It is our great happiness this week to invite the Bishop of Blackburn to come and Confirm our candidates in the faith of the Church. Confirmation is a sacrament conferred less frequently than Baptism. Indeed it may be seen that Baptism is the most ‘popular’ sacrament in terms of numbers, followed by Holy Communion, and then numbers tend to dip rather towards Confirmation and even further to Marriage and to an all time low for Ordination, picking up again for the Last Rites –

Much of our life, in one way or another, revolves around food. Some of our happiest memories gather around tables, Sunday dinners, birthday cakes, fish and chips by the sea, the smell of fresh bread, the comfort of a meal lovingly prepared. Even our entertainment reflects this fascination, like many people, I rather enjoy programmes such as The Great British Bake Off. There is something joyful and reassuring about watching flour, butter, sugar, and skill become something beau

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

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

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

I’m sure at some time or another we have all had a beautiful piece of pottery or ceramic or porcelain which has been dropped and broken. Heartbreaking. Devastating, especially if said item was an heirloom or a piece of nostalgia. We try to get the pieces back together, align them just right, use minimal glue, but strong glue, and hope that the join is invisible. That the item looks as it was before the break. I’ve done that, for sure. A number of times, with, I have to say, l

There used to be a blog called ‘Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things’, I was a great fan. It showed the leader of North Korea being taken to see things, and he would look at them with a degree of interest, depending on the Thing he was presented with. Sometimes, one of his (rather obvious) body doubles would take his place, and their look of sheer incomprehension of what they were being shown could be telling, a little like when a mechanic shows me what is wrong with my car, I simpl

The Jews looked down on the Samaritans as religious and racial half-breed heretics. It’s hard for us to understand the animosity that existed between these two groups. If you think of the Bosnians and the Serbs or if you think of the Palestinians and the Israelis, you’ve got the right idea. So why did Jesus “have to” go through Samaria when the Jews either didn’t go there at all or passed through as quickly as possible? The answer is simple and profound: Jesus went because he