Interpreting the signs is always a difficult thing. How do we interpret the differences between us, between ourselves here or, on a larger stage, between nations, races, religions? Because different we are, often strangely so, sometimes monstrously. Paul, in the face of difference, is pleading for unity—for charity, selflessness, gentleness and patience. Differences, in his …
Monthly Archives: October 2004
Saturday Week 28 Year II
‘May God enlighten the eyes of your mind so that you can see how infinitely great is the power that he has exercised for us.’ There are angels in both readings today. They are being used in each to underline a point, to make clear the gravity of a situation, to guarantee a truth: in …
Wednesday Week 28 Year II
‘Clean’ and ‘unclean’ don’t really mean that much to us nowadays. But for Jesus and his contemporaries they gave life shape and structure. We still have some sense of it in the ickiness of dirt above and beyond hygiene and appearance but the Hebrew idea went beyond that. It’s like the world was full of …
Thursday Week 27 Year II
Paul is at his most pungent today: ‘are you stark raving mad’, he asks the Galatians. Why would you settle for the Law when you have the Spirit? What did the rulebook ever do for you but weigh like a burden on your back? That question echoes through the centuries. It found a focus at …