My friends from Poland were usually surprised to hear I was a Parish Priest at St Peter’s Church in Buckie. The surprising bit was that the church bore the name of St Peter only. In my home country, if a church is dedicated to St Peter the Apostle, it’s virtually always dedicated to St Paul too. To a Polish Catholic’s…
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Pentecost Sunday. What are we celebrating today? ‘The outpouring of the Holy Spirit’ is the obvious answer in the light of today’s first reading, fifty days after Easter (that’s what Pentecost means). On the other hand, today’s gospel reading tells us that Jesus offered the Holy Spirit to the Apostles on the very day of his resurrection. To add to…
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There are two main challenges with creating a sermon on today’s parable. The first one is its renown; so much high-quality artwork and literature have been produced that my attempts can only be extremely dwarfed. The second challenge is the parable’s richness. Once I delivered a 30-minute sermon, touching various aspects of the story. Rest assured, I’m not going to…
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It’s a bit strange to hear the story of Jesus’ transformation on a Sunday in Lent. Calls for repentance, conversion, reconciliation and other attitudes traditionally associated with Lent would seem to be more appropriate, because that’s want Lent is about, isn’t it? Today’s gospel seems to be misplaced. But it isn’t. In fact, today’s gospel is another step we are…
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Delivered at St Francis of Assisi, Mannofield, Aberdeen. The gospel passage: Matthew 5:20-26 If your virtue goes no deeper than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven. This is the key phrase in today’s gospel passage. Now, after a couple of millennia of reading the gospel, we have a very clear and…