Eastertide Sunday 5C, 15th May 2022 Consulting with others before acting is always a wise thing to do. Sometimes this involves direct communication with another, sometimes that more indirect communication we call lectio – the reading of the scriptures, or the consulting with the Fathers, that is: the tradition of …
Eastertide Sunday 4C, 8th May 2022 When to stay; when to go? Paul and Barnabas are following closely in the footsteps of Christ – in the same dynamic of learning when to speak; when not to speak; what to say, what not to say, and its largely unscripted, though Paul …
English Martyrs, 4th May 2022 We are not too sure these days what to make of this memorial to the English martyrs – not too sure what it is to be English any more – or to be a martyr. Surely we’ve moved away from such reflective and emotive terminology. …
Saints Philip and James, 3rd May 2022 Paul is writing against a dualistic mindset among the Corinthians which over- emphasises the spiritual against the physical. No, the Resurrection of the body of Christ really happened; it’s, in a way, a complement or logical working out of the fact of incarnation …
Eastertide Sunday 3C, 1st May 2022 Jesus has forgiven Peter . The whole gospel is summed up in this story. Jesus comes for the forgiveness of sins. We touched on the unpopularity of the concept of sin on Friday, on the feast of Catherine of Siena and how at a …
St Catherine of Siena, 29th April 2022 We’ve attended a series of funerals recently, with one more to come today. And each was accompanied by a moving and marvellous eulogy, but also, in at least two cases, a real aversion to the full Christian Script where Christ’s sacrifice obtains for …
Saint Mark, 25th April 2022 There is always a temptation, in any form of writing or teaching, to conform the words to an already expected pattern of thought or belief rather than simply reporting what is seen – I’m probably doing it now. And it’s unfortunate that we celebrate the …
Eastertide Sunday 2C, 24th April 2022 The theme of belief is very powerful and constant throughout John’s gospel summed up perhaps in its two uses at the very beginning, in the Prologue: firstly in regard to John the Baptist He came as a witness, to bear witness to the lightso …
Easter Wednesday ‘Many years ago…’ — I find myself saying that with increasing frequency now — I was on a tube train in London and overheard one person say to the other, ‘Easter is on Sunday this year.’ And I thought, ‘Umh, so we really are living in a post-Christian …
Easter Monday This is a rather disturbing gospel passage, or should be, as it’s the beginning of that tradition of story-telling that identifies us as Christian over and against everything else: the beginning of that myth-making that can make one group comfortable in itself at the discomfort of others, the …
