The English Martyrs, 4th May 2020 Softly this Sunday morningof sunlight and daffodilsThe thought comes to meThat with malign intent somewhereAt this particular momentPrising the sealed edges of integrityMan tortures man. I should like to pretend otherwiseBury my head in the sandof my Sunday complacency(the daffodils sing in my heart)Yet …
Saint Catherine of Siena, 29th April 2020 Catherine of Siena lived at a very turbulent time in a very turbulent setting among people threatened not only with the plague but with the constant warfare between the various Italian city states and with a Church divided between Avignon and Rome. Astutely, …
Eastertide Sunday 3A, 26th April 2020 Much essential goodness has been revealed in these past four weeks of ‘lock-down’. We have been checking on others to see if they are ‘all right’ and many more have been checking on us to see if we are all right. It’s been quite …
Saint George, 23rd April 2020 St George is a problematic saint for us on several counts, partly because of the lack of historical detail as to the original St George, and partly because of the legends which have since become attached, not least that of the slaying of the dragon. …
Low Sunday, 19th April 2020 John’s gospel, too, struggles with its ending. There is always more to say. Today’s passage seems to have been its original ending culminating, as it does, with Thomas’s recognition of Jesus as ‘Lord and God’ – a deliberate echo of the beginning of the gospel …
Easter Saturday, 18th April 2020 This is the beginning of the longer ending to Mark’s gospel, often seen as an addition to its true ending to ameliorate it in some way. In the shorter ending, the women run away from the tomb ‘frightened out of their wits’, in one translation, …
Easter Friday, 17th April 2020 Allowing for this gospel story, perhaps, to be from a separate tradition to other post-resurrectional stories of Jesus, could it not also be seen as a call to the wandering disciples to return once more to Jerusalem and begin their lives of witness from Jerusalem …
Easter Friday, 17th April 2020 Allowing for this gospel story, perhaps, to be from a separate tradition to other post-resurrectional stories of Jesus, could it not also be seen as a call to the wandering disciples to return once more to Jerusalem and begin their lives of witness from Jerusalem …
Easter Thursday, 16th April 2020 When we celebrate Easter, we are really standing in the middle of a second ‘Big Bang’, a tumultuous surge of divine energy as fiery and as intense as the very beginning of the universe. What a recent writer wonderfully calls ‘the fire in the equations’ …
Easter Thursday, 16th April 2020 When we celebrate Easter, we are really standing in the middle of a second ‘Big Bang’, a tumultuous surge of divine energy as fiery and as intense as the very beginning of the universe. What a recent writer wonderfully calls ‘the fire in the equations’ …
