I have always considered that the imagination was the gateway into the countryside of the soul, but one that needed to be baptised, redeemed and sanctified. And if so, it could furnish the grounds for a Christian Imagination on a personal level but also on a communal and cultural level too.

The 4th Sunday of Easter is called Good Shepherd’s Sunday and as such it focuses us on the issue of Vocation. But the Good Shepherd looks after, guides and protects his flock. Protects them from what? From wolves, bears and lions!

The Gospel for the 3rd Sunday of Easter begins with 7 disciples including Peter returning to a place and an activity where they first met Our Lord and heard the Lord’s call, Galilee [John 21:1-19]. It is a very much a moment full of previous moments and it feels like déjà vu!

Today is called Divine Mercy Sunday. On this Sunday we are called by Our Lord to cleave to him as our hope, our rock and our refuge. It is good news for ALL sinners. It points to the grace of mercy that is close at hand, at our fingers and waiting to be given to us, if only we ask.

The mystery of the Resurrection of Jesus reveals to us what no eye has seen and no hear has heard, namely, the fulfillment of God’s promises of a new form of life that goes beyond our wildest dreams. The resurrection reveals that life on earth is the prelude of life in heaven, so that heaven reveals the true meaning of our being on earth.

The Cosmos understood as man and his relations with everything in time and space, including history, has been brought into the heart of the Drama of salvation that is the Eucharist. So the work of God to bring about in human beings both a Personalization and a socialization that reflects the Holy Trinity and it is a work that redeems and graces human beings for perfection in and through the Eucharistic mystery.

We have entered what Sacred Tradition calls Passiontide where we notice, through the Liturgy of the Word in our daily Masses, that the opposition to Our Lord grows ever more virulent and poisonous.

On the 4th Sunday of Lent in Year C we have before us a parable from the Gospel of Luke traditionally called The Parable of the Prodigal Son. But this parable could also be described as the Parable of the Merciful Father or the Parable of Unforgiving Son.

Today, Lent brings us up to the heights, to the mount of the Transfiguration, on which Jesus gives us a higher and deeper vision of what reality is really about! A way of seeing that sees through the appearance, glamour and zeitgeist of the world which is but a veil that hides the real, the beautiful and the eternal.

We live in interesting times! We live in a moment of time where things seem to be coming together. Who would have thought that so many would seek to do only one thing and find a coalition never before seen, to do it?

We stand now looking back at a Western World and a Modern Church where we find the death of virtue, the death of truth, the culture of death and the rise of a sensuous delectation that flowers into a love of authoritarianism, belligerance and war which has all followed on from the death of the Soul in Modern Man.

Our Lord’s call to love our enemies seems to be impractical, unrealistic and even out of this world. Indeed, it seems to be the ethics of Elfland! However, the ethics of Elfland is more real than the ethics of pragmatism which surrenders to the fallen nature of this world. Our Lord has come to turn the world upside down and show us that our world needs the perception of the Elfs to be seen the right way up.

A blessing on the man who puts his trust in the Lord, but a curse on the man who puts his trust in man! [cf Isaiah 17:5-8] Here we find all our trust issues and it is this issue of trust that underpins the virtue of hope for hope is dashed when that in which we trusted has betrayed us or let us down!

What is it about the holiness of God and the angels that makes us aware of our unworthiness? Yet, moderns have easily mistaken and made soft the contours and real nature of these angelic beings.

Now in the light of the situation in the Ukraine and the pleas from Bishops of Ukrainian Rite Catholics for Pope Francis to consecrate Russia and the Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Fatima once more dominates the hearts and minds of Catholics; well, at least those Catholics who keep in touch with Catholic events!

Many people today have a picture of the early Christians going to church in togas, sandals and with a bible under their arm for some kind of Bible service. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Many today have now taken down their Christmas decorations, but some still follow what was the old tradition as found in the Tridentine Latin Liturgical calendar and do not take down their Christmas decorations in their homes until Candlemass on 2nd February.

The homage that the Magi [the Wise man] gave to Our Lord at Bethlehem as he lay in a manger was different to the one that King Herod planned!

Happy New Year to you all! The month of January is named after the Roman god, Janus, who was the god of gates and doors [ianua in Latin]…but Mary is the Gate of heaven [Ianua Caeli]

Why did God begin the Resistance and his coming Invasion in a family and in Nazareth of all places?