1st Sunday of Lent - Year C

Jeff Bagnall • 25 February 2025

The first reading ( Deuteronomy 26:4-10 ) is about the Jewish spring festival of Unleavened Bread (Matzah), quoting the creedal statement about the past dealings of God with themselves, His people. Their Aramean ancestor was Abram the progenitor of the twelve tribes of Israel; their crop failures took them down to the well-stocked Egypt where Joseph already was; but there they became slaves and only escaped under the leadership of Moses with God’s help. Wandering in the desert they were not too pleased with their God nor He with them, but after a generation (40 years), God brought them into their present (Promised) land. It was here that they could celebrate the first fruits of the harvest again. Their creed about God was not a list of doctrines, but rather about God’s treatment of them over time – His care for His people.

Paul’s letter to the Romans begins with him saying how he loves the Jews, but how they have strayed from their original creed and now seek to gain righteousness by keeping the Law (and lots of other rules); he says: “But now the Law has come to an end with Christ, and everyone who has faith may be justified.” The passage read today ( chapter 10: 8-13 ) follows this; it is about the right relationship that we should have with God, that it comes from God, is not earned by any effort of ours and that it leads to our salvation when we die; it is by faith that we trust in God and his goodness to us. Although Paul quotes the book of Deuteronomy (30:14) he stretches its original meaning, and also when he later quotes Isaiah (28:16); but he finds what he believes about the universality of God’s love in Joel ( 2:32 ).

The Gospel is Luke’s account of the temptations of Jesus ( Luke 4:1-13 ). He has been baptised where a heavenly voice declared him Son of God, but what does this mean and how will it work out – that is where the temptations come in. Will He use His power to satisfy the various hungers of human beings (for easy sustenance, life and prosperity), or will He submit to any evil in order to become the King of kings (ruler of all the nations), or, finally, will He use His protection from God to win people with superficial, miraculous powers? Luke treats the public work of Jesus as a journey towards Jerusalem (and all that happened there), and so he differs from the order of the temptations in Matthew’s gospel to have Jerusalem as the last one and also he implies that Jesus will get tempted further during the rest of His life.

Jeff Bagnall was a lecturer for many years at Craiglockhart College teaching RE to many future Catholic Primary teachers.

7th Sunday of Easter - 2026 - Year A

by Jeff Bagnall • 15 May 2026
Thursday is t he feast of the Ascension . It’s not that Jesus has left this world, but rather that He is everywhere and especially in all other human beings whom we meet! But now to Sunday’s readings —-

6th Sunday of Easter - 2026 - Year A

by Jeff Bagnall • 8 May 2026
The first reading is from the point in Acts where Luke tells of the extension of Christianity beyond the confines of Judea and the limits of the Jewish religion. Christianity is spread by Philip, one of the ‘deacons’ appointed to help the Hellenists in Jerusalem (see last week’s first reading). He goes to the Samaritans, who had become separated from the Jewish faith when they intermarried with non-Jews centuries earlier, and who were despised by the Jews. We have mixed reports about them in the Gospels: Jesus sent the chosen twelve out saying “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans” (Matthew10:2-6); Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25ff); and in John’s Gospel (Chapter 4), Jesus talks with a Samaritan woman and many Samaritans come to believe in him through her testimony. Philip had been commissioned through the laying on of hands by the Apostles specifically to pastor the Hellenists in Jerusalem, but now we see him as a missionary (sometime translated as an evangelist – one who preaches the Good News) to the Samaritans. He is successful Luke tells us, because of his words and the miracles attributed to him; many of them are baptised; we recall that Peter had told the Jews, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is made to you and to your children and to all those far off, whomever the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2:38f). Peter’s words imply that baptism brings the gift of the Holy Spirit and is open to “whomever God will call.” But when the Apostles in Jerusalem hear of this they send Peter and John to lay their hands on the Samaritans for them to receive the Spirit. Behind this we might detect some edginess between the ‘mother’ church’s leaders and the successful evangelist, Philip, though it is not made explicit, for Luke when he was travelling with Paul stayed with Philip at his house in Caesarea (Acts 21:8-10). We learn from this reading about the growth of the Church both as a community of the Spirit and as an organised body (of Christ); the process will always be difficult and is still going on in the worldwide context of the Church to this day – we all play a part in this.
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