In the 1992 Christmas movie, Home Alone 2, the McCallister family go on holidays to Florida, yet again leaving their youngest son, Kevin (played by Macaulay Culkin), alone. Kevin is unperturbed.

You have to admit that grown men and women dressing up in the robes, medallions and eight-pointed crosses of mediaeval knights is rather strange! I say that as someone who wears a mediaeval habit every day and has quite a collection of silly hats… So what’s it all about, apart from the fun of fancy dress?

This idea of framing and structuring our present by looking to the end is an ancient one. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus prepared himself by long solitudes and frequenting tombs

Death, judgment, heaven and hell: there are the four last things. Purgatory is in there, too, as the anteroom to heaven. For weeks past and still to come we’ve been encouraged to think about death…

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

So said J. Robert Oppenheimer, ‘father of the atomic bomb’, upon seeing the destructive power he had unleashed when the first A-bomb was detonated in New Mexico 75 years ago.

What a time to be Confirmed! Tonight, our young people complete their initiation into the Christian life, membership of the Church, and the communion of saints. But we gather in the face of a word that’s been on almost everyone’s lips for months now, a word most of us never used and many not even have known until the beginning of this year: pandemic.

One of my Dominican brothers, long since gone to God, wasn’t great at picking his audience or occasion. He was legendary for preaching on contraception in nursing homes. He used also to promise to “give ‘em hell” at Christmas, as he thought (rather uncharitably), that it was the likely destination for those who attended only annually!

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.