RMHealey

Ascension Sunday (Year C) | Eph 1:15-23; Luke 24:46-53; Acts 1:1-11 I had my washed car yesterday – at one of those automatic car washes. When the weather is a bit warmer, I like taking it through the do-it-yourself section, so that I can play with the power hoses! It is amazing the difference that…

It seems good to the Holy Spirit

9 May 2010

Sixth Sunday in Easter (Year C). In Acts 15 we have a quite extraordinary moment in church history. At issue is how a Jewish community, gathered in worship at a Jewish synagogue around a Jewish Messiah, in the midst of a Jewish nation, keeping Jewish festivals and rituals – how does it welcome non Jews…

Everything is spiritual in the city of God

2 May 2010

Fifth Sunday in Easter (Year C). Sometimes we get caught in the idea that there are spiritual moments in our lives (when we are in Church; praying; reading Scripture; listening to music or whenever) and all the rest is just secular and to some extent doesn’t count. But that’s not the story of the Scriptures….

Every nation, tribe, people and tongue

25 April 2010

Fourth Sunday in Easter (Year C) – Commemoration of Anzac Day. In the reading from the book of Revelation, John the Divine has this vision of an immense crowd – impossible to count – of people from every nation, tribe, people and language who have all been through the persecution / tribulation and have had…

Called to follow in the light of the Son

18 April 2010

Easter 3C – John 21 In this final chapter to John’s Gospel – probably written later than the rest of the Gospel – John provides a magnificent summary of the Christian life. He starts with the disciples returning to Galilee and with Peter in the lead, they head back to their old way of life…

Finding mercy and faith in the heart of Jesus

11 April 2010

E2C – Second Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday) In Acts we are given the strange detail that people were bringing their sick to lay them on the streets near where St Peter would walk, knowing that if even his shadow should touch them they might be healed. The power of his amazing shadow! Surely…

Why Resurrection Matters

5 April 2010

http://www.robbell.com/ – Rob Bell presents a great new video on the difference that Resurrection makes and why it matters for us… all in 4 minutes. Well worth a watch! Jesus is standing in front of the temple in Jerusalemthe massive gleaming brick and stone and gold house of Godand he says destroy this templeand I’ll…

What resurrection means for the world (Easter Sunday)

4 April 2010

We celebrate that moment in human history when the stone was rolled away. A sign and symbol of the separation that exists between life and death. A grave-robber had come – but it was God the Father who had acted in human history to defeat death. Death is our greatest fear and worry – human…

Death and new life in Luke (Easter Vigil)

3 April 2010

Luke 24:1-12 Hey! I’ll let you in on a little secret. Are you ready? (whispering) Dead people – well, they usually stay dead. We didn’t need the insights and advances of medical science in the past couple hundred years for humans to know that. The scriptures make it clear that no one who was following…

Namaste – Holy Thursday

1 April 2010

Easter, Season of Growth, Seasons, Year C

Jesus was an endlessly fascinating character and a simply amazing human being. Across his whole life he never failed to love and bring life to the people that he mixed and shared with, as he taught and healed and forgave sins. In more recent years we were inspired by the example of Blessed Teresa of…

Stones and the Cross – Good Friday

1 April 2010

On Good Friday we reflect on the amazing love that was shown by Jesus. Last night we remembered the nature of our call to be a Eucharistic people and to respond to the call of our baptism through lives of service. Today we continue that reflection by remembering our call to be ministers and priests….

Dining and dying with sinners

28 March 2010

Palm Sunday = Passion Sunday (Year C) The criminal on the neighbouring cross cried out – ‘This man has done nothing wrong’. Pilate had a sign attached to the cross above the head Jesus – as was the custom in the Roman Empire, to provide the charge that had been made against the victim of…

Skubala – and knowing Christ

21 March 2010

Week 5 in the Season of Lent (Year C) Paul, the Pharisee, after giving us his impeccable credentials for ministry within Judaism, then goes on to say why all of that – as impressive and amazing as it is – was as nothing compared to knowing the power of the resurrection at work in our…

The lost sons

14 March 2010

The fourth Sunday in Lent (Year C) – Luke 15. We have been pondering during Lent what it means to be in right relationship with God. Today we are reminded in the readings of the desire of God for us to have a full and complete life. We begin with the book of Joshua and…

Encountering the Sacred Tetragrammaton

6 March 2010

Lent – week 3 (Year C) – Exodus 3:1-16 During Lent we travel with specific characters. In the first week we have journeyed into the wilderness with Israel as they pondered their past and looked toward their future in the promised land – and then stayed in the wilderness with Jesus as he spent 40…

Called through a covenant of trust

28 February 2010

Each year on the second Sunday of Lent we are taken from the wilderness temptations to the heights of the mountain top experience in the transfiguration of Jesus. But in Year C the Church combines the transfiguration with the story of the Lord cutting the covenant with Abraham from Genesis 15. We shall see that…

Purification in the desert

21 February 2010

First Sunday in Lent – temptations in the desert. Deut 26; Rom 10; Luke 4 We begin the forty days of Lent by journeying with Moses and Jesus into our shared history, so that we have time away from all the distractions that we so often fill our lives with, to reflect on those questions…

Trusting in the Lord alone

13 February 2010

6th Sunday in the Season of the Year (C) – Jer 17:5-8; ICor 15; Luke 6:17-26. St Valentine’s Day. The question that lies at the heart of our readings today is – where do you place your ultimate trust / faith / hope? Jeremiah rather starkly tells us that if it is in the world…

Grace and call

7 February 2010

Discipleship, Teaching

On this fifth Sunday we hear the call of three central biblical characters – Isaiah, Paul and Simon-Peter. The first reading (from Isaiah 6) and the Gospel (from Luke 5) offer many insights into the nature of biblical Christianity and the primacy of grace in the life of all who are called to be disciples…

Actions and words

31 January 2010

4th Sunday – Season of the Year C. When we were baptised we were Christened – that is, we were anointed with Chrism and the priest prayed, “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has freed you from sin, given you a new birth by water and the Holy Spirit, and welcomed you into…

Finding the right walls

24 January 2010

Third Sunday (Year C). When adults attempt to teach young children how to ride a bike, they sometimes cry out decidedly unhelpful comments like – ‘just keep pedaling’ or ‘ride straight’ or ‘don’t crash into that parked car.’ When we think back on our first attempts at riding a bike, we may have very vivid…

Water and wine transformed

16 January 2010

Second Sunday (Year C) – John 2 captures the prophetic sense of the new life that is missing from the experience of Israel’s life. The 6 stone water jars represent the very best of life that humans can accomplish. What is missing is the joy and vitality of life – and that is why Mary…

The grace of baptism

10 January 2010

The Baptism of the Lord (Year C): Luke 3; Titus 2:11-14,3:4-7 As we finish the Christmas season and then start a new year, it is natural that we should look ahead. Our second reading today provides a brilliant way of doing this. Paul writes to his co-worker Titus, who is on the island of Crete…

A new kind of king

2 January 2010