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Home / Homily Resources - Page 103
  • Sunday, August 1 2021. Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time


    Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

    Read More Sunday, August 1 2021. Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 31, 2021. Saturday of Week 17 in Ordinary Time


    But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company, and she pleased Herod so much that he promised on oath to grant her whatever she might ask. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.”

    Read More July 31, 2021. Saturday of Week 17 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 30, 2021. Friday of Week 17 in Ordinary Time


    But Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house.” And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.

    Read More July 30, 2021. Friday of Week 17 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 29, 2021. Thursday of Week 17 in Ordinary Time


    And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

    Read More July 29, 2021. Thursday of Week 17 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 28, 2021. Wednesday of Week 17 in Ordinary Time


    Jesus said to his disciples, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

    Read More July 28, 2021. Wednesday of Week 17 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 27, 2021. Tuesday of Week 17 in Ordinary Time


    Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!”

    Read More July 27, 2021. Tuesday of Week 17 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 26, 2021. Monday of Week 17 in Ordinary Time


    For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn — and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.

    Read More July 26, 2021. Monday of Week 17 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • Liturgy | Presider's Page

    Presider’s Page for 25 July (17th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

    United with Christians all over the world, we acknowledge one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God as our Father. We worship as one family, and pray for greater charity and love among all the baptised.
    • Today is World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly

    Read More Presider’s Page for 25 July (17th Sunday in Ordinary Time)Continue

  • Sunday, July 25, 2021. Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time


    When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”

    Read More Sunday, July 25, 2021. Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 24, 2021. Saturday of Week 16 in Ordinary Time


    But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'”

    Read More July 24, 2021. Saturday of Week 16 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 23, 2021. St Bridget of Sweden, Religious, Patron of Europe


    I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

    Read More July 23, 2021. St Bridget of Sweden, Religious, Patron of EuropeContinue

  • Thursday July 22, 2021. St Mary Magdalene


    It was very early on the first day of the week and still dark, when Mary of Magdala came to the tomb. She saw that the stone had been moved away from the tomb and came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved. ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb’ she said ‘and we don’t know where they have put him.’

    Read More Thursday July 22, 2021. St Mary MagdaleneContinue

  • July 21, 2021. Wednesday of Week 16 in Ordinary Time

    Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!/

    Read More July 21, 2021. Wednesday of Week 16 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 20, 2021. Tuesday of Week 16 in Ordinary Time

    And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

    Read More July 20, 2021. Tuesday of Week 16 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 19, 2021. Monday of Week 16 in Ordinary Time


    Some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.

    Read More July 19, 2021. Monday of Week 16 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • Liturgy | Presider's Page

    Presider’s Page for 18 July (16th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

    Our God is like a shepherd who always looks after the flock: the Lord cares for us in all our needs. Even when we are distressed by a new surge of COVID-19, our caring Lord is by our side.

    Read More Presider’s Page for 18 July (16th Sunday in Ordinary Time)Continue

  • July 18, 2021. Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time


    As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.

    Read More July 18, 2021. Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 17, 2021. Saturday of Week 15 in Ordinary Time


    This was to fulfil what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smouldering wick until he brings justice to victory. And in his name the Gentiles will hope.”

    Read More July 17, 2021. Saturday of Week 15 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 16, 2021. Friday of Week 15 in Ordinary Time


    “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

    Read More July 16, 2021. Friday of Week 15 in Ordinary TimeContinue

  • July 15, 2021. Thursday of Week 15 in Ordinary Time


    Jesus exclaimed “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

    Read More July 15, 2021. Thursday of Week 15 in Ordinary TimeContinue

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  • 19 comments

    Seán Ó Conaill: Violence in the Bible: A Motivational Pattern?

    April 6 2026
    Sean O'Conaill
    "... Augustine’s Neoplatonism and ... Anselm’s philosophy of cosmic order. These are both very powerful ways of thinking, but their very power can make them obtuse to the tonality of Scripture." This is most helpful Joe. I can see far more clearly now how the 'evangelical albatross' takes flight - from the misapplication of Anselm's focus on the cosmic divine order to mean that it was this 'divine order' - this towering beautiful schema - that God the Father was chiefly concerned with in asking Jesus to accept the Cross - rather than our own liberation - as individuals as well as collectively - from the power of evil as it confronts us daily. This is where the understanding of the long historical debate over atonement - e.g. between Abelard and Bonaventure's 'takes' and Anselm - becomes critical. Still today the Catechism tends to instil the notion that Catholic theology is one perfectly consistent and logical synthesis - a 'seamless robe' rather than an ongoing discussion 'in faith'. You yourself, Joe, cannot be blamed for that - ready as you are always to engage with anyone who floats an opinion. Thanks and God bless!
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  • 19 comments

    Seán Ó Conaill: Violence in the Bible: A Motivational Pattern?

    April 6 2026
    Joseph O'Leary
    Sean, I would say that Anselm has to be placed within the history of metaphysical theology (which begins with Philo and in the specifically Christian world with Justin Martyr), as a key moment in it (he is called the father of scholasticism), occasionally going too far in a rationalistic direction. My general approach is to "overcome" such metaphysical constructions and to "step back" to the foundational biblical phenomena which the metaphysical approach tend to occlude. But like Heidegger in the realm of philosophy, I think the first step in any such critical retrieval of the past is to understand what the figure studied was attempting to do. Heidegger would say that all the great metaphysicians from Plato and Aristotle to Nietzsche need to be "overcome" but he cautioned against dismissing them. He did not see metaphysics as false, but as creating a blind spot due to its point of departure. Moreover, he found positive material for his step back to a phenomenological thinking of being within the great metaphysical systems. In the case of theology, the first step is to understand what the theologian studied was attempting to do. Karl Barth's book on Anselm names his project as Fides Quaerens Intellectum (https://www.scribd.com/document/789781183/Anselm-Fides-Quaerens-Intellectum-Karl-Barth ). Barth would say that even when he seems to be proving the existence of God by mere reason, Anselm is thinking from faith, and as a saintly monk is thoroughly in line with what the Gospels urge: as you put it, "we are instructed by Jesus himself to ‘come to’ the Father on an intimate, ‘personal’ and friendly level" this applies more to Anselm than to other theologians since the "frame" of his thinking is friendly, contemplative (not merely "intellectual") dialogues, punctuated by bursts of praise for God and concern for the salvation of humankind. The "faith" that is "seeking understanding" is a living faith, not just a set of tenets. The same is true of Augustine, his major predecessor. The search for understanding is a spiritual exercise, and when the theological effort falls short one falls back on faith itself with new appreciation. Having fully appreciated the texture of Augustine's or Anselm's theological thinking, to "overcome" them and "step back" from them means basically to show how their understanding of Scripture was limited by their metaphysical way of thinking, by Augustine's Neoplatonism and by Anselm's philosophy of cosmic order. These are both very powerful ways of thinking, but their very power can make them obtuse to the tonality of Scripture. Yes, measured against the scriptural realities (as apprehended in light of contemporary insight), there is a certain inadequacy and inappropriateness in Augustinian and Anselmian discourse, as you are showing in the case of Anselm. While these saintly teachers lift us up, we may also address a critique to them, in a hermeneutic from faith to faith.
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  • 19 comments

    Seán Ó Conaill: Violence in the Bible: A Motivational Pattern?

    April 6 2026
    Sean O'Conaill
    Thanks, Joe. I respect your sense of duty to do justice to Anselm, a fellow theologian - but all of it makes of God the Father someone (or something) far more complicated for the ordinary person than the Jesus through whom - surely - we are instructed by Jesus himself to 'come to' the Father on an intimate, 'personal' and friendly level? In future I think that's how I'll 'frame' St Anselm - as an intellectual who saw Jesus as restoring the perfect order of the universe in honour of God - whereas for Jesus himself his concern was always the troubled or 'disordered' person in front of him. As troubled individuals we need to, and should, see the Father as equally concerned for us as persons - in order to make us also loving - because it is through the loving lives of individuals that Creation is indeed restored. Where you always seem to want to see the positives in Christendom, I tend to see a legacy of things missing that were not missing in the early church - especially the 'Christus Victor' emphasis on Jesus as revealing and defeating the demonic aspects of pagan imperialism. 11th century Europe - the Europe of the First Crusade - was surely not the New Creation that Paul envisaged, even if the influence of the church upon the state was then at its zenith? I still find it astonishing, and lamentable, that YouCat gives to young people today no clear intellectual framework for connecting 'sin' and violence, when for e.g. St Augustine that connection was obvious in the sin of pride. Can you understand and explain that obvious lacuna? For me we do not hear often enough that Jesus sets the pride of his enemies in high relief by his humility - and that this was also the Father's intent. Anselm's greater concern for a universal order - and a tendency for churchmen more generally not to want to see the pride of the Christendom ruling classes who patronised them - must surely be part of the answer to YouCat's 'voids'.
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  • 19 comments

    Seán Ó Conaill: Violence in the Bible: A Motivational Pattern?

    April 6 2026
    Joe O'Leary
    Is Anselm's theology "always a pastoral albatross"? It seems that in his day he was relieving Christians of another albatross, namely the crude "deceiving Satan" account that had crept into Christian doctrine early on, and also the crude ideas that people formed from an untutored reading of the New Testament. His own theology is caricatured as being based on a divine jealously for His offended honour. But Southern (and also Flämig) put this in perspective: "God's honour is the complex of service and worship which the whole Creation, animate and inanimate, in Heaven and earth, owes to the Creator, and which preserves everything in its due place. Regarded in this way, God's honour is simply another word for the ordering of the universe iin its due relationship to God. In withholding his service, a man is guilty of attempting to put himself in the place of the Creator. He fails; but in making this attempt, he excludes himself from the order and beauty of the universe [a phrase Anselm uses frequently, as in ch. 15]. His rebellion requires a counter-assertion of God's real possession of his honour, not to erase an injury to God [NB], but to erase a blot on the universal order. To do this, God as Man makes good the damage; and God as Lord takes seisin [a feudal term] of his honour once more. And so the whole servitium debitum of the universe is re-established, and God’s ‘honour’ in its full extent is displayed in the restored order and beauty of the whole. All this is capable of expression in entirely non-feudal language. But Anselm used the language of feudal relationships, not because he approved every aspect of them, but because they provided an example of hierarchy, which both philosophically and morally he found most satisfying; and – contrary to what is often thought – he valued hierarchy as an expression of the rule of reason. Those critics who have imagined Anselm’s God as a jealous tyrant, greedy for recognition and honour, have failed to recognize that the feudal image, however unsatisfactory in some of its implications, stood for rationality prevailing against the inroads of self-will and chaos. The rationality of Anselm’s theology is based on the principle that there is nothing arbitrary in God.” (Southern, 226-7) “It is unbecoming to God to overlook disorder in his kingdom” (Deum vero non decet aliquid inordinatum in suo regno dimittere, ch. 13) so he cannot just leave sin unpunished. From the modern point of view this sounds like a big fuss about nothing. “If injustice is merely dismissed out of mercy, then it is freer than justice”; Boso objects that we pray “forgive our sins as we forgive others.” Anselm replies that everything Boso says about God’s freedom and will and loving-kindess is true, but we must understand these is such a rational way that we do not appear to contradict divine dignity. Nothing arbitrary means nothing violent, or at least no unjust violence. Feudal honour is a social bond integrating the whole society, not honour in a later individualistic sense. God punishes sin right through Scripture – what place does that have in Girardian theology? Anselm wants to make it perfectly rational and at the service of the order of all creation. But some of his statements make us uneasy: “as man in sinning robs from God what is His, so God in punishing takes from man what is his” (ch. 14). This sits ill with the Enlightenment with inalienable human rights, with Rousseau’s rejection of Original Sin, and in general with our modern inclination to “forgive myself the lot!” and “cast out remorse” (Yeats, “A Dialogue of Self and Soul”). Anselm follows Augustine in seeing God as the source of all goods and the orderer of all evils – not in an arbitrary or calculating way but just by being God, manifest in the order and beauty of Creation. Anselm’s God is not affected by human sin, but his cosmic providence is impugned by it and is preserved by the law that all sin must be followed by satisfaction or punishment (necesse est ut omne peccatum satisfaction aut poena sequitur, ch. 15). Is this just pabulum for PhD theses, with no vital relevance today? I would say that worry about cosmic order and justice remains a live issue. I met a young Swiss financial wizard the other day who declared himself a nihilist, in the sense that the universe is a mess, and humanity a barbaric breed, and all we can do is ensure some semblance of social order. Our religion claims much more than that, and wants to find a divine purpose in evolution (with Teilhard, who gave the best reinterpretation of Original Sin). When we undertake such cogitations (or attempt to dialogue with Buddhist ideas of karma), Anselm may draw surprisingly near. The lunar astronauts said that from space they saw the earth as a lifeboat, and others with access to the view from space had the same impression – a tiny community clinging to the edge of the vast uninhabited waste, and direly in need of clinging together to survive. Is there no ordering divine principle presiding over all this? I skip the long discussion of the number of the fallen angels being made up for by the number of the elect, a totally obsolete and tedious topic. Anselm's horror at sin produced a statement that is surely the source of a notorious one from Newman: "Were it not better that the whole world, and whatever is that is not God, should perish and be reduced to nothingness, than that you should make one movement of the eye that is against the will of God." (ch. 21). Newman wrote: "Man had rebelled against his Maker. It was this that caused the divine interposition: and to proclaim it must be the first act of the divinely-accredited messenger. The Church must denounce rebellion as of all possible evils the greatest. She must have no terms with it; if she would be true to her Master, she must ban and anathematize it. This is the meaning of a statement of mine, which has furnished matter for one of those special accusations to which I am at present replying: I have, however, no fault at all to confess in regard to it; I have nothing to withdraw, and in consequence I here deliberately repeat it. I said, 'The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die of starvation in extremest agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse.' I think the principle here enunciated to be the mere preamble in the formal credentials of the Catholic Church, as an Act of Parliament might begin with a "Whereas." It is because of the intensity of the evil which has possession of mankind, that a suitable antagonist has been provided against it; and the initial act of that divinely-commissioned power is of course to deliver her challenge and to defy the enemy. Such a preamble then gives a meaning to her position in the world, and an interpretation to her whole course of teaching and action." (Apologia, ch. 5). Southern actually compares the two passages, finding in Newman's words "a rhetorical exaggeration, even (if one may say so) an absurdity, which is never found in Anselm" (pp. 217-18). The rest of Part 1 accentuates the impossibility of man being redeemed. By Original Sin man cheated God of the beautiful work he was to achieve as man flourished (ch. 23). Boso pleads that man is now is incapable of giving God what he might have been able to in his unfallen state, and how can he be blamed for not giving what he is impotent to give? (ch. 24). But, laying on a huge guilt trip, Anselm argues with fierce Augustinian logic that this very impotence is inexcusable. Boso says: "It is too true. He is unjust because he does not render to God what he owes, and he is unjust because he is unable to render it." Now God cannot let the sinner perish (since he must fill up the seats left vacant by the fallen angels, and since it would be a defeat for God if his creature, man, were to be a complete disaster. So it is necessary that man be saved by Christ. Boso agrees, that is his faith, but he does not understand how, qua ratione, a phrase he repeats obsessively. Both Anselm and Boso agree that one who says something is impossible, though is must necessarily be, just because he does not know how it can be (qui idcirco astruit esse impossibile, quod necesse est esse, quia nescit quomodo sit) is a dolt, insipiens). Part 2 will give a positive account of how God saves man without compromising reason and his own dignity. There is very little about "honour" here, just Augustinian ideas about bondage to sin. Anselm may go farther than Augustine in highlighting the desperateness of man's plight and the dramatic nature of redemption. Luther goes further and resolves the issue more radically in his doctrine of Justification, underlining the sheer gratuity of God's grace and forgiveness, and cutting through Anselm's ratiocinations.
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