One of the things in which I have recently taken an interest in my own life of prayer are the questions that we discover in the texts of the Gospel.  It is quite a fascinating exercise to go through the texts and identify the questions that are posed in them.  I have come to recognise that they have great significance and indeed establish the scaffolding, if you like, of our discipleship of Jesus.   One of the most important questions that we come across is the haunting question at the heart of this account we here today: “Who is my neighbour?”  it is a question which is meant to take hold of us, and…

One of the interesting things we have discovered about the famous walk of the Camino de Santiago was that the route of pilgrimage, itself, predates the journey St. James, himself, took in the 1st century.  Scholars now think that St. James went to the region of Compostella because he knew of an existing route of pilgrimage there and thought that because the route already represented people searching for something those on the way may be opened to his message of the Good News.   In fact, in the ancient world, before St. James, the destination was a place on the Spanish coast, a place that is now marked as Fisterra, some…

Some years ago, I was very fortunate to be on the island of Patmos, one of the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey.  Patmos is an island associated with the apostle John.  He was exiled there during the Diocletian Persecution at the end of the 1st century, and it is held that there on the island he wrote the final book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation.  In one of the monasteries on the island, however, is the most extraordinary museum with the most priceless religious treasures from antiquity. One of the artefacts that particularly attracted my attention in the museum was an…

Celebrating a wedding. It’s always a happy occasion, and one full of expectation! Indeed, every wedding brings before us something for which we all long: the simplicity of falling in love, the promise of exchanging a commitment to each other, the hope of beginning a life together. the midst of all the other troubles and uncertainties we experience in the celebration something with all the promise of being good, true and beautiful. And it fascinates us. Somehow it brings us home to ourselves. For many, their wedding is not the first time that they have exchanged a commitment to another person.  But at wedding there is every hope that this time the commitment will work.…

Imagine for a little while a moment in your life which was full of possibility.  Maybe it was when we first started school, or started work, or left home.  Perhaps it was a moment of commitment such as when we got married, or at the birth of our children.  A moment rich in possibility, full of promise!  Can we remember how there was no certainty about the future at that time, but somehow there was a sense that this what life was about?  All of life up to this point somehow seemed to come together and open out into the future.  And the something new was full of promise. Our celebration of the outpouring of the…

We are often used to saying, “distance makes the heart grow fonder.”  Sometimes, though, we are not so sure.  We know how long-distance friendships or relationships suffer for lack of contact, it seems that the saying is true only when actually come into contact with each other from time to time, or when we are constantly reminded of the one we love.  Then, the separation we experience with someone we love does act to deepen our love.  This is why the photos of those we love but who have died become so important to us.  Our constant reminder of them through these symbols means that our love does not extinguish but that, in fact, our…

Last Sunday, the fourth week of Easter, the Church’s liturgy explored the life of the Risen Christ through the imagery of shepherding.  Through this image of shepherding the Gospel of John develops the inter-relationship between the life of Jesus and our own lives.  The image speaks of the particular bond by which we have both our identity and our direction.  It is through this bond, and through this bonding, that we experience the life of the Risen Christ.  The bonds that unite us therefore are not incidental to our Easter experience; they are one of the primary means by which we touch the life of the Risen Christ How does…

Over these Sundays of Easter, we are introduced to the great post- Resurrection accounts, the stories of the way in which the life of Jesus becomes manifest to the first disciples.  These stories, of course, cannot be read in the same way that we might read a modern newspaper account of something that happened yesterday.  The gospels are not written from a modern sensibility.  Rather, the stories are complex theological reflections, in story form, on what the Risen life of Jesus means, and how we experience the reality that Jesus lives.  Each of the stories, including the one we have heard today, is an invitation extended to us, to wonder anew, and more deeply,…

Last weekend we celebrated how the life of Jesus has burst forth, no longer constrained by the fetters of death.  And we suggested that at the heart of this experience lay a question. On the first day of the week the women come to the tomb looking for something.  And there in the empty tomb, where they do not find what they are looking for, a proclamation re-orients and transforms, not only their own search, but indeed the human search itself.  The question with which they are greeted is simply, “Why look among the dead for someone who is alive? Just as discipleship of Jesus begins with hearing a question, “What are you…