Reflections for Lent

Another week, another altercation between Jesus and the scribes and Pharisees (John 8:1-11). But this one is a little different. In some cases Jesus takes the fight to them, as in: “you brood of vipers” (Mt 12:34). In others he engages with a friendly questioner: “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mk […]

During Lent we are presented in our Readings with many of the most familiar scripture stories. Maybe it’s a way to focus us back on the clearest summations of what our faith is all about. Today we hear the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:1-3, 11-32), which is certainly up there as one of

We really, really want to believe that bad things happen to bad people and not to good people. We know this isn’t true, the evidence is all around us. Bad things happen to good people, and good things also happen to bad people. There is simply no connection.  The people of Jesus’s time were equally

The Transfiguration is a strange event. That’s obvious at the superficial level, but it remains strange when we dig a bit further. Jesus takes just a select three of his disciples and they have an experience which is literally out of this world. It’s much more dramatic than the Resurrection, where there were no out

We know that Jesus was “fully human” – in other words he was just like us. When we hear a story like Luke’s account of Jesus being tempted in the desert (Luke 4:1-13) does it help us to feel more like him, or not? I suspect for many of us the answer is “not so

What kind of a relationship do we have with Jesus? Or, perhaps a better question, what kind of relationship does he have with us? During the Easter season we’ve followed the gradual unveiling of the answer to this question. At first it was as companion and teacher (on the road to Emmaus), then as protector

We started our Lent with reflections on the humanity and divinity of Jesus. As we come towards the end we find ourselves returning to these themes, drawn together now as the climax of Easter approaches.  From the Letter to the Hebrews, our second reading (Heb 5:7-9) points out how Jesus wasn’t some perfect angelic being

Last week we had commandments, this week condemnation (Jn 3:16). “Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned”.  Couple that with the angry God of the Book of Chronicles burning down Jerusalem (2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23) and we have a pretty gloomy picture. No wonder we’d rather

We seem to be a society obsessed with laws. To judge by news coverage of court proceedings and so many attempts to create laws to control how other people behave, one might imagine the majority of the population is employed full time in such processes! In reality most of us have very little interaction with