There are all kinds of dreams, are there not. Dreams which we forget the second we wake up, no matter how immersive and occasionally preferable to reality they may be. Dreams which turn into nightmares which we are happy to forget, personal dreams and dreams for others. What are your dreams? We are supposed to be able to achieve our dreams, be they of wealth, avarice, charity or for good or ill – we say ‘you can achieve anything’ to children, which always seems rather unlikel

Gaudete, Gaudete Christus est natus. Ex Maria Virgine, Gaudete. Rejoice, rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary. Rejoice. Gaudete. Rejoice. The Messiah, the Christ is coming. He will come to be the light to lighten the gentiles and to be the glory of His people Israel. And as the Gaudete carol continues: Deus homo factus est natura Murante, mundus renovates est a Christo regnante. God has become man, with nature marvelling. The world has become renewed by the reigning Chr

If we are to live fully as human beings, we have to acknowledge our mortality, our joys, our faults and our internal pain. All these things together make us who and what we are, and they combine into the song of never-ending love that we can sing with certainty and joy – when that song is sad and when it is full of life, it is still our song and speaks of who we are. So we need to sing, and to remember the songs of those who we come here to mourn today, because they also live

Some years ago, I spent Advent in the Manchester Royal Infirmary as a patient. I’d been in hospital since October, by Advent I was recovering from surgery and waiting for test results. Miles from home, barrier-nursed in a side room, uncertain and anxious of what might lie ahead, it was a strange Advent... not the kind with candlelight services and carols, but one of ward life, the smell of disinfectant, and long nights broken only by the soft sounds of nurses’ footsteps. Duri

There are so many announcements and proclamations made that sometimes you could be forgiven for being a little underwhelmed by their...

Today we celebrate Gaudete Sunday, a moment in Advent where the mood shifts, where the purple of penitence softens into rose, and the...

There is a time and a season to go back home – to return to some kind of beginning, whether this is to rediscover the reason we set out...

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Thus begins the Gospel of John today and thus ends our...

Imagine that you are in Nursery School and we are about to begin story time, and it goes a little like this; “Once upon a time a little...

You can’t escape the symbolism of watching in Advent, can you? From the purple of the vestments reminding us of the dark before the dawn...