Homily for the 8 o’clock Mass (also St. Margaret’s, Forres), 28 July 2024 Sunday 17B: John 6:1-15

As everyone here is intensely aware, this year our Sunday Gospels are generally taken from St. Mark. But because this Gospel is so short, when we come to the feeding of the 5,000, the lectionary switches instead to Chapter 6 of St. John’s Gospel. This Chapter begins with St. John’s account of the feeding of the 5,000, and then continues on with the long Bread of Life discourse that follows. We shall read extracts from that discourse over the next 4 Sundays.

Homily for Sunday 16B, 21 July 2024, Ephesians 2:13-18

When St. Paul fell off his horse on the road to Damascus, blinded by light from heaven, his life, his outlook, his mission was turned upside down. What Paul saw, or encountered then was Jesus Christ. And in that moment he understood, with unbreakable conviction, that he had been wrong, wrong, wrong. Jesus was not an enemy, a blasphemer, a false prophet, a corrupter of Israel, as Paul had previously thought.

Homily for 7 July 2024, Sunday 14B: Ezk 2:2-5, 2 Cor 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6 DJC

In today’s first reading we meet Ezekiel at the beginning of his prophetic ministry. The year is 592 BC. He is one of the many inhabitants of Jerusalem taken in the first wave of the deportations to Babylon. It is by one of the rivers of Babylon that we find Ezekiel. He has been commissioned by God to be a prophet to the Israelites in captivity.

Annual Aberdeen Diocesan Pilgrimage to Pluscarden: Sunday 30 July 2024; the transferred Feast of SS. Peter and Paul

Once again this year our Bishop and Brother Hugh led the annual Aberdeen Diocesan Pilgrimage to Pluscarden. The weather was kind to us: a fair day, without either hot sunshine or rain, enabling many to picnic in our grounds before the Mass, in festive atmosphere.

Homily for the 8 o’clock Mass, 9 June 2024: 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

The 1960s compilers of our current lectionary offer us a series of readings these Sundays from 2 Corinthians. There are 7 little snippets or extracts, given for the second reading at Mass, for Sundays 7 to 14. We missed the first 3 in the series because of Pentecost, then Trinity Sunday, then Corpus Christi. So we’re starting now today, on the 10th Sunday, with a little passage from the end of 2 Corinthians Chapter 4.