Twentieth Sunday of the Year

Today’s gospel passage takes us into uncomfortable territory. Journeying from the land of Pharisees to the land of Canaanites, a woman - a Gentile, and an enemy -  forces Jesus to respond to the ‘bigness’ of God. Through a series of encounters with people, Pope Francis has in many ways reflected to us at the World Youth Day, and elsewhere of the wide embrace of God. No one is excluded which Pope Francis reminds us of when he says, ‘all are welcome.’ There are no exceptions. In Isaiah, God says, “‘I will bring foreigners to my holy mountain. I will make them joyful in my house of prayer, says the Lord, ‘for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples’”. 

Nineteenth Sunday of the Year

There is something very fitting about Matthew’s account of Jesus walking on water and the invitation to Peter to do the same. The story is relevant to the experiences Matthew’s contemporaries of turbulence, polarisation, violence, and uncertainty. These experiences are also very much part of our lives.  

Feast of the Transfiguration 2023

August 6^th is the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus. It is also the 78^th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb followed three days later, on August 9^th with the bombing of Nagasaki. Nagasaki was strongly Catholic city and the plane that dropped the bomb was blessed by a Catholic Chaplain. These events brought about a catastrophic ‘transfiguration’. The effects of these continue to the present and the threats of nuclear war are continually before us.

Seventeenth Sunday of the Year

Christianity is a religion of attention. Whom do we notice? What do we notice? Is it a person on the street or a person with a lot of social status?  This relates to the image, a few weeks ago, where Jesus self-described as meek and how that may be reflected in our worship spaces might; what appears in parish bulletins; books we read; the training we offer for youth and religious leaders; how ‘little ones’ are listened to as privileged interpreters of God’s message. What verses and scenes do we hold in our hearts? What images direct our attention to the God of love? The parables suggest that God’s Reign is not only found in places such as monasteries or in the demands and rewards of human religion but in the ordinary, daily, in your face, reality.

Sixteenth Sunday of the Year

The gospel continually calls us to seek to do relationships differently. To do that means we need to question how we classify people and situations. In the face of evil and people hurting others by unkindness, lack of care and malice, the gospel whilst acknowledging the negative invites us to hope. The parables turn traditional values upside down. Jesus reverses our understanding by insisting that there is wheat among the weeds, not weeds among the wheat. The word is that God is present amid evil, destruction, inadequacy, and insignificance. God is not limited by human weakness or failure. Evil, brokenness, pain, and sin are realities in our world but do not have the last say. God is patient. It comes from love and unlimited concern for all creatures. This is the soil from which God can work. Positive fruitfulness can be found in the messy field. Clearly, the Church is not meant to be a sect of perfect people. We are asked to check our assumptions about what we classify as ‘weeds.’ Might we be mistaken? Might we judge things to be harmful when they are not? Jesus’ teachings about peace and liberation were viewed as a weed that needed to be removed. What was viewed as a weed as with the mustard seed, was actually a lifegiving tree.