“No matter what our struggles, whatever cross we have to bear, we can know that God’s gracious will is leading us back to him, if we keep our eyes fixed on his Cross, from which he continues to bless us”

Fr Matthew Jarvis · “Coming and Going”

“When we venerate the Cross, we remind ourselves not only of how cruel human beings can be, but also of how there is no cruelty so deep, no wickedness so inhuman, that it can separate us from the love of God”

Fr Richard Ounsworth · “The Power of Advertising”

“Like a man in a rowboat, faith and action must be pulled together if we are to follow Jesus. If they are not, we may well find ourselves going in circles.”

Fr. George Smiga · “Rowing with Jesus”

“The world seems too cruel a place and God too remote. But the crucifixion proclaims that it is man who is cruel, not God, and that God could not have been closer to human experience.”

Fr John Patrick Kenrick · “Seriously”

“The big statement, if you like, that the cross makes is about the depth of divine love for you and for me; but it also reminds us of uncomfortable truths about what human beings are capable of”

Fr John O’Connor · “Get Real”

“When Christ was crucified, evil assaulted him with all its power. He did not fight back using the strategies of earthly power. He remained God, remained true to his nature of love, endured the evil, and overcame it. Because Jesus did that, we can, too”

Mary Ortwein · “Why the Cross?”

“With infinite patience and creativity, God keeps on knocking at the door of our lives, sometimes with utter discretion and at other times with insistence, until we open and embark on the road to freedom and joy. God does not give up on us”

Fr Timothy Radcliffe · “But Not Yet?”

“The human is not exalted at the expense of the divine; rather, human and divine are exalted together. God and man are mutually glorified by loving each other. Humanity becomes more human by becoming more divine. Divinization also humanizes.”

John Bergsma · “Schizophrenic Crowds, Crucified Savior”

“God, by his very nature, lacks nothing, needs nothing. Everything he does as Creator he does not for his sake but for ours, and yet he truly delights in creating us and holding us in being.”

Fr Richard Ounsworth · “In the Heart of God”

“Why is the cross a glorification? Because it is the extreme expression of love; only a God most truly worthy of love and worship would and could undergo such radical self-sacrifice for our sakes.”

John Bergsma · “Good Friday”

“Enter into the mystery of a God who loves us so much, that he gives his life to both demonstrate there is a price to pay for our sins and to demonstrate for us HOW to overcome evil with love”

Mary Ortwein · “Luke’s Story of the Passion”

“Evasion is not a way to salvation”

Fr Robert Ombres · “By Way of the Cross”

“What has God not done for us? What has He not given to us to win our love? Who are we to have merited the free gift of His Son?”

Fr. Lawrence Obilor · “Rejoice in His Merciful Love”

Fr Oliver Keenan · “Looking Through”

“Today’s readings remind us that once we have decided to say yes to the Lord, then we should prepare to have it tough because it will never be easy. Yet it is in living the tough experience of faith that our true identity as disciples is defined.”

Fr. Lawrence Obilor · “Do not leave your cross behind”

“The cross represents EVERYTHING that evil could do to Jesus, who is the Christ—humiliation, injustice, suffering, abandonment, and death. In the cross, Jesus took it upon Himself.”

Mary Ortwein · “Exaltation of the Holy Cross”

“We cannot dissuade Christ from being the vulnerable Messiah, as Peter once tried to, and we cannot cover our ears from the voice that burns within our own hearts commanding us to take up our Cross as we go out to the whole world to proclaim the Good News”

Fr Richard Ounsworth · “The Power of the Cross”

“no power, no authority, no principality will have the direct and final say and rule over our lives because we have a king whose power and authority supersedes all”

Fr. Lawrence Obilor · “He reigns forever”

“Jesus is fighting, winning and establishing his kingdom, even bringing people into it, while his enemies think they are winning”

Fr Andrew Brookes · “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom!”

“the cross is indispensably Christian; for a crossless Christian is a Christless Christian”

Fr. Lawrence Obilor · “It costs a lot to follow him”

“Christians, like all other people, will suffer and die. Yet we will not do so alone, for the suffering Christ is with us...We can only overcome our fear of death and find healing for our pain if we are united with Christ on the cross.”

Fr David Goodill · “Gripped by Fear”

“We must accept our crosses with humility, patience and perseverance. In time, their purpose will be made known.”

Joseph LaCombe · “Why He Got Up”

“At his Baptism, the Saviour chooses to be with us where we are, to enter into solidarity with us, sinners as we are”

Fr Aidan Nichols · “Cleaving the Darkness”

“What will be revealed...is simply how we stand in relation to Christ’s Cross: are we with those who put him there and mock him, or have we joined him there by mercy and compassion?”

Fr Richard Conrad · “Accomplished in Christ”

“the cross doesn’t just show sin for what it is. It also definitively shows God’s response...God’s incompressible response to sin is love.”

Fr Peter Hunter · “Love's Response”

“I do know that our crosses in life, can purify us, shape our soul, our character, and our strength – if we trust in and rely on God to get us through, even if we don’t understand”

Joseph LaCombe · “Take Up Your Cross”

“Without the Cross, then, we can’t interpret correctly the glory of the Transfiguration. It is on Calvary that we find the supreme illustration of the Father’s words, ‘This is my beloved Son’.”

Fr Aidan Nichols · “Theophany”

“I think the thing that pains me the most in today’s world is not the struggle and suffering that people go through, it’s the fact that people choose to go through it alone – without God. Granted, some may not know Him, but for many it is a choice.”

Joseph LaCombe · “Divine Love”

“I want to be more like the man who knows who Jesus is. That through the trials and tribulations of life and all the uncertainty, knows his faults, and admits that he has made mistakes, but who also knows that the pain is temporary, and that this man next to him is truly the Son of God, the King of the Universe.”

Joseph LaCombe · “The Good Thief”

“And in those families where you have some extra baggage – those families with discord and conflict and tension – sometimes you need to check that baggage and let God handle it, and don’t let it weigh you down. You’ve got enough to burden you; you don’t need more.”

Joseph LaCombe · “Check Your Baggage”

“Jesus, the one to whom we go for rest from heavy burdens, teaches why we should prefer the burden of discipleship to that of sin.”

Fr Bruno Clifton · “The Burden of the Cross”

“It’s interesting, the more we focused on seeking and doing God’s will and less on our own problems and ourselves, the more Christ helped us carry our cross”

Joseph LaCombe · “Pick Up That Cross”

“Let us go out this week and tell new stories, stories that embrace the past, but do not hold us there; stories that promise new life and invite us to create future full of hope and life-giving possibilities”

Kathy McNeely · “Exaltation of the Holy Cross”

“In the single event of the crucifixion we can see at the same time both the depths of human sin and degradation, and the heights of God’s forgiveness, love and power”

Fr Fabian Radcliffe · “Creation's Binding Force”

“Our faith and prayer is that we are also chosen by God to bear witness to Christ in our place and in our time”

Fr Aelred Connelly · “Beyond the Present Moment”

“Today the God of all creation tells us that those who do care for the poor, those who take a stand against injustice, those who seek to bring peace and yet suffer ,those are ones whose lives are acceptable to God.”

Fr David Sanders · “When I Am Lifted Up”

“The message of the life of Jesus spoken clearly in the crucifixion is just this: “All you who are broken, come.” In fact, His message is even stronger: especially you who are broken, “be with me in Paradise.””

Maria Montello · “Good Friday”

“It was the witness of these poor tenants, their ability to endure a suffering which I could not begin to imagine, let alone bear, and their hope for a better life that slowly allowed met to carry my own cross...it was their discipleship that motivated me to find my own; to take that preference for God.”

Chris Bodewes · “23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time”

“the pettiness of much that passes for life and debate in the Church shrinks into an insignificance that is much to be desired. We must ask ourselves, What does the persecuted Church make of us?”

Fr Aidan Nichols · “Peace on Earth?”

“The first stage of overcoming the evil of death is to overcome our fear. This requires courage but the proper remedy for fear, in the Christian disposition, is not courage but hope.”

Fr Euan Marley · “Facing The Cross”

Fr Duncan Campbell · “A Disciple”

“On the cross Jesus unites himself to each one of us as we are faced with the choice between life and death: do I grasp hold of the world beneath me, asserting my power and control over it, or do I return it in love to the one who has given it in love?”

Fr David Goodill · “He Looks Down on the Earth”

“This stark way of speaking, characteristic of Jesus’s language and times, tells the crowds that, when the time comes to choose, we must put God and his Christ before everything we hold dear, even the very things we expect God and Jesus to preserve.”

Fr Simon Gaine · “Facing the Challenge”

“Through the streets, among those to whom he is sent, he carries his cross – the throne of his glory...the power of this King comes not from below, but from above. Jesus is his own master and carries his cross himself, so that his triumph is made known.”

Fr David Rocks · “The Triumph of the Cross”

“Love is transforming, the source of all change in us. Without it we are dehumanised and can die. Jesus shows us that we are lovable enough to die for.”

Fr Denis Geraghty · “'Good' Friday”

Fr Theodore Taylor · “Keeping Company with the Lord”

Fr Richard Ounsworth · “We Beheld His Glory”

“And as for us, no matter how dark our shadows, our sins — there is nothing that cannot be lit by the glorious cross”

Fr Leon Pereira · “One and Only Noble Tree”

“Throughout our Christian lives, we continually fall short of our commitment to our faith. Yet we must never lose sight of the truth we ought to understand from the start: we are surrendering our lives to Christ.”

Fr David Rocks · “A Crown of True Glory”

“The Bible begins with Adam — The Man — rising up against God in the garden. To counter human pride, the new Adam obediently handed himself over in a garden...He was buried in a garden where, in his resurrection, he would re-fashion human nature in beauty.”

Fr Richard Conrad · “The Promise of Eternal Friendship”

“We should be stunned into speechlessness at the thought that the Lord of the Universe, the Creator of the World, Word-made-flesh and Splendour of the Father ended his ministry of love choking out his last agonised words on a Roman cross”

Fr Richard Ounsworth · “Veiling and Unveiling”

“Before you cast the fire in righteous anger against others make sure you are willing yourself to take some of the same heat which Jesus felt in his baptism of fire”

Fr David Sanders · “The Peace That Only Comes Through Fire”

“the throne of David was established, when Christ reigned from a tree...There he taught the Torah in its completeness, which is the law of charity for us to learn through the grace of the Cross.”

Fr Aidan Nichols · “Nowhere to Lay his Head”

“People feared Jesus because he didn’t have a shadow side, and that meant he showed up the shadow side of those around him. This is not because Jesus was constantly pointing out people’s faults but because a bright light always makes the shadows sharper and easier to see.”

Fr Peter Hunter · “Banishing the Shadows”

“The sacrifice of Calvary cannot be repeated because it is not terminated. It throbs through every molecule of the cosmos and stands at the heart of the Trinity.”

Fr John Farrell · “The Glory of Calvary”

“The goodness of Jesus’s love and sacrifice at Calvary is immense, permanent and efficacious”

Fr Robert Ombres · “What Happened on Good Friday?”

Fr Isidore Clarke · “The Royal Way”

“The power of the liturgy of Good Friday comes from the silent gaze of him who bore ‘the weight of our sins on the tree.’”

Fr Allan White · “The Silent Cross”

“So we who come to the liturgy on Good Friday believing that this is the story of the death of the Son of God, a death that brings us freedom from death, a Passion that liberates us from sin, we Christians can hardly fail to be moved once again by this great mystery at the heart of our faith”

Fr Richard Ounsworth · “The Whole Story”

“So the Epiphany, as Matthew presents it to us, is not just about the fact that Jesus came for all peoples, but that Jesus came to die for all peoples: to die for their sins”

Fr Benjamin Earl · “The Sign of the Star”

“When we hide the image of God, we go on to defile, profane and destroy that same image which lives in the flesh of our brothers and sisters”

Fr Allan White · “Behold, your King!”

“In dark times, we are not cut off from grace, for grace comes through Jesus’ deliberate self-abasement”

Fr Richard Conrad · “Hail, Cross!”

“In today’s passion John does not see the cross just in terms of suffering but also in terms of the power of God’s love. He sees the cross not only as an instrument of torture but also as a throne on which Christ sits as divine and majestic king”

Fr David Sanders · “The Necessity of the Cross”

Fr Richard Finn · “Parody or Reality?”

“On Calvary sin and death seemed to come to the brink of defeating Christ. Yet, in reality, Christ’s obedience in love to the Father cancelled out the disobedience of sin, and by his death Christ exhausted death, pouring forth new life in the Resurrection.”

Fr Martin Ganeri · “Life and Love, Death and Sin”

“The test of a true Christian love is that it makes those whom we love strong”

Fr Timothy Radcliffe · “Stand Upright”

“We cannot postpone living until the cross is gone. That is why we are asked to take up the cross on our shoulders and follow Jesus.”

Fr. George Smiga

“Being a disciple of Jesus does not mean that we have achieved perfection. It means we are making progress. And the progress we make need not be earth-shattering. It can occur in small steps.”

Fr. George Smiga

“we do not gain the strength to carry our cross by turning inward, by feeding our anger and our discouragement. We gain strength by turning outward, by finding some way to give, some way of touching the life of another.”

Fr. George Smiga

“on this Feast of the Holy Family, let us pray for the faith to accept redemptive suffering, the courage to reject destructive suffering and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Fr. George Smiga

“Holiness is not being perfect. Holiness is claiming our weakness in the presence of God’s strength.”

Fr. George Smiga

“The cross of Jesus tells us that suffering does not mean punishment...The presence of the cross is not the absence of love.”

Fr. George Smiga