Download Bulletin 20th March 2022

Fr Hugh’s Homily for 3rd Sunday of Lent

Imagine that the world is a human body, and from space, as we have seen in famous pictures taken by astronauts, very beautiful.  Blue and green and swirls of cloud.  It looks an idyllic place to live.  A healthy body. But when we get closer we start to see that the body is not so perfect.  The skies are not as clean as we thought as if it was the body of a regular smoker. Both the air around it and parts of the body within are damaged.  Then we can see also that there are self-inflicted wounds especially where warfare or disease or environmental disaster have broken out.  Patches of sickness across the planet like the black pustules of plague.  Areas that once were beautiful and now hard to look at.  Unlike our own bodies the planet does not have just one ruler so that chances of healing the areas of disease, of making the decision to go to the doctor, become more complex.  If it was our own body we could do that, but the attempts to create a unified head, such as the United Nations, seem to have limited effect.  In the film ‘The Physician,’ the wise healer (Ben Kingsley) says, “we do not treat the illness but the whole person.”  So the question is, ‘What as individuals or small groups can we do?  How can we help heal the planet?  Our shared body?’

Read Fr Hugh’s Homily here

Readings for 3rd Sunday Lent

Daily Prayers 3rd Sunday Lent