Twentieth Sunday of the Year

Isaiah is offering us a way to embrace the value of others by genuinely appreciating them in our hearts which impacts on our actions by way of his prayer of the heart – the God in our heart – who says, ‘I will bring foreigners to my holy mountain. I will make them joyful in my house of prayer, says the Lord, ‘for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples’. No one is excluded.

Nineteenth Sunday of the Year

Like most people, Elijah, does not experience God’s presence in the expected places such as in power or violence of earthquakes, fires or winds. God is found in the quiet, gentle breeze by responding to everyday issues that involve service and solidarity with others. Today’s readings suggest that it is in precisely these places and situations that we experience and touch God. God cannot be encountered in withdrawal from life’s realities but by ‘walking across the water’ and trusting in the one who says ‘Courage! It is I!’  

18^th Sunday of the Year

It is difficult to avoid the reality of injustice and poverty today when we see the following Jesus whilst he is trying to find some space to deal with the murder of John the Baptism.  This murder gave Jesus a double warning. First, it made clear that anyone who criticised powerful people courted danger. We see also the tragedy of trivialising John’s life and mission because his death was due to petty vengeance and a drunken promise. Whatever Jesus wanted to do, looking upon the distressed people called something from him as well as clarifying his mission.

Seventeenth Sunday of the Year

Christianity is a religion of attention. Whom does one notice? What do we notice? Is it a person on the street or a person with a lot of social status?  This is connected with the image, a few weeks ago, where Jesus self-described as meek. I wondered how our worship spaces might reflect that and what material parish bulletins might highlight.

Sixteenth Sunday of the Year 2020

The gospel continually calls us to build a culture of active response in the face of injustice to transform our world and doing relationships differently. According to the gospel Jesus reminds us that God knows we are almost never wholly one thing. We are capable of good and not so good. In reality, our lives and our world consist of good and evil, justice and injustice, life and death, joy and sorrow which live side by side. This is what God’s reign is like and it continues to be present despite the so-called ‘weeds’ and ‘wheat’.