In Fr Kieran’s homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, he explores the unfathomable mercy and forgiveness of Jesus, first, when he appears to Thomas after he doubted the stories of resurrection, and later, to Peter, the man who denied Jesus three times, and yet, so complete is the forgiveness that it is Peter who is asked to be head of the Church.
Fr Kieran reflects on the reassurance of the resurrections and points out too, that the message of Easter is not that we can relax and wait for the Lord to evacuate us to heaven, but that we must roll up our sleeves and get to work preaching the gospel to the ends of the earth, drawing on the supernatural power of Christ’s cross and resurrection.
In Fr Kieran’s Good Friday homily, he reflects on the two Passion accounts, viz., that of the suffering servant from the prophet Isaiah and the main focus of the Good Friday liturgy, the Passion of Jesus and the theme that joins both of these accounts. Fr Kieran explores these two accounts as calling on us, to find a unity in our whole life span between the active stage and the stage of passion. Often our world identifies those lesser ones with the inactive, the passive, but Jesus identifies these same ones as the most important in the heart of God. He has come to make us all one and what a price he pays to get that message across.
On the fifth Sunday of Year A, Kieran connects last Sunday’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:1-12), with this week’s Gospel (Mt 5:13-16), which opens with Jesus telling his disciples that they, “are the salt of the earth.” As Kieran points out, Jesus did not say that they “must become” but that they are! What an amazing message to hear – a compliment for sure, and in his homily, Kieran points out that this is “the natural state of the baptised person.” Affirming and all as this is, and as we read the words of Jesus more deeply, isn’t it really about how we are, or are meant to be, as a community? We aren’t meant to act alone; one example is that The Franciscans base their apostolate on life in fraternity. They go out as brothers to the world, not as loners! So maybe Kieran is challenging us to truly live up to that affirmation that we are the salt of the earth, light to the world.
In Fr Kieran’s homily for the fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, he looks at the Sermon on the Mount, the eight beatitudes or blessings. We might benefit from a short introduction to the Catholic tradition of reflection on what it means to live a good life as a follower of Jesus. In other words, a peek at moral theology down through the years!
Fr Kieran reflects on the Gospel from the Mass of the thirty-second Sunday (Lk 20:27-38) when Jesus is confronted by the Sadducees with a question designed to catch him out.
Irish people are proud of their traditional image of being an hospitable, welcoming nation. Céad Míle Fáilte, a hundred thousand welcomes, is a familiar greeting for our foreign visitors! I imagine that this reputation, handed down from generation to generation, was...
My dear friends, in this Triduum in honour of St Anthony, we have been focusing largely on our young people, especially as they’re in the midst of their exams. We continue to think of them and pray that the Lord, through the intercession of Saint Anthony, will help...
At the end of a series of lectures given by an American theologian Richard Gula which I attended, he invited questions from the audience. One person asked his opinion on what the most worrying trend in American culture from the ethical point of view. He replied that...
We’re so used to praying through St Anthony to God, asking him to intercede for us for various things we need. But of course, we mustn’t forget the other important dimension of saints, which is that we’re supposed to, in some sense, imitate them, or at least, learn...