On Tuesday, His Grace turns to the theme of Jesus’ hidden years. His Grace asks the students to consider questions concerning what really happened: ‘Who, for instance, was Joseph? Was [ … ]
A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Part 5
On Thursday, there is more lost-history to contemplate. More Christian life unknown. Certainly, His Grace tacitly withdraws some measure of the veil of – more creative years. Though what he has to say does not overtly contradict received Church teaching.
His Grace moves the beginnings of Christian faith – the Church – as from stunned remains: Jerusalem razed – as our first generations looked back onto it.
This nexus of salvation-history – all history pointed forwards-backwards either way in faith in Jesus. As, in intervening centuries, disparate communities scatter through what is becoming a wreckage of Empire, spiritual waste, gather their scraps, and they begin to communicate. Truth-recalled – reverse-transcribed like RNA like a retrovirus – penetrated into the pagan world laid out for it – became life [ … ]
A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Holy Week | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Part 6
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. [ … ]
Reflections On A Visit To Lourdes | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs
We were at Lourdes before we crossed the Pyrenees. This lies back in the days when I wanted a clean faith, a vertical faith, where I could just be me, and nothing to do with home. Later, I have come to know, and quite to like, that modern Catholicism’s splashed all over the blessed place, a more womany religion, and perhaps that is its secret heart. Fundamentally vulgar, squalid, domestic, this, necessarily, was an attempt to share. All manner of things. All manner of stuff and business. Normally, the rule is, Mum and I talk through the dog: Samson’s very happy to see you. Samson was missing you. Oh look, Samson’s giving you his paw. That’s how we share most directly. That’s how we confer such mutual feeling and human emotion. I had wanted to share a lot, but we never did – not directly. Now this delicate matter of Catholic faith [ … ]
Hail Mary, Full Of Grace | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | The Virginity Of Mary And The Birth Of Christ
Sometimes, when I read my Bible, I pause in the reading and say to myself: ‘This bit’s real.’ It would be fair to say, I have issues with Mary, because, [ … ]
The National Sculpture Museum | Valladolid | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs
The Carrefour will be open, where I can buy nuts for the red squirrel, who lives in Campo Grande. The red squirrel is Valladolid’s best bit. Even as a child, [ … ]
The Birth Of Jesus | Jesus Is God | Jesus Is Love | Prayer To Jesus
Our Advent prayers recall Jesus and Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, the story of the Nativity as handed down to us especially through the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. It is such a wonderful, intimate story, of Mary and Joseph, two people whose lives would have been otherwise utterly obscure, lived out in a remote province of the Roman Empire, far from the centre of things, to whom something extraordinary is happening [ … ]
KJV Psalms | Psalm 22/21 | King James Bible | My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me | Crucifixion
We can only wonder at Jesus’ agony on the Cross. There are so many possible layers of the meaning here. At once, this utterance might seem to us an action of despair, or perhaps better of nullity, and at the same time an action of triumph, as the psalm moves to reaffirm and reinforces faith in God [ … ]
Daily Bible Verses | Ritual Cleansing | The Tradition of the Elders | What Defiles a Man
The purification rituals of the Jews were originally laid down, in Exodus, for the priests to perform before they offered sacrifices to God. These rules were then later extended to all Jews, to be performed before every meal. This was as there developed a greater and greater call for all Jews to be a priestly people, particularly in the light of national set-backs, which were ascribed to infidelities to God [ … ]
Saint Thomas Aquinas
Saint Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy was grounded in Aristotelianism, but he was also heavily influenced by the works of Augustine. He sought to reconcile the insights of reason with the truths of revelation, arguing that faith and reason are complementary rather than contradictory [ … ]
Parable Of The Good Shepherd | Daily Bible Verses Easter Season To Pentecost | Parables Of Jesus
Christ offers himself to the people as the good shepherd, recalling a favourite theme of Old Testament prophecy. Priests and kings are so described, and indeed God is spoken of as a shepherd, as we hear, for example, in Psalm 23:
THE Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters [ … ]
Parable of the Vine and the Branches | Parables Of Jesus
In the Old Testament, the chosen people of Israel have been compared to a vine. We may think, for example, of Isaiah’s Song of the Vineyard (Isaiah 5:1-7 – Audio Bible Verses Spoken Word), in which God complains that, despite the care he has lavished upon it, his vineyard has only produced wild grapes [ … ]
Parable Of Lazarus And The Rich Man | Parables Of Jesus
Jesus speaks in parables when he has something important to communicate. The meaning of a parable may seem obscure or in need of explanation. Jesus does give interpretations of the parables to his disciples. We are encouraged through the parables to see our world in new and perhaps unexpected ways. The parables encourage us to think more deeply about Jesus’ teaching. They are, above all, a challenge – even an anarchic challenge – to everything we think we know [ … ]
Parable Of The Good Shepherd 1 | Parables Of Jesus
Christ offers himself to the people as the good shepherd, recalling a favourite theme of Old Testament prophecy. Priests and kings are so described, and indeed God is spoken of as a shepherd, as we hear, for example, in Psalm 23: THE Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want [ … ]