Twenty Fourth Sunday of the Year

The three stories Jesus tells us are how God feels about each one of us. We see God’s passion for all people; and God’s mercy and compassion is to recover, restore, all that is lost. They speak of God’s passion who looks at our world. How do we share that passion in our desires for the world and its people? When facing complaints about his poor taste in dinner companions, Jesus responds with these stories. The image that emerges is that God is not reasonable in human terms because God’s favourites are the broken people who we rub shoulders daily.

On Saturday, 27 August 2022 Edmund Rice Centre for Justice and Community Education (ERCJ) organized a workshop on employment and career development for the newly arrived Afghan refugees. This workshop was delivered in partnership with Openpages.

Twenty Third Sunday of the Year

Jesus has some strong, uncompromising and challenging words about the cost of discipleship and the cost of liberation that goes with it. Some might see as an offence to family-centred sensibilities and family values. Jesus is calling for a seismic shift in consciousness – hitting us in places where we are comfortable and drawing us into conversations that matter. They expose our real loyalties and offer us wider and creative horizons. It may come to detesting the ways of our forebears or society, who gave us full bellies and empty hearts, or despising our own ‘lifestyles’, organized as they are around beautiful things. Jesus asks more of us than the Church has ever done, or will need to.