Spirituality Articles
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LENT: Season of Grace
The following Lent Reflection comes from the Columban Director in Britain, Tom O’Reilly SSC. Ideas for Reflection and Action during Lent are given at the end.
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Welcoming the ‘Son of Man’
The truly amazing thing about the birth of Jesus Christ, called the Messiah, Son of David, Son of Man, Son of God, Saviour, Teacher, Rabbi, Master, healer, as he is named throughout the gospels, is that he never claimed those titles for himself other than the simplest thing of all, “Son of Man” which means “ordinary human being”. He used it 70 times of himself as written in all the four gospels.
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A Christmas Memory
The child of the fisherman was clutching her pink doll on Christmas day. We looked at each other across the estuary. The waters divided us. I was a stranger new to the country. Her look was one of loss and of being, forlorn.
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The Year of Mark, #1 Mark’s Gospel as Transforming Story
We have begun the Year of Mark in the Church’s liturgy. The Gospel of Mark is the shortest canonical gospel and it can be read from start to finish in a relatively short time. In doing this, one can sense that Mark’s Gospel is a developing story which draws us into the flow of events and the continuing struggle of people to understand who Jesus is and what following him means. We can easily miss this when we hear the Gospel piecemeal in the liturgy.
Fr Tom O’Reilly SSC offers six short articles (to be read in sequence) which may help us in keeping the unfolding plot in view as we hear the individual passages. Some suggestions are made about the relevance of Mark’s message for Christian discipleship and mission today.
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The Year of Mark, #2 Galilean Ministry in Mark: Who is Jesus?
The first part of Mark’s story (1:1-8:30) moves rapidly and has Jesus on mission in and around Galilee. Peter’s confession of Jesus as the expected Messiah (8:27-30) comes near the end of this Galilean ministry and is the turning point for a new direction in the story, when the focus shifts to Jesus’ suffering and death in Jerusalem. The two basic questions to keep in mind in reading the first part of the story are: Who is Jesus and what is he about? How are people responding to him? In this instalment we focus on the Markan Jesus’ identity and mission, as seen in the Galilean ministry, and leave the matter of various responses to him till the next instalment.
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The Year of Mark, #3 Galilean Ministry in Mark: How are People responding to Jesus?
In the last instalment we looked at the identity and mission of Jesus in the drama of the Galilean ministry up to Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah (Mk 8:29). Now we focus attention on the various responses to Jesus in that part of Mark’s story. We do this, not as detached spectators, but as participants seeking our place in the unfolding drama.
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The Year of Mark, #4 Mark’s Gospel: From Galilee to Jerusalem
In this instalment we follow the major developments in Mark’s story from Peter’s confession of Jesus as Messiah in Caesarea Philippi (8:27-30) to the beginning of Jesus’ passion in Jerusalem (14:1). We first focus on Jesus as he finishes his ministry in Galilee and moves towards Jerusalem with his disciples (8:31-10:52), and then glance at what is happening in his ministry in Jerusalem (11:1-13:37).
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The Year of Mark, #5 Mark’s Passion Narrative
On Palm Sunday this year we hear Mark’s passion narrative and on Good Friday we hear that of John. The two are very different, particularly in the way they present Jesus. Compare, for instance, John’s all-knowing and commanding Jesus in the garden (Jn 18:1-11) with Mark’s distressed and struggling Jesus in the same scene (Mk 14:32-42). We must read Mark’s passion narrative on its own terms, not allowing the emphases of other passion narratives to blunt the impact of Mark’s stark and dark picture. The suspense that has been building up in Mark’s story is now moving towards resolution. The rapid pace of the earlier narrative now slows down to an hour-by-hour account of Jesus’ suffering and death. Mark does not want us to rush over his story of the passion (14:1-15:47).
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The Year of Mark, #6 Resurrection in Mark’s Gospel
Mark begins his story by saying he is relating the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (1:1). But where does Mark end his story? The vast majority of interpreters say that the original ending of his story comes at 16:8, when the women left the empty tomb in fear and said nothing to anyone, even though they had been commissioned to tell the disciples that Jesus would meet them in Galilee. The longer ending (16:9-20) differs in language and style from the body of the Gospel and is not found in significant manuscripts. This early second century addition, which is part of our canonical Gospel, most probably came from a scribe who felt that Mark’s Gospel needed some account of appearances of the Risen Lord, which he supplied by taking information from the other Gospels.
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The Lord of the Manger
For the past ten years I have been working in a livelihood project with a group of Subanen artisans. Every year we design Christmas cards that simultaneously celebrate the story of God’s Creation and the story of God’s Incarnation. This year the Subanen artisans are carefully crafting images of Jesus in the manger within five ever-expanding settings from the tiny stable in Bethlehem to the vast heart of our spiraling Galaxy. While they craft cards, I have the task of crafting a reflection – with a lot of help from St Francis – about the meaning of their cards.
