First Sunday of Advent 2015 (Luke 21: 25-28, 34-36)

Happy New (church) Year! Today is the First Sunday of Advent and we begin the season of ‘waiting’. 

The Gospel today has powerful (and perhaps distressing) images of great signs that will appear. For many of us this year we saw lots of signs that Christmas was coming, even as far back as September, which is more distressing than any of the images in the Gospel today. Some people love that feeling of expectancy, of waiting for someone or something to arrive. It can be quite an exciting time or even one of anxiety. Very often we are on high alert during such a time, and often quite creative. We are asked to enter into the season of preparation, to celebrate God in our lives and in our world. It is a season of great joy and of hope and while waiting is not always seen as a good thing, it can be an interesting time of growth. So, what will our preparations be like? In the middle of the crazy, busy days in the run up to Christmas, can we stop and invite God into our hearts and lives once more?

“As with madness we prepare for this festive time of year, as we rush and count the days, Advent passes in a haze, So may our feet take us to places where we will meet You” (Janet Lees)

Sunday November 22nd ~ Christ the King

The Feast of Christ the King is the final Sunday in the liturgical calendar. In the Gospel today, Pilate is concerned with what type of King Jesus is and what kind of Kingdom he is talking about? To understand what type of kingship Jesus is talking about we need to lay aside a lot of the cultural baggage that we have about Kings and Kingdoms. There are no palaces, no pomp and ceremony involved here. Jesus’ Kingdom is concerned with justice for the weak and the oppressed.

At our baptism we were each anointed as ‘priest, prophet and king’ and therefore we share in this kingship that Pilate is wondering about. We are called to show the world that Jesus’s followers are concerned with love and service of others; that Jesus’ Kingdom is built on a different kind of foundation. With so much brokenness in the world we are called to transformative service. There are no shortage of causes: the refugee crisis; homelessness; climate justice…

At the end of this month, world leaders gather in Paris at ‘COP21’ to try to come to a universal agreement on addressing climate change. We pray that the ‘Kings’ and ‘Presidents’ of this world take strong action to protect our planet. “We pray for the representatives of the nations meeting in Paris, and in every government everywhere—and all business leaders and consumers—that we will see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. (LS 12)” #pray4cop21 

Sunday 15th November 2015 ~ Mk 13:24-32

Next week we come to the end of the Church’s liturgical year and therefore on this Sunday the readings traditionally speak about the end of the world and the final coming of Jesus. There is a lot of symbolic language in today’s Gospel, some of it which may distress us. The opening verses tell us of great destruction of things that we know we cannot survive without – the sun, the moon. The Gospel goes on to speak about the gathering of a great community. People in Jesus’s time believed that the end would come in their life-time. Jesus says that no one will know when this is to happen and that it is not for us to worry about. What we should be concerned about is how to live every day in God’s love and service.

Today, we might recall times where we thought our worlds had ended because we lost something so important to us or we were suffering in some way. During that time it may have seemed like nothing would be the same again, but it was temporary; a new or different way of life was opened up to us as a result. The parable of the fig tree in the middle of this Gospel speaks to us about life and hope. In the midst of winter a small sign of hope was there even though we may not have seen it. 

‘When you see these things taking place, you know that he is near.’ (Mark 13:29)

Sunday November 8th 2015 ~ The Widow's Mite

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is courageously speaking out against the hypocrisy of the so-called ‘religious’ of his time. This passage is encouraging all his followers to engage in a reality check. The hypocrisy of the scribes is in total contrast to the humility and generosity of the widow in the second part of the Gospel. She gives not of what she has to spare, but everything she has. She is free. We don’t have to restrict this example to money either.  

At the end of this month, a vitally important meeting is taking place in Paris called COP21. World leaders will gather to try to settle on a universal agreement on climate change action. It is a hugely difficult task, one that has not been achieved before. We are asked to pray and to continue to put pressure on our governments to take real action on climate change. The widow gave her all in the Gospel today and we are challenged to model her behaviour rather than the behaviour of the ‘elite’ of the opening verses. 

You can join the march on November 29th @ 2pm @ The Custom's House, Dublin, to make your voice heard on climate justice. Encourage our leaders to make a strong stand at COP21 in Paris this Nov/Dec.





“The idea of infinite or unlimited growth... is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth's goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry at every limit. Yet all is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst, are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again what is good, and making a new start." (Pope Francis ~ Laudato Si)

All Saints Day ~ Matthew 5:1-12.

Today we celebrate All Saint’s Day and to celebrate this feast the Gospel we read is The Beatitudes. It is an interesting passage to spend time with. Jesus is not moralising in this text, he is not telling us what to do. He is stating facts and we are invited into each Beatitude and given space to draw our own conclusions. The Beatitudes may shock us, but they force us to think and to ponder the paradox in each statement. There is much human experience within each one and as you read them you may recognise your local or ‘urban saints’.

This week can you spend time with each beatitude? There are seven so one per day is totally doable. Who are the peacemakers around you? Who are those who are persecuted? Who is mourning? The beatitudes call us to live life more fully, to see all as connected. Saints are all around us, pointing the way for us, teaching us something about God through their lives. They persevere in all they do for their families and communities, especially those on the margins. They are the blessed ones.

“Saints make our hypocrisy so apparent that we want to change our lives – not because of guilt but because we want to be alive, we want to be more like Jesus…[they] leave us the scent of God, the aroma of Christ. In God’s flirting with humanity, God occasionally drops a handkerchief – and these handkerchiefs are called saints” (Shane Claiborne).