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November 03, 2026

4 November 2026 Unlike St. Mark’s Gospel which begins with the ministry of Jesus and St. Luke’s Gospel which begins with the birth of Jesus, St. Matthew’s Gospel begins much further back with the roots of Jesus. This is spelled out in his genealogy which isn’t traced through the line of his mother, Mary, but through her husband, Joseph. He is a direct descendent of David. On several occasions, Jesus is described by St. Matthew as the Son of David. This is important because his gospel is the most Jewish of the four. Jesus is the new Moses. He doesn’t climb Mount Sinai to fetch the Ten Commandments but on another mountain, he teaches his friends a new law and gives them eight Beatitudes, disclosing the secret of a true happiness. ‘You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, but I say to you …’ And Jesus gives us a new law about turning the other cheek, going the extra mile. ‘You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbou...

November 02, 2026

3 November 2026 Papias started it! He was a bishop in the second century. He said that St. Matthew collected the words of Jesus and made a book about them. St. Irenaeus followed. And with him Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian … All the Church Fathers ascribed the edition of the first gospel text to St. Matthew, the apostle. However, there is no evidence within the gospel itself to suggest that Matthew wrote it. His name is associated with the tax-collector who is called by Jesus to be one of his disciples. In St. Mark’s Gospel and in St. Luke’s Gospel, the tax-collector is called Levi. Furthermore, the most ancient manuscripts don’t have a title nor a title page referring the text to St. Matthew. The authorship of this gospel remains a mystery but the point and purpose of the gospel does not. We aren’t drawn to the gospel because it was written by St. Matthew nor anyone else but because it introduces us to Jesus, the Divine Man. This is the traditional symbol for St...

November 01, 2026

2 November 2026 Georges Lemaitre was born on 17 July 1894 in Charleroi, Belgium. He grew up to be both a Roman Catholic priest and a scientist. Although he didn’t coin the phrase ‘Big Bang’, he was responsible for developing the theory of the origins of the universe. It grew out of his observation that the universe was expanding. If it was expanding then at some point it must have been very small indeed. He posited the idea that it started with a single atom but this has since been developed differently. With the primeval explosion which created the universe, he argued that there must be cosmic background radiation resulting from the Big Bang. Thirty years later, the radiation was observed by American physicists, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias in 1965. Lemaitre heard of this result shortly before he died. For Lemaitre, there was so issue arising from his work as a priest and his work as a scientist. He saw that those who were involved in religion and science were...

October 31, 2026

1 November 2026 – All Saints Run with perseverance 'the race that is set before us looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.' Looking to Jesus – that’s our number one for he is our pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He has given us direction but he is more than a pioneer. He is also the perfecter of our faith. He is the one who fulfils our work and makes it whole so that all things in heaven and on earth may cohere in him. Whenever I read this text, I think of two saints. The first is Eric Liddell and the race which he did not run and the race which he did run at the Paris Olympics in 1924 responding to the text scribbled on a piece of paper by one of his staff. ‘He who honours the Father, him will the Father honour.’ The second is Betsie ten Boom who, unlike her sister, Corrie, died in the conc...

October 30, 2026

31 October 2026 I have never been a prison chaplain but I admire what they do. In the recent series of ‘Time’, we see the work of the chaplain to a young offenders’ institution. She is a Roman Catholic nun played by Siobhan Finneran. She is the one who looks at what is happening with compassion and brings peace in her wake. The Revd. Canon Helen Dearnley is a real life prison chaplain who was featured in the recent issue of ‘Word in Action’, publication issued by the Bible Society. She ’supports and equips Anglican chaplains in all 123 prisons in England and Wales’. She was conducting an act of worship in the prison chapel when she noticed Michael. Her heart sank. He had been released three months before. She knew him well because he had been a regular member of the Bible Study and a regular attender at worship. She wondered why he was back in the prison. ‘ I believed you would make good.’ she said hardly able to hide her disappointment. ‘I learnt in this chapel th...

October 29, 2026

30 October 2026 Donald Trump, the unpredictable and aggressive President of the United States, is surely looking forward to confirmatory signs in the mid-term elections which are scheduled for 3 November. He has been trying to shift responsibility for recent American ills onto others not least the President of Ukraine. Since the start of his second term in office, monitored approval ratings have fallen across the adult population in the United States – and it’s no wonder. In a recent poll undertaken by the Pew Research Centre, the fall in approval ratings is evident in all religious groups. For example, across the Roman Catholic population, Trump’s approval rating has fallen from 47% at the start of his second term to a staggering 30% in October. Interestingly, there is a distinction between white Catholics and Hispanic Catholics as reported in ‘The Tablet’. 50% of white Catholics said that they would vote for the Republican candidate in the mid-term elections and 32% sai...