Given that this is the beginning of the month of November and all around us for the next few days fireworks will be let off to the chant of ‘Remember remember the 5th of November’, I want to say “Remember, remember the month of November..for it is the month of the Holy Souls.”

A three tier wedding cake is a rare sight these days. But I recall looking at a photo, a black and white photo, of my father and mother on their wedding day, cutting the wedding cake; and it was a white three tier wedding cake. Recently I asked my mother why a three tier wedding cake?

Harken to the conversations held among the Common people who complain of their lot. Though oft it has been the case that such conversations were heard in ancient times but now they are to be heard up and down the country in places of food and drink where family, friends and strangers still do meet.

Recent events, be it the attack on the Last Supper in Paris at the Olympics or the protests and riots in the cities and towns of England, they have a feel to them that suggests we are all being played!

As the bad weather continues and heavy rains fall upon us in a very unnatural manner, we pause to look up and wonder at the strange formations in our skies.

C S Lewis once said that many today speak of Evolution and ask what is the next step of evolution for Man? But evolution could become devolution. But it could also be a step where we are put into metamorphises of grace under pressure just as coal can be put under fiery pressure and become a diamond!

All of us who have been baptised are given an indellible mark or a permanent character which makes us a royal people, a priestly people and a prophetic people. But are we really?

In many ways people…live in boxes, move around in boxes, listen to boxes, watch boxes, think in political boxes and all trying to pretend that the day when they will be buried in a box is far far far away! But time is ebbing away for the world of boxes!

What would winter or our childhood have been like, without Christmas? Christmas is a word the Catholic church has given to the world and with this word comes the deepest mystery and the deepest joy!

You might have noticed that there is a War on Truth today. Governments and Mass Media are seeking to be the Truth Seers, the Truth Speakers and the Truth Guardians for all of mankind based on them saying to us: ‘You can’t trust anyone, but you can trust us!’

The Angelus is a mystery and an icon that reveals to us the beauty and the chivalry of grace that flows between a pure spirit - Gabriel - and a pure embodied spirit -Mary!

A new call has arisen. It is championed by devotees and zealots of what seems to be a new religion who say we need to save the planet. But if you ask, to save the planet from what? Apparently, we need to save it from human beings!

If Humility is the ground of all the virtues then rituals are designed to ground us in the objectivity of someone greater than ourselves, in whose presence we stand.

As a priest during this season of November I often feel that I am on a watchtower in the vineyard of the Lord, spying out the Last Things that seem to be coming over the horizon and calling to the people that winter is coming. November…reflects the autumn season…Autumn gives a feeling of end times and a reminder of our mortality.

For many years I have pondered the question, what is a parish? But the key is found in the Lord’s parables of the Vineyard for he is the Vine and we are the Branches. But are we?

God fearing human beings are discovering that a new secular world and a new secular order is being set up by intelligences, human and other, gradually, collectively and step by step and piece by piece.

In the 70s many threw out the elements that made up what Catholics called Sacred Tradition in the name of Modernising the Church or in the name of going back to biblical roots! The result has been the desertification of the Catholic landscape. It is time for a change!

The Life of the Church is the Life of God, the Holy Trinity, and the life of God is given to us as food and drink in the Holy Eucharist for the Eucharist makes the Church and the Church makes the Eucharist and thus the Eucharistic Community makes us fit for Heaven for the Eucharist is the seed of the Resurrection!

Eastertide reaches it’s climax with two mysteries that both lift up our eyes to the skies and draw down from the heavens the fire that will light up the earth: Ascension and Pentecost. Together these two mysteries fulfill the meaning of Jacob’s ladder [Genesis 28:10-28] for now we can ascend with Christ the King and the fire of heaven can descend upon all who dwell upon the earth. But as always the fallen world ruled by its dark winged princes have sought to ape this by building two towers.

Many today cuddle up to dragons and think they are a nice fantasy. Indeed there are programmes ranging from Merlin, Eragon and Game of Thrones and songs like ‘Puff the mighty dragon’ that make a dragon seem something nice to know, to have or even to ride! But I prefer the accounts of JRR Tolkein in the Hobbit and stories like St George and the dragon as this captures the Western view that we have dragons to fight and dragons to slay.