Sermons

No, I am not going to do it. I am not going to ask you if you are prepared for Christmas. Why not? Well, many people would instantly feel the stress coming up of all the things they still have to do, or should I say, all the things we have imposed on ourselves, whether it is [...]

“I just called to say I love you”, “you are the sunshine of my life”, “ebony and ivory”, “don’t you worry ‘bout a thing”. Do you know who wrote these songs? Yes, it was of course Stevie Wonder! This American song writer and record producer was blind from infancy, probably due to an excess of oxygen [...]

The human heart is a great mystery, don’t you think so? Without it we could not be inspired to make great works of arts and heavenly music, and to love with every fibre of our being, to care for others, temporarily forgetting our own needs. But the same heart can also distrust, and hate, and [...]

An old man lived on his own, deep in the mountains of Colorado. When he died, some relatives came from the city to collect his valuables. Upon arriving, all they saw was an old shack. Inside it was just some old junk, like an old cooking pot, some mining equipment, a cracked table and a [...]

A picture says more than a thousand words. It is much quicker to communicate than spoken or printed text, and for a large group of people who are visually oriented, it is easier to remember. That’s why today’s shops and media are full of images, photographs, logo’s, posters and videos. In the time of Jesus all [...]

The parable of the true vine is a rich one. Whenever I read it, I find new meaning in it. But what is the main message here? And how is it more than just another sermon about love? Could this parable help us to improve our lives in real and practical terms? Absolutely! And it is not [...]

Social psychologist Alison Ledgerwood is interested in how people think and how they can think better. One day she asked herself the question, how is it that when I return home from a day’s work, my mood is largely determined by what went wrong during that day, and not by its successes? She found that once our [...]

The gospel reading for today is probably very familiar to us. Also, it was part of the reading on the first of February when we celebrated Candlemas. So it is a legitimate question why we are presented with the same text today. Well, this time the emphasis is not so much on the start of [...]

The spirits of Elijah and Christ. Last Sunday Fr. Jake spoke about Wisdom and the Word. Today we add the role of the Spirit. Like Wisdom and the Word, the Spirit played a role in creation. Not only that, but this is also the holy and life-giving spirit, which, according to our first Eucharistic prayer, [...]

When a woman says “no”, she means “no”. That is the message of the Serious Request campaign that is holding Haarlem in its grip for 6 days. It is trying to do something about sexual violence against women in conflict areas.  This morning [21st December 2014] at 11:00, the St. Bavo church in the city [...]