Reflections

To prepare for Holy Week, the Fathers recorded a series of Lenten Lectures on each of the major liturgies.1. Palm Sunday2. Tenebrae3. Maundy Thursday4. Good Friday5. The Easter Vigil

Candlemas brings the extended Christmas season to a close. With Septuagesima the next season of our liturgical year is now already upon us. As we say farewell to the crib we start to prepare for Lent and Passiontide. The Presentation and the Purification were the remote preparation for Passiontide, both for the Lord Himself, and for His sinless Mother, and [...]

Today’s introit and epistle bid us always to rejoice in the Lord. Should we make this a daily resolution? “Today I’m going to be joyful.” No, that won’t work. We might resolve to be more charitable or more patient. Charity and patience are virtues, good habits. We acquire those virtuous good habits by repeating them over and over again. We [...]

The Birmingham Oratory parish is dedicated to our Lady’s Immaculate Conception and so we have the privilege of being under her special patronage. In order for our understanding of our Lady’s sinlessness to be more than merely theoretical, God has given us a way of approaching it that is personal and truly human. He has given us the beautiful devotion [...]

We are told that four babies are born on earth every second. In the same moment, a comparable number of souls who have lived their allotted span in this world are leaving it behind as they are called to their final destiny in eternity. The flow of individual human souls in and out of this world is unending. New lives [...]

In the Bible, there is no hard and fast distinction between public worship and private prayer. In the Gospels, Our Lord, quoting the Prophet Isaiah, condemns those who honour God with their lips, but whose hearts are far from Him. In other words, engagement in external ritual without an inward dedication of heart is of no use spiritually. Equally, the [...]

This sermon was preached at the 11am High Mass on Whit Sunday. The Bible is so sparing in the incidental details that it gives of the ministry of Our Lord and the Apostles, that when such details are given you can be sure that some significance is intended. When some of those who witnessed the prodigious wonders of that [...]

"…the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear…" The disciples were afraid they were going to suffer like the Master Himself had suffered, so they locked themselves away, petrified. Then miraculously, Christ stands among them, reassuring them with the breath of the Holy Spirit that He is truly risen, truly alive. In the present [...]

This sermon was preached at the solemn Mass on Easter Sunday, which can be viewed here. Towards the end of Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, there’s a scene where Cordelia describes the deconsecration of the Marchmain family chapel. Having removed the Blessed Sacrament and the altar stone, the priest: … emptied the holy-water stoup and blew out the lamp in [...]

When we are unable to receive Holy Communion sacramentally, we may still make an act of Spiritual Communion. Saint Thomas describes this as 'an ardent desire to receive Jesus in the Holy Sacrament, and a loving embrace as though we had already received Him.' The prayers given below are one way of expressing this desire. The Confiteor I [...]