“Why am I alive and on this Earth? Why doesn’t anyone care about me? I can see why nobody cares about me, but why must I end up alone? What’s the point of my life?” These questions are interspersed through my friend’s conversation, as though looking for an answer but not really expecting one. It’s just as well, as I have none, none.

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) July 14 (Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Psalm 69; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37)

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) July 7 (Isaiah 66:10-14; Psalm 66; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20)

As a young seminarian in the late 1960s, I was very taken by the writings of Andrew Greeley, a priest in Chicago, who was churning out books on popular spirituality.

The German philosopher Nietzsche once described Christianity as a religion of the weak. He argued that religion, especially Christianity, denied the human person free will because it removed the freedom to make choices by relying on a God who, he argued, does not exist.

13th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) June 30 (Kings 19:16, 19-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke 9:51-62)

Elisha was completely blindsided. As he went out to plow that morning, he probably thought the day would be like any other, but his life would never be the same.

Haste is our enemy. It puts us under stress, raises our blood pressure, makes us impatient, renders us more vulnerable to accidents and, most serious of all, blinds us to the needs of others. Haste is normally not a virtue, irrespective of the goodness of whatever it is we are hurrying towards.

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) June 23 (Zechariah 12:10-11; Psalm 63; Galatians 3:26-29; Luke 9:18-24)

Zechariah’s cryptic prophecy presents us with a question: Who was the one who was pierced and why? These and other questions remain unanswered from the historical point of view.

Each year we celebrate Father’s Day, a day on which we’re asked to get in touch with the gratitude we should feel towards our fathers. For some of us this is easy, we had good fathers; but for many it’s difficult. How do you feel gratitude if your father was someone who was mostly absent or abusive?

The Wizard of Oz is a true classic movie. One of my favourite scenes is when Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion arrive to see the Wizard.