Reflections for Feastdays

On the last day of our church year we step back and take a look at things from the widest perspective possible: The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.  We consider Jesus to be not just a king, unlikely though that seemed to Pilate and pretty much anyone around (Luke 23:35-43). […]

A Feast about a church building, or more specifically the dedication of a church – that’s strange. If it were Saint Peter’s in Rome it might make a bit more sense. At least everyone has heard of that.  Just as a Feast dedicated to a saint we’ve never heard of might lead us into an

I’ve always liked the way that the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls come as a pair. All Saints seems to speak to the grandeur of church, the great sweep of history including the lives and deaths of so many extraordinary women and men. And we are part of that. We are amongst those

Our readings today make the link between a story from the time the Israelites spent in the desert, when they lost patience with God since their salvation from slavery in Egypt wasn’t working out as they expected (Numbers 21:4b-9), to Jesus referencing this incident in relation to his own coming death (John 3:13-17). In both

As we move away from our focus on the Easter event and the Easter experience that defines us as Christians we return to our day to day life, acknowledging its mundane ups and downs. Being a Christian isn’t something for special occasions, something we experience only when we’re at the top of the mountain. As

Given the fact that the Eucharist is the central activity of our faith, the action that marks us out as Christians, it’s appropriate that Easter and the Feasts that follow it should come to its conclusion on this day – a feast recognizing the mystery of the body and blood of Jesus. Body and blood

If we are inclined to ascribe a human personality to God that would be rather foolish. But equally we are human and we can’t avoid seeing relationships in human terms, whether it be with our dog or even our God. And we can see that throughout the long history of God’s interaction with his people,

Following the Baptism of the Lord we’ve had two Sundays where we heard how John and Luke introduced the public ministry of Jesus. Today we suddenly jump back to a story of Jesus’ childhood (Luke 2:22-40). This certainly isn’t the straightforward order that Luke promised at the beginning of his Gospel, and indeed it doesn’t

I do find myself feeling a certain amount of sympathy for Pilate in the exchange he has with Jesus in today’s gospel (Jn 18:33b-37). He’s been handed this hot potato by the Jewish leaders, who he trusts about as far as he could throw them. He doesn’t care whether Jesus thinks he’s a king or

“This is my body, this is my blood”.  We are used to thinking about this extraordinary statement from the perspective of a meal. That was the context in which Jesus spoke these words. John in his gospel elaborates the idea of eating and drinking the body and blood of Jesus in a way that we