Short Talks
This section of the website comprises short stand-alone talks and articles on different aspects of the Christian Faith, including the teaching of Jesus, the seasons of the Church’s Year and Feasts and Festivals. More talks/sermons/homilies/articles will be added in due course.
The section of the website entitled The Christian Faith provides more extended teaching on larger content areas, such as the Creed and the Sacraments.
Hell
“Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire” (Matthew 25:41)
Hell is the logical and inevitable outcome of unrepented sin. Sin is separation from God, Hell is that separation made permanent by the sinner’s own will. For our freedom to choose God as the object of life’s journey carries with it also our freedom to reject him. And as he is the source of all goodness and lasting happiness, so without him there can be neither goodness nor happiness. Hell, therefore, is not a punishment inflicted on sinners by God as an act of revenge, but is a state of misery which is inseparable from their rejection of him.
Purgatory and Heaven
“…the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face…” (NRSV, Revelation 22:3,4)
Every soul is brought before our Blessed Lord for judgement at the moment of death. To those who die in penitence and in the love of God, the sight of his face then will be the source of their shame and bliss in Purgatory: shame as they recall the sins of their earthly life wherewith they have wounded the love of God; bliss as, fresh from the foretaste of Heaven which the sight of him will give them, they look ahead with the certainty of seeing him again and of being with him for all eternity.
The preaching of John the Baptist: Repentance
“John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Catholic edition RSV, Mark 1:4)
From his childhood St John the Baptist was conscious of the tremendous destiny for which God had created him – that he should be the new Elijah charged with the almost terrifying responsibility of preparing the Chosen People for the Coming of their Divine Saviour and Judge. That destiny determined the manner and course of his whole life and in order to fit himself for it, he withdrew in his youth to the terrible wilderness of Judea to the south east of Jerusalem.