The Conversion of Saint Paul, 25th January 2022 Be very wary of people who know for sure what they have to do and say in order to do God’s will. Paul is a prime example of this: I studied under Gamaliel….I was as full of duty towards God as you …
Sunday 3C, 23rd January 2022 This is a game of two halves – as I believe football commentators occasionally find themselves saying. In today’s first half we hear the good news of Christ revealed to his own people – epitomised by this taking place in the town of Nazareth where …
Sunday 2C, 16th January 2022 there is no ordinary time. For those with the eyes and ears and every other sense – summed up in the word spiritual perhaps – to see it. Every day and time is extraordinary but it takes time for this to unfold and become our …
The Baptism of the Lord, 9th January 2022 Nothing is as it seems, or so it seems. In Luke’s account of Jesus’ baptism there is no dialogue between Jesus and John and the revelation of who he is seems a very private matter for Jesus alone for later John sends …
The Epiphany of the Lord, 6th January 2022 Physiotherapists encourage people experiencing relentless post-viral fatigue to gently push at the limits of what they can do in terms of physical effort. They’ve found that if those limits are not tested, then the realm of the possible begins to shrink – …
Second Sunday after Christmas, 2nd January 2022 Wisdom is elusive, easily lost. This is the story of Israel, of Jerusalem, of humankind and the story too of Jesus. God’s spirit has been at work throughout but our history is one of evasion, of hiding from wisdom’s truths, of observing them …
Mary, Mother of God, 1st January 2022 As pickpockets see only pockets so birdwatchers see only birds, or so it may seem but where we place our attention matters, Consider this wonderful passage from Iris Murdoch: I am looking out of my window in an anxious state of mind, oblivious …
Feast of the Holy Innocents, 28th December 2021 ‘Half of my family were killed in Shatila,’ Fatima told me after dinner. ‘My mother’s sister and all her immediate family. Her daughter was pregnant and the Israeli soldiers made a bet, for a can of beer – boy or girl? Then …
Feast of St John the Evangelist, 27th December 2021 You hear it all the time, ‘We grew up poor but we didn’t know it’ – a comment on and by Appalachian coal miners who suddenly find themselves at the mercy of forces far away: hedge fund investors who see them …
Feast of the Holy Family, Sunday 26th December 2021 Reality is where you place your attention That’s a quote worth pondering on from Dom Lawrence Freeman, as is the following as he wanders around the exhibits at the recent Cop26 conference in Glasgow: I listened to a presentation at a …
