Readings: Jeremiah 1:17-19; Mark 6:17-29 You could hardly have two readings more calculated to contradict each other than these. The first is bracing with promise: you will be a pillar of iron, a wall of bronze; they will not overcome you. And it’s quite a ‘they’ arrayed against the prophet: kings, princes, priests, and people. …
Monthly Archives: August 2006
Sunday Week 20 Year B
When I was at university some friends of mine signed up for VSO, Voluntary Service Overseas, to head off for Papua New Guinea. With the ghoulish interest of a 21 year old I thought to myself ‘mmm, cannibals! head-hunters!’ and hit the library, intent on scaring the life out of my buddies. I discovered that …
Sunday Week 19 Year B
Bread. Bread for the journey, bread to keep you going in the desert when you are done with doing… We join Elijah in mid story, sulking under a tree. ‘I’ve had enough. I want to die.’ But in truth he’s been eating the bread of death for a long time. He’s been fighting a guerrilla …
Paying the Price
I’ve been indulging a guilty pleasure for a few weeks: watching my way through the DVDs of ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer‘. I’m trying to spin it out now that I’m closing in on the final episodes so maybe some theological reflection on the topic will help delay me. ‘Buffy’ is full of insights that jog …
Feast of the Transfiguration Year B
Readings: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14; 2 Peter 1:16-19; Mark 9:2-10 We’ve reached here the highpoint of Jesus ministry. Literally. In recent weeks he’s raised the dead, he’s made a meal for a multitude out of scraps and gleanings, he’s walked on water … and everywhere the crowds are following him in droves. These are his glory …
Hiroshima Day
Tomorrow brings together the anniversary of the atrocity of Hiroshima and the Feast of the Transfiguration. Every year the collision seems both inescapably apt and awful beyond words. It demands we understand glory and bear its weight. An eye-witness account by a Jesuit living in Hiroshima in 1945. Tomorrow’s gospel reading: Six days later, Jesus …