Earlier this year (May 8th), many of us paused to mark the 100thbirthday of Sir David Attenborough. For generations now, his voice has accompanied our viewing of the natural world, revealing its beauty, complexity, fragility, and wonder. Through astonishing cinematography, programmes such as Planet Earth have allowed us to see the world afresh, the hidden intricacy of forests, the movement of oceans, the delicate balance of ecosystems, the miracle of life unfolding often unno

I used to love watching ‘Yes, Prime Minister’, especially the eternal playoff between Sir Humphrey and the Prime Minister. It usually ended with Sir Humphrey getting exactly what he wanted and making the Prime Minister, Jim Hacker, think he had got what he wanted. It was a complex interplay, with many people on the side of Jim or the side of Sir Humphrey pulling them in different directions. I found myself in the Mayors Parlour last Sunday before walking out to lead the Armed

We celebrate today the feast of the Apostles Peter & Paul. Foremost among the followers of Christ. But what is it precisely about these two men that caused God to exalt them so? On the surface there is much that separates these two saints. St. Peter was a poor and simple man, unlearned and uncultured; St. Paul was a Roma citizen, “a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee” one educated at the feet of Gamaliel. St. Peter was with our Lord from the very beginning of His public ministry

This morning, as I am in York, Fr Lawrence will be presiding and preaching at the Masses at St Stephen’s, and I am very grateful to him for doing so. As I do not wish to repeat what he (might) be saying, I instead offer a few thoughts on this month of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, in which we celebrate the very great love that Jesus has for us. This month we find ourselves faced with the Holy truth of His great love for us and finding ourselves the object of this love, we t

Have you ever been overlooked, not chosen for something which you really wanted, something which could have been life affirming? Maybe a fantastic job prospect, or a key member of an important team. It can be quite disheartening, maybe even soul destroying especially if you had set your heart on whatever it might be. I’ll bet the overriding emotion at the time was disappointment, maybe some resentment and maybe even some feeling of a lack of self-worth. It has happened to me

During his time of teaching in the flesh, Christ often expressed his love for, and his desire to be one with people, especially for those who were rejected and unloved. One quite obvious way He did this was to share meals with them. We only need to think of the familiar feeding of the five thousand where he miraculously provided a great meal for a huge crowd of people who came to listen to him and be healed by him. Shared meals were, for the Jews, signs of acceptance and frie

Where are we going and what can I do about it? What can you do about it? Better to ask ‘what can we do about it’. What can Trinity Sunday teach us today? First, in Christ we discover that God is love. It is not just that God loves, but that God is, at the very core of his being, love. When we love, we share in the life of God. If God were alone from all eternity, then God could not be love. There would have been no one and nothing to love until Creation. Love would be acciden

You know how sometimes a word can be used in everyday parlance to effectively replace the word which actually describes an action or a thing? Let me explain…..So for example, when we clean our carpets we often say we are hoovering our carpets. We don’t say we are sharking our carpets, or ewbanking them or even dysoning them. I wonder how many of us actually do say that we are vacuuming them? The act of vacuuming has become so glibly known as the act of hoovering, when of cour

It’s a part – an important part – of the practice of our faith to find peace and stillness. It’s hopefully easy to find, we are open all day just so that people can come in and find peace. As Christians, we associate peace with the presence of God. The still quiet places are where we expect to find God, and the Spirit in particular is associated with peace. We go on pilgrimage to find stillness and peace, and it’s very possible to find it with other people as well, as we shar

Christ tells us in today’s gospel, “There are many rooms in my Father’s house”. We often hear this reading at funerals – and rightly so, for it is comforting and true, and puts into context the promises made to us and for us at our Baptism, that there is a place for us in the world yet to come and that we belong in the heart of God, indeed that there is a place individually prepared by Christ for each one of us, which may seem to bear little relation to the place where we are