Fr Dominic’s Homily
Today is the feast of all feasts. It’s the new Passover feast of Easter.
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Lovely Polish Blessing of Baskets in the church today!
Each basket is decorated with white linen, sprigs of greenery, and spring flowers—a nod to the season of renewal.
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Around 30 people gathered at 10.00am for a united Good Friday service at the Glastonbury Methodist Church.
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As well as being called Palm Sunday today is also Passion Sunday because we read the Passion Gospel. It is a combination of the joyful entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem combined with his betrayal, rejection and persecution.
We hear that Jesus was first welcomed into Jerusalem by people waving palms as we have done today. Palms are used as a sign of welcoming a royal king. They also spread their cloaks in front of him. Cloaks had a special meaning in those days. They were a sign of life and dignity. So to lay them on the ground was a great sign of reverence.
Read MorePastoral Letter on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill 5/6 April 2025
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
I wish to speak with you today about the process in which our Parliament is currently considering legalising assisted suicide through the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. As I have made clear earlier in this debate, as Catholics we have maintained a principled objection to this change in law recognising that every human life is sacred, coming as a gift of God and bearing a God given dignity. We are, therefore, clearly opposed to this Bill in principle, elevating, as it does, the autonomy of the individual above all other considerations.
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Today is Laetare Sunday and is the half way point through lent towards Easter. (A bit like Gaudete Sunday in advent) The colour of the vestments represents joy.
And this ties in nicely with the theme of the Gospel today. We have the story of the prodigal son. Prodigal referring to his loose lifestyle when he squanders his father’s inheritance. Excessively extravagant. But perhaps a better title would be the story of the merciful father because this is what the main theme is.
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As you may know one of my brothers is also a priest based in Poole in the diocese of Plymouth where he runs two parishes. A couple of weeks ago he was speaking to the head of his finance committee who was off to visit his family based in Nairobi for a few days.
Chris my brother was telling him to have a safe journey to which the man jokingly replied “Don’t worry Father – It’s a dangerous place but I hope to see you soon”
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Where do you go to pray and how do you pray? Do you pray in the mornings? In the evenings? At night? Do you pray alone or with others?
Today we hear that Jesus goes up a mountain to pray. Mount Tabor. And he prays to his Father in heaven probably for the whole night.
He has taken Peter, John and James with him who also came to pray - but who probably fell asleep after an hour or so. They probably didn’t pray the whole night.
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On Friday 7th March our first group of pilgrims to visit Our Lady's Shrine were 135 children from St John's, Bath. They had initially climbed the Tor and had waved their coloured ribbons of hope at the summit.
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Yesterday David Baldwin gave us a terrific talk about Pilgrimage. The do’s and don’ts and what to pack in our rucksacks. What to bring and what to leave behind despite temptation.
Today we hear about the temptations of Jesus in his wanderings in the desert. And we hear that Satan tempts Jesus in three quite specific ways.
So why does Satan use these three ways of temptation? It’s because they exactly mirror the three ways in which Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden all those years before when they took fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Why was Eve tempted by the fruit originally?
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Today we mark ourselves with ashes as a sign of our humility in front of God and that we will return to him at some point. We came from him and we will return to him. And this should form how we live our short span of life in this world.
And lent is a time of fasting when we think about maybe giving something up or taking something on that is good. 6 weeks or just over 40 days. 40 having significance of spiritual preparation in the Desert in the scriptures. We allow ourselves to enter the desert a little.
Lent of course is the old English word for spring. Because we have the lengthening of days. And Lent is a time to remind us of our complete dependence on God and not on other things.
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When reading the Gospel this week in relation to someone unfit to complain about the splinter in the others eye because he already has a bigger one in his own eye made me think of the argument we saw between Zelensky and Trump in the news recently. Can one blind man really teach and lead another?
Jesus is speaking to his disciples today in relation to spiritual blindness. He is telling them that we cannot judge or condemn others if we are not first aware of our own sinfulness.
Remember some of the saints – St Teresa of Liseux for example. She continually writes about her own sinfulness because she has a great spiritual awareness of herself. The more clearly you see God in your life the more aware you become of your own sinfulness. The more the light you let in the more you see the blemishes.
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How easy is it for us to get angry in this life? To offer curses instead of love? Perhaps a classic example is road rage…
Today Jesus continues to tell us how we should behave towards others. He tells us how we should love.
We know we should love God. And our neighbour. But our enemies? How can we love those who have hurt us in some way or another? Well part of the reason why we find this so difficult is due to how we see love in this day and age. We see it as an emotion and a feeling.
Whereas Jesus want us to see it as an action. He wants it to be a decision that we make rather than simply a feeling that we experience.
Read MoreThe Committee stage of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted suicide Bill has begun, raising serious concerns about its conduct.
The Committee has been ‘stacked’ with a higher number of MPs who support the Bill.
Nearly twice as many witnesses supported assisted suicide than the number who opposed it.
Important voices have been excluded, including the Government’s chief Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisor, the British Geriatrics Society and a number of disability rights groups, senior palliative care doctors and legal experts with relevant expertise. MPs must be aware of the serious issues in the scrutiny of Kim Leadbeater’s Bill. It’s vital they know your concerns and vote against it at Third Reading.
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