As gospels go this is my favourite in all the year—and not just because I get to watch all your faces fall when you hear those words of Matthew’s: “A genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham…” The mind-numbing litany we get today hardly seems a good way for Matthew to open …
Yearly Archives: 2003
17th December
I get a great view up here of your faces when those first words of Matthew’s ring out: “A genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham…” And it’s not a pretty sight. The mind-numbing litany that follows hardly seems the way for Matthew to begin his gospel, his one attempt at Good …
St Francis Xavier
I have one image of Francis Xavier that I hold dear. It isn’t of him before the warlords of Japan; it isn’t of him baptising thousands in one day; it isn’t even of him dying within sight of that further shore his zeal for souls urged him onto. My image is a more humble one. …
Saturday Week 34 Year I
Somewhere in the last decade I must have had a major conversion experience because I used to be one of those people who love to read ahead at ever increasing pace to get all the more quickly to the end of the book. Now I discover myself reading ever more slowly so that the book, …
Saturday Week 33 Year I
Isn’t it the dream of religion at its most basic that we each get what we deserve … call it fate or fortune, karma or comeuppance? If we are bad, if we seize the gold and silver of Jerusalem and exterminate Judah, then our armies will be defeated and we will die in a fit …
Thursday Week 33 Year I
Zeal, fervour and legitimate anger: they make a dangerous brew. A murderous brew. You could see it then; you can see it now. It’s the fuel of suicide bombers and the fire of terror. Yet we are given to mouth the words of the psalm: I will show God’s salvation to the upright. Uneasy words, …
All Saints of the Society of Jesus
I used to love the stink of sulphur and smoke that told you things were under way. The sky burning and the ground littered with spent carcasses of fireworks. As a kid we’d spend the weeks running up to bonfire night out in the freezing evenings scavenging bonfire wood and dragging from door to door …
St Luke
In the gospel today we get to the pith of apostolic poverty: to be on the road, with no bag, no money, no shoes even, nothing to help you on your way, just the clothes you stand up in, and nowhere to stay except the first place that will take you in. Extreme, eh? As …
Thursday Week 27 Year I
Be careful what you ask for! By hitching these sayings about asking, searching, knocking onto the parable of midnight hospitality, Luke seems to defuse them. ‘Ask and it will be given to you, search and you will find’ but … but it might take a while and it might take repetition and you might have …
Guardian Angels
Today, in celebrating the guardian angels, we celebrate God’s care for creation. For ourselves certainly, but for the whole created world too. The God who made the world loves it. The God who fashioned you loves you. But what we celebrate particularly today is the way God’s love and care is mediated by creation itself. …