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.

Our lives often bring us to cross roads where we have to take stock and ask: ‘How did I get here?’ Within this question lie three other questions: where have I been? Where am I now? and where am I to go next? In the words of the Lord to Jeremiah:

“Stand at the crossroads and look, ask for the ancient paths: which was the good way? Take it and you will find rest for yourselves.”

Easter Sunday is when we celebrate the momentous event of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not to be domesticated by being reduced to the Easter bunny – whatever that means! Rather, it is the event of history. It is an historical event and no myth for myths are abstractions with no rootedness in history. Whereas the resurrection of Jesus is rooted in a particular place, Jerusalem and in a particular time, the time of Pontius Pilate, which no myth is.

Lent is a season that prepares us to enter into the Mysteries of Holy Week where we come face-to-face with our own part in crucifying Our Lord Jesus Christ. We could rightly say that the Mass is the centre of all these mysteries. Indeed, in Holy Week the Mass is unrolled like a scroll for us to ponder all the elements of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ what we call the Paschal Mystery. Holy Week unfolds for us the Paschal Mystery through the eyes and heart of Our Lady who is the memory of the Church.

Over the last three weeks we have listened to the stories in which the three disciples on the Mountain, the Samaritan woman, the blind beggar and now the sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, encounter the presence of Our Lord. We have also seen how Our Lord transfigures the desert, sinners, the blind and how he tranfigures thirst, water and light into symbols of who Our Lord is and what he is doing. Today, we consider how Our Lord transfigures the reality of death.

Many today speak of the need for change, some speak of coming to a point in life where it is ‘time for a change’ and indeed some have made a cult of change where the latest thing must displace the past and even the present thing. But there is change and there is change. There are external changes, circumstantial changes and even surface changes. But there is also the much more painful and real form of change that is… a profound change of heart, mind, body and soul and it is called Transfiguration!