Matthew 10:17-20 At baptism when we were anointed with chrism these words were said: ‘God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into his holy people. He now anoints you with the chrism of salvation. As …
Category Archives: Monastic
Saints Philip and James
John 14:6-14 ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’ If you Google this famous quotation you’ll get quite a few pictures of roads and paths. It is the easiest of the three concepts to illustrate. We know where we are with a clear path. When Jesus says he is the Way we have …
Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter
JOHN 10:22-30 ‘If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.’ I have such a lot of sympathy with the Jews of John’s Gospel when they say this. Jesus answers them in riddles and leaves them with more questions than answers. The more I sit with the Gospel texts, the more I realise that what I …
Monday, Fourth Week of Easter
John 10:11-18 I am the good shepherd;I know my ownand my own know me,just as the Father knows meand I know the Father;and I lay down my life for my sheep. A local farmer grazes his sheep on our land. I asked him once if he named his sheep, he said, ‘No’. I asked him …
Fourth Sunday of Easter
JOHN 10:1-10‘I am the gate. Anyone who enters through me will be safe: he will go freely in and out and be sure of finding pasture.’ Biblical scholars tell us that the shepherds of Jesus’ day took the safety of the sheep so seriously that they would lie themselves across the entrance to the sheepfold …
St Catherine of Siena
Matthew 11:25-30 Today we celebrate the feast of St Catherine of Siena. You’ll see her depicted wearing the habit of a nun, but she was in fact a Third Order Dominican. She’s of particular note for her fearless resolve and ability to speak truth to power, and especially to Popes. The Church has recognized her …
Friday, Third Week of Easter
John 6:52-59 ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him.’ When we gather together to give thanks to the Father and to share bread and wine we make a statement about who we are as individuals and who we are as community. We receive Christ’s broken …
Thursday, Third Week of Easter
John 6:44-51 ‘Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that a man may eat it and not die.’ It’s worth reading the whole of the Bread of Life discourse (John 6:22-66) in one sitting to get a sense of …
Wednesday, Third Week of Easter
Acts 8:1-8John 6:35-40 I am the bread of life.He who comes to me will never be hungry;he who believes in me will never thirst. We are so familiar with Jesus’ language when he refers to himself as ‘the Bread of Life’ that it is easy to miss just how bold a claim this was. In …
St Mark
1 Peter 5:5-14Mark 16:15-20 When we celebrate the feast of St Mark the Evangelist we celebrate the gifts of a storyteller. What we read on the printed page had its origins in an oral culture. The early Church preserved in writing the memories and stories which shaped their identity. If you were a well-to-do host …