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. […]
Sermon Topic: Incarnation
Magnificat Fire
Mary was a girl, young and small, from a village that could be swallowed by the dust and never missed. Nazareth. The name carried no weight then, just a whisper of a place where time had settled like silt in the cracks of the world. Yet she sang a song that bent the arc of […]
Tales of the unexpected: Heaven and Earth in a Little Space
There was once an elementary school that had an old tradition that, on a teacher’s birthday, every child in the class would bring their teacher a special gift. As the children progressed through the school, the teachers discovered who gave the best gifts and looked forward to it immensely. It was the sixth-grade teacher’s birthday, […]
Believe
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. For many years—so many years it’s almost shocking that things have changed— For many years, if you were to go to Macy’s on Herald Square, now, in this season, you’d see, Blazoned on the front of the store in […]
The First Sunday After Christmas Day
It being the third day of Christmas I can very correctly wish you all a “Merry Christmas”. I need hardly remind you that we are within the Twelve Days of Christmas which began on December 25 and ends on the Eve of the Epiphany, Twelfth Night. At least in normal times we go on singing […]
Messengers
We know the scene: the room, variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily. Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest. But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage. The engendering Spirit did not enter her without […]
No room.
A few weeks ago, my wife and I were invited to a parishioner’s home for dinner. They live in Jamaica (that is, Jamaica – Queens, though I wouldn’t have minded a trip to Montego Bay!). It took quite a while to get there and I marveled that, in their late 80’s they still made the […]
Can I learn to sing Mary’s song?
Mary is known as the Mother of God – or ‘God-bearer’; the Greek word Theotokos. 1. A title given to her by the Council of Ephesus in 431, but a title that only makes sense in relation to her Son who is fully God and fully human. Everything we say about Mary points to Jesus […]
The Threefold Birth of the Son
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen. Welcome to you this happy morning! It is exciting to see you all here. Dear Lord Jesus, 2012 years on and ever stronger, Happy Birthday! Saint Luke, whose Gospel we heard at the midnight Mass, tells the Christmas story […]
Looking through the Eyes of the Child
Not so many years ago, the celebration of Candlemas was seen as another of Mary’s feasts – The Purification – and certainly, that is one element of the gospel story we hear today. But there is something far more important here, and that is why the title has changed to “the Presentation of Christ in […]
