7th Sunday of Easter - Year C

Jeff Bagnall • 20 May 2025

The first reading ( Acts 7:55-60 ) is Luke’s ending of the story of Stephen the first martyr in his story of the beginning of Christianity. In chapter 6 he tells how the community of Christians in Jerusalem were. asked to choose seven helpers for the work of serving and extending the number of believers. Luke then tells of Stephen who was one of the seven chosen by the people and commissioned by the apostles. But it was not long before his preaching was opposed by some of the Jews accusing him of defaming holy Jewish leaders of the past etc. Stephen is tried and sentenced to death. Luke has him deliver a long speech and we listen to its ending in our reading. He fogives those opposed to him and Luke tells us that a young lad was guarding the clothes of those who stoned him to death – this was Saul better known later as Paul and by us as Saint Paul.

The second reading is extracts from the last chapter of the book of Revelations ( 22:12-20 ) omitting verses 15,18 and 19. The writer has described the Glorious Future – the fullfilment of God’s plan for creation with the imagery of a New Jerusalem. He uses ideas from the literature and hopes of the people of Israel found in what Christians call the Old Testament. The future will be a home for all nations like a New Jerusalem described here as a bride – it’s like a wedding feast that is coming soon (they thought). it finishes with the prayer preserved in the very language of the early Jewish followers – maranatha – which is used sometimes in Christian worship in our own time; it can mean “Come Lord!” or “the Lord has come.”

In John’s gospel, a number of chapters are used to express what Jesus would pray for to His Father while still in this world but leading up to his final moments. Some think that because the period leading up to what we call Easter differed in length depending on the lunar calendar, different passages of this long section provided the readings for the liturgy that they had at that time. Today ( 17:20-26 ) it culminates with a prayer expressing Jesus’ great desire for the unity of all followers; and this was a unity with each other, but brought about by the more important unity of believers within the very life of God, addressed by Jesus as Father. The characteristic of this unity can best be expressed as love.

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

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2025 - Year C

by Jeff Bagnall • 25 September 2025
This is the only time on Sundays that we have a reading from Habakkuk. He was a prophet perhaps around the 7 th century BC, when the people were troubled by the surrounding more powerful nations. Of the three chapters in the book, we have a few verses from each of the first two ( 1:2-3, 2:2-4 ). At first the prophet expresses the heartfelt cry of the people, “How long, O Lord” is all this going on; a feeling common among most peoples at some time or other throughout all periods of human history, especially where there is an idea of a caring deity of some kind. The phrase is also used often in the psalms . But in the verses from chapter 2 that are added into our reading, we hear that God does have a vision of the future – sometime – and so we must hang on and remain loyal because, as it ends, “the upright man lives by his faith;” and this phrase is taken up in St Paul’s way of thinking and in later Christian teaching, where the word ‘faith’ is not just ‘loyalty’ but trusting in Christ and in Christ’s way of selfless service of others. In 1947 an ancient commentary on this book was found in a cave in the Dead Sea area ( see the video ), it referred the troubles to the invasion of the Romans into their land,

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2025 - Year C

by Jeff Bagnall • 18 September 2025
The first reading is from a section of the book of Amos ( 6:4-10 ); it is introduced with the opening words of the chapter: “alas for those who are at ease in Zion.” Strong words against the city dwellers come from Amos, the country fellow – words and woes against the northern kingdom of Israel. We hear the third and last woe against the excessive luxury in which they are living although their prosperity is declining visibly; they seem to live for the moment and care little of the future, even their own. They are, unusually, referred to as a group under the eponymous name of Joseph; this could be because of the account of Joseph’s interpretation of the Pharaoh’s dream (Exodus 41) of seven years of plenty followed by seven of crop failure, and his wise management under the Pharaoh of storing up supplies for the future. The exile that will come will be the disaster that follows this decadence. In the second reading ( 1 Timothy 6:11-16 ) Timothy is addressed as a ‘man of God.’ Unlike the people of the first reading and in contrast to those addressed in this letter just before this section, Timothy is chosen and enabled by God to be a minister in the Christian community. Paul’s athletic imagery appears here also, saying “compete well,” that is, ‘run the race’ or ‘fight the good fight.’ The Christian at baptism made confession that “Jesus is Lord”, and Jesus made a similar confession before Pilate according to John’s gospel (18:37); Timothy was baptised but was also a leader in some way, and that meant not to be a covert Christian but to speak the truth even before accusers, as Jesus did before Pilate; the writer could be referring to either of these situations. The requirement to keep the commandments or ordinances is most likely not to the ten commandments of the Jewish religion but to the requirements of being a Christian or, more likely, the specific orders for acting as a minister. He must act as a servant of the King who will eventually appear, and he must be selfless in his work towards the kingdom of God. In today’s gospel reading from Luke ( 16:19-31 ) we have the parable often call that of Dives and Lazarus; but ‘dives’ is just the Latin word for rich man. In many ways the story is straightforward once we accept the different understanding of the afterlife that it portrays. However, whereas the rich man is anonymous, the beggar at his gate is named Lazarus. Luke is writing about 40 years after the resurrection of Jesus but still there are people who aren’t believers; and John’s gospel, uniquely, has the story of the raising of Lazarus which Luke’s readers may have known; but Luke’s point is not about accepting the truth of the resurrection, of Jesus or of Lazarus, because believing is more a way of living than accepting facts – of loving God and your neighbour as yourself, which the rich man in the parable didn’t do.
Show More