Rev elations

Then Jesus cried aloud:  'Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me'. This reading presents to us the inter-dependence of the Father and the Son. Glory as I reflected in my last post, is what God does for us in love and here Jesus tells us what he does for us is on behalf of the Father: they work together, not alone. Jesus is a reflection of the Father, if we see Him we see the Father. Devotion to Jesus – looking upon Him through icons, through reading Scripture, in worship, in sharing in the Eucharist draws us into relationship with the Father, because through Jesus we see the Father. Sacraments exist because Jesus tells us that if we look on Him we see the Father ––sacraments always refer to Christ – to his action in the world, and they enable us to enter fully into the relationship that exists between the Father and the Son. I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them,  for...

Just a few days before he was murdered, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, offered these words of faith and affirmation: “My life has been threatened many times. I have to confess that as a Christian, I don’t believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.” Romero died loving his enemies. “You can tell people, if they succeed in killing me that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully they will realise that they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the Church of God, which is the people, will go on.”   ( The Tablet) Christian belief and faith is hope incarnate – dying Jesus conquers death. There is nothing that can destroy a Christian, because death the ultimate end, leads to only  greater fullness of life: indeed death itself is instrumental , sacramental in the Christian spiritual journey: ‘unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies...

John 12:1-11 (see at end of text) As the passion of Christ gets closer and closer there is an intensification of emotion, of love but also of danger and threat. The first thing to note is that Judas is close to Jesus; he is intimate with Jesus too, like Mary and Martha; a disciple, who shares his table. He is also someone who takes on responsibility within the group, he keeps the common purse. So whilst there are attackers on the outside, waiting to kill Jesus and Lazarus too, on the inside, around the common table is the greater threat – the betrayer. The second thing to note is how evil intent is shrouded with the veneer of good intentions: ‘why was this perfume not sold and given to the poor?’ Less we imagine that evil is ugly and blatant, let us remember that the great deceiver is cunning and charming, covering his tracks with a kiss, here with a feigned care of the poor. Jesus is not in any way living in a bubble of love and  coziness ; he is living in the mid...