Palm Sunday - Year C - 2025

Jeff Bagnall • 11 April 2025

In the first reading ( Isaiah 50:4-7 ) the prophet is lyrical about his own experience, He has faithfully heeded and delivered God’s word, but it is met with rejection and physical abuse,. Yet he has faith that all will be well in the end. His words are easily applied to Jesus’ life and are appropriate at this season of the Liturgical year. Because God is ‘a stable character’ people are treated in basically the same way by Him in whatever century, though differently according to their circumstances and response; in this way the suffering but faithful life of a past individual, like Isaiah, can be seen as a foretelling of how God deals especially in His Incarnate Son, Jesus, but also with us in our corporate and individual lives. The responsorial psalm shows the same pattern and personal anguish and hope.

The second reading ( Philippians 2:6-11 ) is part of a hymn expressing Christian belief about the Divinity of Jesus. It is difficult to translate the words used to describe this enormous mystery. So the phrase “being in the form of God” (King James Version) is quite a literal translation of the original Greek, but our understanding of the Incarnation is better expressed as “His state was divine”( Jerusalem Bible); it is interesting to look at various translations of this opening phrase. The hymn that this reading is part of, goes on to say that Christ took on human life and became like us; and this meant he was involved in and effected by all the messiness of human life and all the struggles and temptations it brings. But, as He held firm to his calling by the Father in the face of enormous difficulties, so we could expect to be elevated to be with God in glory if we hold to our call as Christians through the difficulties of our lives.

The Passion narrative in Matthew ( selected from chapters 26f ), generally follows that of Mark.  In recent decades the Catholic Church has emphasised the resurrection and the element of joy and glory more than the trials that led up to it. Yet as well as this great message of hope and new life, it is almost reassuring to know that what leads to this is a life dedicated to the good of others and of the world, and this means a life subject to great disappointment and, for many, much suffering both emotional, psychological and physical. With this in mind we follow the story of the completion of Jesus’ life. Passion is not just suffering, Donald Senior points out, that passion is also a great enthusiasm for something you believe in – so each of us can consider, what is my passion?

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

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.

25th Sunday In Ordinary Time - 2025 - Year C

by Jeff Bagnall • 11 September 2025
The Sunday readings only use the prophet Amos three times; this and next Sunday are two of those. Amos was a country man used to living a simple life: a herdsman tending sycamore trees. Somehow he came to be a prophet of God in the city of Bethel, though he wouldn’t claim the title of prophet and was different from most of them. Such a man coming from the country to the big and prosperous city just had to speak what he thought in order to deliver a ‘scolding’ from the Lord, for the hiking of prices, lowering of measures and fixing of scales (Amos 8:4-7). His natural reactions to the corruption that he saw is described as visions from God, and they are nearly always expressed with an impressive literary style: matching couplets and triplets. Yet it is the language of wrath and condemnation, though elsewhere Amos does tell of a remnant few who will be spared and at the end of the book there is a very positive prophecy though this ‘epilogue’ may have been added later to end on an upbeat note of hopefulness.
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