Twenty Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Download Bulletin 21st September 2025

Fr Hugh’s Homily for 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Return to Paris on Tuesday was £300.  Metro fare 4 euros or so.  Notre Dame cathedral was free.  Lunch 15 euros.  To the guy who begged at my table 4.5 euros in what change I had.  21 euros for presents.  Everything had its price.  Money is our natural way of exchange for services, or to enable others to get services.  Money is simply a factor in our daily lives.  But the gospel today is about how an ordinary thing like money can so easily be perverted by our greed, or other temptations…..

Complete Homily for 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Daily Prayers Week 25

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Download Bulletin 14th September 2025

DEACON GEORGE’S HOMILY FOR THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS

“So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.”  When I was 26, someone gave me a cross, with a human figure, crucified, mounted, on the cross.  I looked at the crucified figure and lived.  God first conversed with Moses, at Horeb, the mountain of God.  There, God spoke to him from a burning bush but at a distance because he was standing on holy ground.  In those days, only Moses was able to converse with God.  And he always had to sanctify himself before he could speak with God.  When God decided to descend upon Mount Sinai, in the form of a cloud, all the people had to sanctify themselves, it took two days.  But even after their sanctification, they were not allowed to touch the mountain, on pain of death.  Only Moses was called, to go up the mountain.  The bottom of the mountain was the nearest that the Israelites could come to their God….

Complete Homily for Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Daily Prayers Exaltation

 

Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Download Bulletin 7th September 2025

NATIVITY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY – 8TH SEPTEMBER

FR HUGH’S HOMILY FOR 23rd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

I like to buy a little present for those in the house when on holiday and I was in the renovated Battersea Power Station, now a shopping mall, impressive, but just a shopping mall, and I walked by the Rolex shop.  What about a watch each for the four of them?  One was going for £17,300.  Would my Debit card, Apple pay, cover four of them?  I guess I might have got away with it for a brief time, but not long.  There are things we would love to do, but like the builder of the tower and the king, in the gospel, but we can only give of what we have.  Otherwise our cards are rapidly ‘maxed out’ and we end up in the hands of short-term loan sharks, as so many poor people, and others, do today….

Complete Homily for 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Daily Prayers Week 23

Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Download Bulletin 24th August 2025

DEACON GEORGE’S HOMILY FOR 21st SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Today’s Gospel message is about the Kingdom of God: who’s in and who’s out.  The Gospel begins, with a question from a bystander, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” The question is not answered.  The answer is God’s business.  However, the business of the questioner is to make sure that he is one of the saved.  Because, Jesus answers him thus, “Strive to enter through the narrow door…”.  The reply from Jesus, “Strive to enter …” must have come as a shock to him.  Because he would have assumed that the kingdom of God, was automatic for the Jews.  And therefore, he expected Jesus to confirm this.  So, he must have asked himself, why was Jesus telling a Jew to, “Strive to enter ….”.  To find out the answer, to the bystander’s question let us look at our first reading…..

Complete Homily for 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Daily Prayers Week 21

SANCTUARY OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES, FRANCE

LOURDES PILGRIMAGE SUMMER 2026 – SEE INSIDE BULLETIN FOR DETAILS

 

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Download Bulletin 3rd August 2025

DEACON GEORGE’S HOMILY FOR EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Today’s parable, “the rich man and his barns”, is only found in Luke’s Gospel.  As Luke was addressing his Gospel mainly to non-Jews, therefore, he must have thought that this parable was important for them.  Jesus was surrounded by a large crowd, to whom he was giving his message of salvation.  However, some men in the crowd asked him to arbitrate in a family dispute over property.  They asked Jesus, because, in those days, rabbis were expected to give judgement on the whole range of the Law, which included civil, criminal and religious questions.  Jesus refused to do this, no doubt, for a very good reason.  However, their interest in property, gave him the opportunity to teach his hearers, and all of us, a very effective parable on the relative value of this world’s goods.  The lesson of this parable is very obvious to us all…..

  Complete Homily for 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Daily Prayers Week 18

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Download Bulletin 20th July 2025

Fr Hugh’s Homily for 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if anyone hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to them, and will eat with them, and they with me” Jesus says in the book of Revelation.  So at the end of the Bible, Jesus is saying to us, if only we open the door to him he will be that close to us, as a family member eating at our table.  Why does he want to do that?  Is it just to eat, as might be my first thought?  In our first reading and gospel this is exactly what happens.  Abraham and Martha both eagerly welcome the angels (or angel) and Jesus into their homes.  But why have they come.  Its not to eat.  The angels don’t need to, Jesus might need to but it is not his priority.  Both come to do the work of God.  To make God and his message known……

Complete Homily for 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Daily Prayers Week 16

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