Blog on the Learig

  6 November 2026 The teaching of Jesus as recorded by Matthew is unforgettable. ‘The keys if the Kingdom’ are his and his alone. The primacy afforded to Peter and the foundation of the Church upon this rock is to be found nowhere else in the Scriptures. And yet, has there been a more powerful and divisive text in the whole of Christendom? ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ These are beautiful, unforgettable words spoken by Jesus as a fitting prelude to his wisdom about the futility of discontent and worry. And, of the all the words which we remember from the gospels, the comfortable words of Jesus must surely rate very highly. Our gospels would certainly be the poorer and our hearts the more troubled if we couldn’t open the pages of St. Matthew’s Gospel and read the last verses of Chapter 11. Is there any more fitting conclusion to a chapter, a sermon,...

  5 November 2026 The Jesus which Matthew introduces us to is primarily a teacher. In between the Incarnation and the Resurrection, there are five important discourses all introduced by some biographical information and all concluded with the words, ‘And when Jesus had finished ..’ The five discourses are really collections of sayings which the author has gathered together on particular themes. The first is the most famous. We call it ‘The Sermon on the Mount’ and it contains the Beatitudes, the new law, teaching about a true spirituality. The last is equally familiar. It has to do with the time to come – the second advent and the judgement of God. It contains the famous parables of the Ten Virgins, the Talents and the Sheep and the Goats. The followers of Jesus are always described as ‘disciples’ which literally means ‘pupils’. Whereas the disciples of the rabbis eventually graduated and completed their role as disciple, this isn’t true for the followers of Jesus. Right at t...

  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...

  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...

    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...

  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...