Today’s homily is supposed to be “brief and to the point”.

So, who are these like stars appearing? “Chosen men”, the Litany of the Saints will call them.

Here, briefly, is Malachy Eze, born in Igboland, who, after working as an interior decorator in Lagos and earning the wonderful nickname of “Parousia” from the youngsters he catechised, came to the UK, did some business studies, became a seminarian for the diocese of Aberdeen and appears before us today. Continue reading

Today’s readings are full of the “earth”.

So Isaiah: “As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth…” Continue reading

I once actually saw a fisherman by the lake of Galilee casting a net into the sea. A biblical moment. In due time, he would have drawn that net back ashore. This is the kind of thing Peter did in his young days. Continue reading

One of the saints of this diocese is John Ogilvie, born in Keith in 1580 and martyred in Glasgow in 1615. He lived at a time of ferocious controversy between Catholics and Protestants. It came to war in some places; it came to arguments everywhere. They were often very learned arguments, with quotations from Scripture and early Christian writers, arguments about where real Christianity and the real Church were to be found. It was like a boxing match, where nobody quite managed to land the knockout blow. Young John Ogilvie had been brought up a Protestant, but he went to continental, Catholic Europe for his education. And he became engaged in these controversies. He began to feel the force of the Catholic position, but then on the other hand… Continue reading