Second Sunday of Easter

Gregory Boyle in Barking to the Choir comments on ‘secular culture’ which is depicted as always being ‘hostile’ to Christianity. Boyle does not believe it to be true. He says, ‘Our culture is hostile only to the inauthentic living of the gospel.’ It seems more likely that that hostility to religious organisation is really saying that unless they see, they will not believe. So often when interacting with people who no longer identify as Christian, they say it is ‘because of Christians.’ Because of what they see, or don’t see in their lives.

Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion

Last Sunday some Greek pilgrims came to Jesus’ disciples saying: ‘We want to see Jesus’. One wonders what they were looking for. A healer? A miracle worker? One who take on the system? Whatever it was, Jesus responded by using the image of the grain of wheat that needs to die in order to live and give life. This image is lived out in the Passion story. A unique characteristic of our faith is the constant invitation to become part of the story of Jesus’ life and ministry on earth and of God’s ongoing love for the world. The entry into Jerusalem was not a parade but a protest in response to the militarism and oppressive dominance of the Roman Pontus Pilate who entered Jerusalem from the West. In our story, Jesus rides in on a donkey from the other side of town and the people hoping for an end to Roman oppression, thinking Jesus would be the one to bring it about.

Fifth Sunday in Lent

What is God up to? According to Jeremiah religion is getting a complete makeover from something formal, external and calcified to something alive to God that can touch peoples’ lives. Jeremiah speaks of God’s desire for a new and more intimate covenant; a deeper commitment. It is gut-located, heart-centered, and mind-penetrated. In his Spiritual Exercises, St Ignatius invites us to imagine God looking with great love upon our world where some ‘[people are] being born and being laid to rest, some getting married and others getting divorced, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the happy and the sad, so many people aimless, despairing, hateful, and killing, so many undernourished, sick, and dying, so many struggling with life and blind to any meaning.