John the Baptist comes not simply to know Jesus – He knows He is the Messiah – but to know what that means, to know something more of the depths of that mystery of who He actually is; to be initiated further into that knowledge that Jesus says is the essence of the eternal life. [...]
Mark 1:29-39 shows us the organic rhythms that underpinned the life of Jesus and those that should underpin our own lives also. Jesus begins by visiting His friends, but His sociability very quickly turns into ministry, as He heals first Peter’s mother-in-law, then the sick from around the neighbourhood, and also delivers those possessed by [...]
Matthew 3: 13-17 recounts the episode of Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan at the hands of his cousin John the Baptist. How strange are the paths of the Lord! Behold John, six months the elder of Jesus, sent before Him to make straight His paths, whose sandals he was not fit to loose, now performing [...]
This is how the rich pursue God: self-sufficiently, driven on by the conquest of curiosity, inevitably instrumentalizing the knowledge they seem to acquire for their own self-satisfaction. The poor of the Lord, however, must take another path: the path of the wise men. Matthew 2: 1-12 gives us the only narrative in the gospels of [...]
Come out of the shadow of death, out of the darkness of sin, to take our place beside Zechariah, Joseph, and John the Baptist, and cast our eyes on the grace-filled sunrise which begins now in the crooked crib of a newborn babe. Luke 1: 67-79 is a moment of prophetic insight and praise, as [...]
When Joseph obeyed the command of the angel in his dream, he was following a long tradition of obedience to God’s messengers. He could not, like Mary, reverse the disobedience of our first parents by his simple consent to God’s plan. Today’s gospel (Matthew 1: 18-24) relates the circumstances in which Joseph considered “putting Mary [...]
The genealogy of Jesus, so strange upon our ear, is no excursion into mere curiosity or arcane trivia. It is the unfolding and making known of the tale of God’s mercies down the centuries, told out in the lives of the many most of whose names are known to God alone and who lie in [...]
How, we wonder, can we know the lightness of His burden and the easiness of His yoke? Unless we are gifted by some special grace, this is not the work of one day or one night. We must surrender to the divine pedagogy, to the training that He offers us every day. Matthew 11: 28-30 [...]
If our ears are to be opened to the good news to come, we need to shed the lies with which we comfort ourselves and face our worse selves, only to bring them to the healing touch of Christ. He is the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. He is the [...]
Follow me, Christ says; and wherever the Master goes, there must the disciple follow. Mark 16:15-20 gives us the last scene in the gospel of St Mark, setting out Jesus’ final command to the apostles to preach the gospel, and promising that their work would be accompanied by miracles and signs. Then the Lord is [...]