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.

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

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2026 - Year A

by Jeff Bagnall • 30 September 2026

In the first reading we have a very good illustration of a successful approach to delivering bad news when you are a prophet and that is your job. The book of Isaiah has been heavily edited, and our reading from chapter 5 is very likely the first public appearance of the prophet. If you want the crowd to listen to you, you don’t want to be known as a prophet of doom. So Isaiah draws a crowd by saying he is going to sing a song, like a street busker setting up his spot. It’s a song, he says, about his friend; it’s told as though it is about a man setting up a new vineyard, but it is really about unrequited love. He did everything one should for the vineyard to be successful, but it just produced (literally) stinking grapes. The friend then questions the crowd: “is there anything more I could have done?” And he tells them he is going to completely wreck the area and make it a wasteland. Then, when the crowd has grown and is listening intently, like a punch-line the prophet announces: “this song is about the Lord and you Israel!” The image of the vineyard became quite popular in the sayings of prophets and even among the people themselves; one of their hymns is the psalm that follows the reading for today.

25th Sunday In Ordinary Time - 2026 - Year A

by Jeff Bagnall • 18 September 2026

The first reading is part of a heart-warming poem. It was written about the time that the people were going to be released from captivity by a friendly emperor, Cyrus. It attributes this release to the love of God, who has a special relationship of love for people, a relationship traditionally called a covenant. It is a two-way agreement: God will look after the people, and the people will live in a way pleasing to God. But the agreement is not conditional; it is not like God saying ‘if you keep my commandments I will be your protector and god;’ it is unconditional on God’s side: ‘I will be your God, so you will be my people however you respond to me.’ In the part of the poem we read today, the prophet is announcing to the people, God’s call to them; it is a call to give up any wickedness and turn their lives towards Him. But the prophet is also emphasising that God’s ways are mysterious, for He does not depend on the people behaving well for Him to love them and to be their God; there is no way they can deserve or merit God’s love, it is generous, free and everlasting. The extract is chosen for this contrast between God’s ways and ours, an idea taken up in the Gospel reading for today.