Jesus has performed the second miracle of the loaves and fishes, following which the Pharisees have come to him, demanding to see a sign from heaven to prove that he is the Messiah. Jesus rejects and departs from the Pharisees, and now warns his disciples to be wary of them [ … ]
In today’s Gospel verses, Jesus teaches that the Pharisees have got it all wrong in relation to the Sabbath. While God gave the Sabbath to man as an opportunity to rest and to devote himself to divine worship, the Pharisees have choked the meaning of the Sabbath in a mass of legalese, turning it from being a time of joy into a time of anxiety and empty observance [ … ]
At the time of Luke’s writing his Gospel, those Christian communities which had largely arisen among the poor were being joined by richer people. This caused some problems, which appear in the advice given in the Letter of James, in the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, and in Luke’s Gospel. Saint Paul describes how, when the Christian community comes together to share the Lord’s supper, the rich have brought their own food and have no intention of sharing it. This was at a time when the Eucharist proper was still celebrated as part of a larger meal, an arrangement which did not last many years. St Paul writes [ … ]
