The reading today from Acts (15:1-6) begins an account of what seems to have been the first really big argument in the early Church: whether Gentiles (that is Greeks, Romans, and anyone else not Jewish) who converted to Christianity should also effectively become Jews by being circumcised and observing the
Continue readingIn today’s first reading from Acts (14:19-28) Luke concludes his narrative of the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas – we see dramatic contrasts. First we’re told that Paul is almost killed by being stoned, and then (in spite of this) they ‘put fresh heart into the disciples’. We
Continue readingToday is the feast of St Pancras. We don’t know much about him, but he is thought to have been martyred at the beginning of the fourth century in Rome during the last great persecution of the Church at the hands of the Emperor Diocletian, and was killed when he
Continue readingI remember at school that going slowly through the text of Acts was a very good grounding in what was then called ‘Divinity’ – we had to draw maps of St Paul’s various missionary journeys; the rather odd things which sometimes happen in the story can excite a young imagination.
Continue readingToday is the Fifth Sunday of Easter. Both the first reading at Mass today (Acts 6:1-6), describing the commissioning of St Stephen and the first deacons, and the gospel reading (John 14: 1-12) have occurred at weekday Masses recently, and I don’t want to repeat what I have written earlier.
Continue readingToday is Europe Day, about which I have written, in conjunction with VE Day, in our parish newsletter available here on our website. For some years (and I don’t why it was stopped) our Bishops Conference produced an annual message and prayer leaflet for today; and in our parish it’s
Continue readingToday’s gospel reading, John 14:1-6, is one of the best known passages in John, often read at funerals: its last words ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’ used to be seen on evangelistic adverts on the Underground. Jesus at the Last Supper is trying to cheer his
Continue readingAs you know we hear every day at Mass from the book of Acts. From roughly the point reached today (13: 13-29) the spotlight moves from Peter and the disciples who have received the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem, to their former persecutor Saul of Tarsus, now renamed Paul, (shown here
Continue readingThe structure of John’s gospel, from which virtually all our gospel readings are taken in the Easter season, is mostly built around specific feasts of the Jewish liturgical year, celebrated in Jerusalem (in John Jesus doesn’t simply go to Jerusalem before his arrest, but at various points in his teaching
Continue readingToday’s first reading from Acts (11:19-26) describes how, because of the persecution which broke out after the stoning of St Stephen many of the earliest disciples move away from Jerusalem and the surrounding area – various parts of the eastern Mediterranean. This is seen as providential, a sign of God’s
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