Through personal contact and friendship, St Philip Neri contributed to the spiritual renewal in Rome that was essential to the success of the Counter-Reformation

It is often said that you cannot turn the clock back. In a sense, however, the Church does just that in her liturgy, in which we are inserted into Mysteries of our salvation which occurred millennia ago. At the beginning of Advent we revisited that age of yearning of the Prophets, when the parched earth

On Easter Sunday, we contemplate with wonder the empty tomb, and the circumstances of the Resurrection transport us all the way back to Genesis. That tomb is situated in a garden, just as the history of the human race began in a garden. Mary Magdalene mistakes Our Risen Lord for the gardener. Adam’s task had

A 4th-century Egyptian observed that “the Son of God became man so that we might become God”. Such words might sound audacious to the point of blasphemy, until we realise that the author of this extraordinary statement was none other than the great saint, bishop and champion of Catholic orthodoxy, Athanasius of Alexandria. St Athanasius

The Resurrection means that evil has a very definite sell-by date

Inasmuch as it is an excessive exultation of human achievements and capabilities, triumphalism can only ever be an impediment to the Church’s mission. Any deviation from the path of humility exemplified in the life and ministry of Our Saviour inevitably takes us into a dead end in which we cannot expect him to bless our

Exactly nine months before Christmas Day we celebrated the visit of an angel to a virgin in Nazareth. That young girl was quite unknown to the great and the good of this world, but the angel delivered to her a message which offered the fulfilment of all the promises of the Old Testament and of

Whenever we say the Creed, we profess our belief in two resurrections. First we affirm our conviction that “on the third day He rose again”. Then, at the end of the Creed, we declare that “we look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come”. The first resurrection

On Christmas Day we celebrate the moment when God came to us in human flesh. The mystery and event of the Incarnation made possible the sanctification of the physical world which is our home. The Holy Land is truly holy because it contains the stones that were trodden on by the feet of the Word

The unfairly maligned founder of the London Oratory died 150 years ago