Sunday reading

Reading for pleasure, but if I learn something along the way, that's gravy...

Gospel Story: The Crippled Woman In The Synagogue

Here we encounter yet another of those incidents, so frequent in Luke, in which Jesus’s kindness to the unfortunate, and specially to unfortunate women, is attested.

The scene is a synagogue on the day of the Sabbath. So this episode is not just one of healing, but a story of confrontation as well.

As he is teaching in the synagogue, Jesus’s eyes alight upon a woman bent double with age and infirmity, a hunchback in fact, for 18 years. Read more »

Gospel Story: Blind Bartimaeus

Scattered throughout the Gospels are the “prayers of the plain men and women”, rough and unlettered most of them, who encountered Jesus.

These prayers are ‘one-liners’, and usually ask for a favour, or intercede for a dear one. They are direct, straight from the heart. They are persistent, in spite of the shooing and booing of the passers-by.

And as they are prayers from the heart, Jesus rarely left them unanswered. Read more »

Priests' Group Creates Catholic Voter Guide Mobile App

The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy has released a non-partisan voting guide for Catholics in the form of a free mobile device app.

"With Election Day soon approaching, it is imperative that the lay faithful take their right to vote seriously," Fr. John Trigilio, Jr., president of the San Diego-based fraternity, said Oct. 4. Read more »

Symbolism Of EU Flag Is Marian

Marian devotion versus Christianophobia: Our Lady of Fatima comes to Strasbourg. The twelve stars on the EU flag are a homage to her and yet this will be her first “visit” to the political headquarters of the EU.

Tomorrow at 10 am, the statue of the Virgin Mary will be brought to the cathedral of the city that symbolises European technocracy, by a group of pilgrims from all across the continent. The statue is also expected to come past the European Parliament building. Read more »

Christ The Teacher: The Rich Fool

This Sunday’s reading begins a section of Jesus’s teachings on the theme of material possessions. Probably no part of Jesus’s message inspires greater resistance.

This is because the accumulation of wealth and property is very much part of our nature, and in the conventional thinking, riches are seen to be a sign of God’s blessings

This passage begins with a request for arbitration in a quarrel over inheritance, and ends with a parable on the dangers of avarice. Read more »

Christ The Teacher: The Holy Spirit Will Instruct You

This chapter in Luke’s Gospel contains a number of exhortations to the disciples on the Endtime, that is, that Final Day of the Lord, which is both a time of judgment and a time of vindication.

There are three brief teachings in this Gospel passage. Firstly, God will vindicate all those who have proclaimed him courageously and in public — but not those who have denied him through fear or favour. Read more »

Church Venerates Saint Luke - Physician And Evangelist

Luke was St Paul’s beloved companion on many journeys, physician and evangelist, to whom we owe some of our most beautiful memories of Jesus and his mother.

He was born in Antioch – today’s Antakya, in Turkey – which was then the capital of the Roman province of Syria and the second city of the empire.

He was a doctor by profession, and accompanied Paul on his second missionary journey into Greece. Read more »

Church Honours Saint Ignatius of Antioch – Bishop and Martyr

Antioch in Syria was the second city of the Roman Empire during the first century. It was a rich, cosmopolitan city where the new faith took root, and where for the first time the disciples of Jesus were called “Christians”.

Ignatius grew up here, a zealous disciple of St John, Apostle and Evangelist. Ordained bishop, he encouraged the faithful by his life and teaching, specially during times of persecution. Read more »

Church Honours Saint Teresa of Avila - Mystic, Writer And Doctor Of The Church

Teresa Cepeda de Ahumada was born in Spain of an affluent family, and as a young woman opted to join the Carmelite order.

The religious orders of the day were lax and indisciplined – and the Carmelites were no exception. So Teresa’s early life as a religious was quite worldly.

“I was so hard hearted,” she was to say in later life, “that I could read the Passion of the Lord and not even shed a tear.” Read more »

Christ The Teacher: Jesus The Strong Man

Those who observed Jesus’s actions of healing saw them as ‘signs’: signs of God’s power.

The poor and the sick praised and thanked God because of this, but the Jewish establishment did not.

The scribes and the Pharisees, the learned people of the day, refused to accept these actions as signs from God, but alleged that Jesus was in league with the devil. Read more »

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