In the coming weeks schools and colleges will return to their usual routine. Our Choir stalls will be filled once again. Blessings of backpacks and indeed new students will mark the rhythm of a new school year, a rhythm filled with tradition, music, creativity, new opportunities and song. Across the land and beyond, it won’t be […]
Sermon Topic: Christmas
Letting God Speak to Us
Just few days ago my younger brother Sandro and his wife Giulia, who live in Florence in Italy, gave birth to their second child, an adorable girl, whom they called Emilia. Once again, as with all my other nephews (six, so far), I have noticed how there are two stages in the experience of childbirth. […]
‘Building the Bonds of Attachment’
When our children were very young, before they went to bed on Christmas Eve, they would put out some traditional treats for Santa by the fireplace – a glass of sherry and a mince pie, and a carrot for the reindeer – just as I had done back in the 1960s. Then, during the night […]
Once you are real you cannot be ugly.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?” “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to […]
Sermon for Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, 2023
In the name of God, who is Grace and love and communion. Amen. Good evening. Good evening! And Merry Christmas. It felt so helpless. It feels so helpless. It’s Christmas Eve in Ramallah on the West Bank. In Israel, Palestine, it’s Christmas Eve. But all the Christmas celebrations have been cancelled. No wreaths, no trees. […]
Hope from the House of Bread
My building has really got into the Christmas spirit and have been playing Christmas carols morning, noon, and night in the lobby and all the other public spaces. While I was having my morning swim the other day, I was thinking about the conflict in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, and my mind wandered to […]
The Real Christmas
I’ve witnessed two births in my life. In both cases, births that were fully surrounded by the technology and wisdom of our medical age. Buttressed by months of through preparation and guidance beforehand, and months of specialized care afterwards. For the moment of birth itself, we couldn’t have been in a better place or with […]
The Humility and Love of God
I woke up this morning to hear news of the shelling of the city of Kherson in Ukraine. People of that beleaguered city had been shopping at the market, presumably getting ready to celebrate Christmas. Families including children were killed in a senseless attach on a civilian target. Meanwhile, many miles away in Bethlehem, the […]
The Calvary and the Christmas Tree
There is a book, long out of print, that was formational in my sense of calling to be a priest back in 1979 when I was a young undergraduate. It was a collection of essays edited by Eric James titled ‘Stewards of the Mysteries of God.’ In it was a short piece by Bishop Richard […]
The Time Being
I remember in our apartment on 215th Street (Seems like ages ago now), The super would figure out a way To rig the elevator to play Christmas music for weeks and weeks before the Day: I think what he did was just put a radio on top of the elevator Set to a perpetually Christmas […]
