Sunday reading

May 13 is the optional memorial of Our Lady of Fatima.

Fatima is the most prominent approved apparition of the 20th century.

It became famous the world over, particular for its three-part "secret."

Here are 9 things to know and share with friends . . . Read more »

The scene is the Last Supper and Jesus’s final conversations with his disciples.

He wants to share many things about himself with them, though in fact they are too distracted to understand what he is saying.

Thus Jesus wishes to let his friends know that, although he will soon be leaving them, and even though this departure will bring them grief, he will not leave them orphans; he will come back to them, but in a different way. Read more »

Jesus continues to speak to his disciples about the Holy Spirit, well aware that they were unable to grasp much of what he was saying.

The Spirit is first and foremost the Spirit of truth. This phrase is used three times in the Last Supper discourses, and with reason.

The battle against evil is always the struggle against lies and falsehood, for that is what evil is, a distortion of what is, a twisting of reality. Read more »

The Last Supper discourses are teachings from the Lord which are multi-layered in meaning.

There is the teaching on humble service to begin with; there’s the ‘new commandment’ of love; there’s the allegory of the Vine and the branches, a symbol of the union between disciple and Master.

But one of the richest passages deals with the Holy Spirit, Jesus’s own spirit of love, the bond between him and his Father, which is also the bond between him and his disciples. Read more »

Very little is known of the two apostles, Philip and James.

They scarcely figure in the Gospels and the little we know of them comes from church legend.

Philip was a native of Bethsaida on the shores of Lake Gennesareth in Galilee, and apparently a friend of Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, as well as Nathanael, whom he introduces to Jesus. Read more »

“Formidable!” is the only way to describe the eight new rooms at the Palace of Versailles.

For two months they will be packed with oil paintings and antique objects made of silver, solid gold, emeralds and diamonds transported to Paris from Jerusalem.

They are on loan from the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. Read more »

April 25 is the feast of St. Mark, one of the companions of the apostles and the author of one of the gospels.

Who was he, and what do the Bible and the Church Fathers record about him?

Here are 8 things to know and share . . . Read more »

Quietly the men in brown robes mingle with tourists and pilgrims alike.

For more than seven centuries, the Franciscans have kept watch on behalf of the Church for more than 50 sites in the Holy Land — 90 per cent of the identified holy places.

“The Christian faith is not just an idea but first and foremost history,” explained Fr. Pierre Batista Pizzaballa, head of the Franciscan Custody in the Holy Land. “If there is a history of revelation, then there is a geography of revelation.” Read more »

The sixth chapter of John’s Gospel describes in great detail an event which was the turning point in Jesus’s public ministry.

This was the multiplication of the loaves and fishes by the lakeside in Galilee, which in turn led to Jesus’s discourse on the ‘bread of life’.

Not all who heard the discourse reacted positively, however. Many of the crowd, as well as some disciples felt that Jesus was exaggerating, and some were turned off by his insistence on “eating my flesh and drinking my blood”. Read more »

This Resurrection appearance of Jesus is intriguing for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it appears in what is known as the ‘supplement’ to John’s Gospel, which ends with chapter 20.

So the events narrated here in chapter 21 form a kind of juxtaposition to what has already been written, and do not form a logical sequence. Read more »