Ash Wednesday Something of the immediacy of Paul’s conversion to Christ is being called for today. He thought he was serving the Lord but, like the hypocrites in the gospel passage, his exterior actions were misplaced, untrue, not according to God’s will. It happens to us all the time. We …
Holy Thursday, 1st April 2021 Jesus is pushing up against the boundaries that make life so precious, that give life its meaning. We may think that such boundaries, all the limitations of mortality, mean that we should get as much out of each day and one another, as possible – …
Palm Sunday, 28th March 2021 Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. This is the physicist Neils Bohr on quantum theory. In contrast to this, I’m not sure I’ve ever understood theories of atonement and am still shocked by the …
The Annunciation of the Lord, 25th March 2021. As morning breaks earlier so the blackbird’s song coincides with ‘getting-out-of-bed’ time. What better alarm clock could you want? But still there’s a certain resistance in me to getting up even when the real alarm goes off. I’ve slept very well because …
Fifth Sunday in Lent, 21st March 2021 As in previous weeks, we concentrated on the readings from the Old Testament in our Lenten lectio groups and, as ever, found a great deal to ponder over and to stimulate thought, not least, this week, on what it means to have God’s …
Solemnity of Saint Joseph, 19th March 2021 The theme or concept of faith has been dogging our footsteps throughout Lent. It was there most obviously last night in the reading from chapter 11 of the letter to the Hebrews, and is there again in the readings of today’s eucharist, all …
Lent Sunday 4B, 14th March 2021 We’ve been using the passages from the Hebrew Bible for our zoom Lectio meetings in Lent this year and it’s been a useful exercise, not least because many of us are less familiar with the older biblical stories and the pattern of early Israelite …
Saint Frances of Rome, 9th March 2021 Picking up from the words of the Sufi mystic Rabia of Basra quoted on Sunday, that we’re not here to act out of fear of hell or love of heaven but for love of God. We can see this essential trust in God’s …
Lent Sunday 3B, 7th March 2021. Having an argument is a good way of ‘creating an atmosphere’: one can enter a room and know immediately that something is going on – something bad – something not conducive to peace. But one can also enter a room after an argument and …
Lent Sunday 2B, 28th February 2021 At first sight it seems a bit of a puzzle to juxtapose two such different readings as in today’s Second Sunday Mass of Lent: we are uplifted by the wonder and promise of the Transfiguration but this is preceded by the harrowing story of …
