NEWSLETTER INSERTS FOR THE TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

'Only forgiveness sets us free and restores the light, even where human material and moral poverty has darkened the horizon and made the path uncertain. Forgiveness, like a gentle breeze, sweeps away even the thickest clouds until the sun shines once more'.

Pope Leo XIV, 13^th Sept 2026.

'When a child is conceived people of faith recognise that God is saying again: I trust this world enough to send another life into it.  And, when you say yes to that life, you are saying: ‘We trust God enough to welcome this child.’

Bishop Niall Coll

'Be examples of integrity to your children who learn far more from what they see than from what they hear.  When they see you pray, they learn trust.  When they see you forgive, they learn mercy.  When they see you serve others, they learn generosity.  When they see you love each other, they learn what God’s love looks like.  Your vocation is not perfection.  It is presence.  It is faithfulness. It is love'.

Pope Leo XIV

'There is only one thing that gives you protection from a broken heart and that is lovelessness. If you never give your heart away to anyone or anything it, will never be broken, it will become unbreakable, it will become a stone'.

Peter Kreeft

‘Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams.’

Dostoyevsky

‘Narrow is the mansion of my heart. Enlarge it’

St Augustine

‘The person who has not suffered – what they possibly know anyway’

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

‘People hate religion. They fear it might be true’

Blaise Paschal

'The Catholic school therefore aspires to be a ‘school of the heart’ – not in any sentimental way – but by offering solid principles, gospel values, and sound stepping stones for the future. It does this best whenever it is immersed in the Heart of Christ, where students encounter love which is self giving and does not manipulate or use others'.

Archbishop Eamonn Martin

‘The word ‘deserve’ is an important word for how we think and how we act. We think we should get what we deserve and protest when we don’t. We say things like – ‘You worked hard for your exams so therefore you deserve to do well’; ‘They were the better team in the match and so deserved to win’; ‘He did a terrible thing and so deserved to be punished’, etc. The trouble with this way of thinking is that we project it on to God and believe that God thinks and acts like this too – ‘God is good to those who are good to him’; ‘God rewards with heaven those who have lived a good life and the wicked he punishes because they deserve it. The parable Jesus tells in the Gospel today turns this logic on its head'.

Fr Billy Swan