Peter Blog a few random thoughts

This weeks homily: Jesus who people say he is. He asks the same of us today What can se say?

  At the end of the Second World War. There was a call to stop crimes against humanity. And yet as we have seen on the news in various parts of the world we have seen crime upon crime against humanity. I think that we have all been shocked and disturbed by what has been going on in Iraq. Aid to the Church in need states “The ancient Christian community in Iraq is being decimated. People are fleeing for their lives ahead of acts of terror by ISIS (now Islamic State) and their avowed ambition of ridding Iraq of the hated Christian presence and of eradicating an Iraqi community with a 2,000 year-old heritage.” We are reaching crisis point the international community are responding by dropping aid to the people who need it most our collection here last week was very good in response to what is happening in Gaza and in Iraq. This is something that we can feel that we can do. Often we feel paralysed and can feel that we should be doing something more. There seems to me to be...

 I read a report a few weeks ago to say that religion was dead that we no longer desired or had any need for God. Also in the same report that many young people could not or would not be interested in God and were just out for their own self and had no regard for anything else. Even there has been an attempt to change the language of religion. I heard the other day on the radio someone talking about “mindfulness” actually they were describing prayer without mentioning God. I was in the middle of washing up at the time and shouted at the radio and said “That is called prayer.” My recent trip to Lourdes I have come across something very different and they remind me of the readings today. In the readings today we hear about coming to the water and the feeding of the five thousand with bread and fish. It is in these readings that we notice the generosity of God Notice his generosity in the feeding of the five thousand in this Gospel Jesus uses Five loaves and two fis...

Over the last number of years there seems to be a problem in modern society. It is summed up in a title of a book that I have on my book shelf in the office “ The Lost art of listening” The book laments at the fact that in modern society we have forgotten or at least many of us have forgotten how to listen . It stresses that for many people we have been so busy with our lives that we have not slowed down sufficiently enough to listen to the world around us and more importantly to each other. This weekend the readings focus on a new kind of listening. It is listening of the heart but not to meaningless words but to the most important words in the world. The word of God. Jesus uses that beautiful image of the word as seed penetrating different kinds of soil. This soil is us. We are the ones who hear and read the word of God. And yet I am sure that we can see ourselves in all the different kind of soil. We do not hear the Word of God because of who we are or what is happening to us. ...

The Most Holy Body and Blood   Sometime ago I was celebrating a First Holy Communion Mass and when it came to communion I gave it to one chap when I said “ The Body of Christ” he responded “ Cheers Mate” As you can imagine I was quite taken back from this response. When we were clearing up the Church after the Mass we found an array of sweet rappers and even someone had brought in a McDonalds to eat during the Mass. This is an extreme example of what actually is happening in most parishes. Many priests have seen the lack of respect for the Blessed Sacrament in their parishes on the rise. I began to wonder if someone like the Queen or Pope came to their parishes would they keep talking about what they were having for Dinner or leave early when there was no good reason to do so like catching the last bus. I am sure that it would seem disrespectful. And yet here at Mass here is the Church is someone greater than the Pope and the Queen it is God himself on the Altar. We re...

One day two men were walking along the seashore discussing the mystery of God. However they were not making much progress. Suddenly they came across a small boy planning on the beach. He had dug a hole in the sand and kept running down to the sea, dipping his toy bucket in the water and running back to the beach to empty the water into the hole. The two of them watched this boy for a while as he ran back and fi=fourth filling and emptying the bucket. They found the scene amusing. They went up to the boy and asked what he was doing. Very seriously he told them he was emptying the ocean into the hole he had dug in the sand. The two smiled and walked on, resuming their discussion about God. After a while one of them stopped and said to the other “You, know we were amused just now when the child told us what he was trying to do. Yet what we have been doing in our discussion about God is exactly the same. It is impossible for us to understand the mystery of God is for that child to p...

In the Liturgy this weekend the emphasis changes from looking at the Resurrection and focusing on what is to happen after the Ascension we see the promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit the Advocate. In a few weeks’ time we will see the power of the Holy Spirit and how it transforms peoples’ lives. A few weeks ago a parishioner cam and asked me why the Church never seems to promote or talk about the Holy Spirit. “After all” he said “it hardly ever appears in the Mass.” Although one can be quite dismissive of this statement at first it is true that the Church sometimes has looked upon the Holy Spirit as there but never really spoken about.  I gently reminded him and asked him to look out for the action of the Holy Spirit during the Mass. After Mass he admitted that in fact it is there quite a lot more than he had first thought.  From the opening dialogue to the epiclesis through to the dismissal the Holy Spirit flows through our liturgy. Sometimes the Holy Spir...