25th January 2009
Today is the Feast of the conversion of the Apostle Paul, a day which commemorates the turning around of Saul to the Christian Gospel. Very little is known of his early life, save that he persecuted the early Christians for their faith in Jesus Christ. The Acts of the Apostles does not spare his blushes when it says that he approved of the death of the First Christian Martyr St Stephen. I am sure we have heard of his famous conversion on the road to Damascus, when Jesus said 'Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me? From that moment on we witness a massive change in his life, the once persecutor becomes the greatest Missionary the Church has ever seen. What changed him was the realisation that he was loved by God, and that God had walked among us in the person of Jesus Christ.
What we know of Paul we know from all the Letters he wrote and the travels he undertook. We hear those letters again and again each Sunday. He is so important for us because unlike the Apostles, Peter, Andrew, James, and John, the ones the gospel mentions today, he never lived with Jesus, he never walked the dusty roads of Palestine, never shared that intimate bond the others shared with the Son of God. We are in the same position he was in. In today's Society we struggle as he did to be faithful to the gospel in the midst of so much flux and change. We have not seen the Lord and yet we believe in him. St Paul reminds us of the duty of each one of us to be a missionary for Jesus Christ, maybe not abroad like all our heroic missionaries, but in the parish we worship in, in the home we live in, wherever life finds us. In the inspiring words of his letter to the people of Ephesus, 'Glory be to him whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory be to him from generation to generation in the Church and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever. Amen'.
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Homilies Archive
17nd May 2009
26th April 2009
3rd Sunday of Easter
12th April 2009
Easter Sunday
9th April 2009
Holy Thursday
29th March 2009
5th Sunday in Lent
22nd March 2009
4th Sunday in Lent
17th March 2009
St. Patrick's Day
15th March 2009
3rd Sunday in Lent
8th March 2009
2nd Sunday in Lent
1st March 2009
1st Sunday in Lent
25th February 2009
Ash Wednesday
22nd February 2009
8th February 2009
1st February 2009
25th January 2009
18th January 2009
11th January 2009
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord
6th January 2009
Feast of the Epiphany
4th January 2009
2008 HOMILIES ARCHIVE
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