We begin this evening the Sixth Sunday of Easter. This beautiful piece of music by the English Tudor composer Thomas Tallis is a setting of part of this Sunday’s gospel reading, John 14:15-21. [Click on the image below to listen on YouTube]. Next Thursday is Ascension Day (as it is
Continue readingThe first reading from Acts this morning (1:1-10) shows really a ‘whistle-stop’ journey of St Paul round Asia Minor. However the vision he has in a dream at the end of someone saying to him ‘Come across to Macedonia and help us’, which leads us to the next stage of
Continue readingIn the calendar of the Southwark archdiocese today is the feast day of St Simon Stock, the thirteenth century Carmelite friar from Kent, associated with the shrine at Aylesford, one of the great centres of spiritual life in this part of the world. Because of his personal holiness he was
Continue readingToday’s first reading (Acts 15:22-31) includes the first appearance of Silas, who will be Paul’s companion for much of the rest of Acts. The letter recounted here is the result of the decision of the apostles and leaders of the Church in Jerusalem to affirm that Gentiles who became Christians
Continue readingSee the note below about today’s special Day of Prayer being led by Pope Francis. It’s also the feast of St Matthias, who was chosen to be added to the Twelve after the suicide of Judas Iscariot (Acts 1: 15-26). The interesting thing is that there are two candidates, and
Continue readingThe 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 reading