Surely the days of teaching about hell fire and damnation are gone. Surely our ever loving and forgiving God wouldn’t exclude anyone from Heaven. Well according to today’s gospel reading we can’t bet on it! We might imagine Heaven’s gates as big and welcoming, but today we hear that it may instead be a narrow door through which it might be difficult for us to
If Jesus came back today and joined one of our parishes how would he behave? Could we imagine him on the finance committee, submitting articles for the Link Up, joining our baptismal team, taking charge of our Prayer group or volunteering to decorate the Church for Christmas?. Everything we do for the church is important, but on a scale of one to ten, we are
A farmer has a lucky year and finds himself with an abundant crop. He decides to tear down his barns and build bigger ones in which to store it. In the meantime, he decides to take a well earned rest, eating drinking and making merry, confident that his future is financially secured. “You fool,” says, God, “this very night your life is being demanded of
Have you ever prayed really really hard for something and not had that prayer granted? Have you ever looked back in life at a prayer you once made and thought thank goodness God didn’t grant it? This week’s gospel reading is a lesson in prayer, but more importantly, it’s a lesson in having faith that God is a parent who will not let us down.
“Don’t just stand there gawping,” we’re told as children,” …. do something!” we have grown up knowing that we all must pull our weight, and so when the overworked Martha complains to Jesus that her sister Mary has not helped with the meal, we get understandably hot under the collar when Jesus condones Mary’s choice to sit at his feet in conversation. There is of
Today a law student asks Jesus “Who is my neighbour?” he might just as well have asked, “Who is NOT my neighbour.” The law student was a Jew, and as such would only have considered fellow Jews as worthy of his neighbourly love. His loyalty to his own community would in itself have excluded those outside it. By asking Jesus “Who is my neighbour?” the
