Reflections

This week we hear Jesus giving three accounts of the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 13:24-43), following another that we heard last week. The Jews had a very mixed experience of kingdoms. In their tradition there were a few good kings, notably David and Solomon, and a lot of bad ones. Even the good ones got very mixed reviews, as we hear in the less savory stories  about David. At the time of Jesus there were people who wanted to bring back independent rulers so Israel would have its own king, but they…

Continue Reading Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We may not be as familiar with the harvest and sowing as the people of Jesus’ time or before, but we can still relate to God watering the ground and giving us food (Isaiah 55:10-11) – we repeat the sentiment every week in the Offertory prayers of our Eucharist when we thank God for the bread and the wine. We can also understand the analogy between the sowing and the preaching of the Gospel (Matthew 13:1-23). And we know that the outcome of that preaching is not a given – looking around…

Continue Reading Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

So we’re going to have a life of ease, living at peace. Isn’t that what today’s readings promise?  Well if they do, why would you believe them. It clearly hasn’t and doesn’t work out that way. So either we ignore them or we figure out what they are telling us.  This situation isn’t unfamiliar to us. Sometimes we find that the words we hear don’t mean what we first thought. In this case however the challenge may go deeper than the meaning of particular words.  Taking our first reading (Zechariah 9:9-10) -…

Continue Reading Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

We are used to having two readings in our liturgy where the first from the Hebrew Scriptures may be harsh or even violent, reflecting what we may think to be a more primitive or less developed understanding of God. Our Gospel readings, on the other hand, reflect a fuller awareness of God as revealed through the words and actions of Jesus.  Today that picture is reversed. The story we hear about Elisha visiting a well-to-do couple, who are rewarded for looking after him, is comforting (2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a). We can identify…

Continue Reading Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time