The Law and the Land … that’s the strange linkage that’s forged all through this part of Deuteronomy. The Law and the Land. The Law is given for the sake of the Land. So that the people might enter the land of promise and live there. The Land is given for the sake of the …
Yearly Archives: 2000
Sunday Week 1 of Lent Year B
I was told when I was learning to drive that if I ever got into an accident I should never say sorry, never admit responsibility, never apologise. Just let the insurance companies work it all out. Fine by me! And do you remember that icon of the seventies, “Love Story”? “Love means never having to …
Friday Week 8 Year II
A guy in my parish was talking to me after Mass on Sunday. Not his usual pleasant and upbeat self. Instead just a little embarrassed. A bundle of awkward silences. So, I thought, do I take the hint and go or do I make myself a nuisance? I wanted to know what was going on… …
Sunday Week 7 Year B
Close to my hometown in the north of England is a church—St Oswald’s if I remember right—that has a particularly ugly relic: the Holy Hand of Edmund Arrowsmith. It is usually kept in a glass bell jar and, mercifully, covered up with a kind of black glove. But once a month or on special occasions …
The Feast of the Presentation
In the pagan calendars Candlemas is a halfway feast—halfway between solstice and equinox—halfway between winter and spring—halfway between darkness and light. The Celtic name for the feast, Imbolc—meaning “in the womb”—captures it perfectly. We are in the womb and celebrating it—not yet fully alive but by no means dead. So today we celebrate in-between-ness. Inbetweenness …
Sunday Week 4 Year B
My history with telling people to shut up has not been a good one! I remember saying it my grandmother … I can’t remember what on earth she was saying to annoy me but I, 7 or 8 years old, remember very well the look that crossed her face … but even today I can’t …
Sunday Week 3 Year B
Zebedee’s Story If he comes near me ever again I’ll give that boy Jesus a piece of my mind. Hell! I’ll give him piece of my fist. Trouble-maker! Home-breaker! Arrogant, self-centred, son-of-a-… —What do you mean, “who do I think I am?” I’ll tell you who I think I am. You all sit here so …
St Anthony, Abbott and Martin Luther King
Three images, three voices. Round about the year 270 The story goes that Anthony heard this gospel and did what it said: he sold what he had and gave the money to the poor. So began a trajectory that carried him further and further away from ordinary life, deeper and deeper into the desert, down …
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Wednesday after Epiphany
When Moses, high on Mount Sinai, asks to see God’s glory, God does indeed agree to pass by him and reveal the holy splendour. But there are conditions: First, Moses must hide in a cleft of the rock because God’s presence is so powerful it would roast him; and second, since no one can see …
Sunday of Epiphany Year B
Time for an informal millennium survey: hands up if you partied the night away; hands up if you celebrated quietly with friends or family; hands up if you met the New Millennium tucked safely in your bed! To be honest the whole day was a couch potato’s paradise, a channel surfer’s dream. I tuned in …