Peter Blog a few random thoughts

When I was a cub scout many years ago we would every year go to the local Anglican Church for Church parade. You always felt by our local parish priest that even though we had done nothing wrong that he frond upon it. One of the problems with some in the Catholic Church is that we have all the answers and other Christian denominations have nothing to offer. This was one of the problems that the disciples were facing in today’s Gospel. They had great problems with anyone else. They refused to recognize the authority of an exorcist who does not belong to their company. “Master we saw a man who is not one of us casting out devils in your name; and because he is one of us we tried to stop him.” He had been successful in his ministry where earlier on in Mark the disciples tried to cure the man from a spirit of dumbness. The father appeals to Jesus saying “I asked your disciples to cast it out but they were unsuccessful” The disciples were threatened by another person’s success...

We can split up the Gospel of Mark into two sections. The first up to the event that we heard about in last week’s Gospel when Jesus asks “Who do people say I am” and we get that great profession of faith from Peter “You are the Christ.” The second half of the Gospel is of Jesus and his disciple’s journey to Jerusalem. There is also a journey of discovery of what the disciple’s role was with Jesus. And so we get the question from the sons of Zebedee about who is the greatest. (The revelling of who the disciples are does not appear in Mark’s Gospel) This wanting to be the greatest comes from Greed and prestige: Inflating ourselves so that we are greater than anyone else. This is not then just a 21 st Century problem. St James points out where this worldly value actually comes from. “You want something and you haven’t got it; so you are prepared to kill.” But how do we kill? We do it by many different ways, by our fight for power and prestige our jealously over position and ...

One of the most fundamental questions that we ask ourselves is “Who am I” And there are many different answers to this question. I suppose that we try to answer this question in many different ways. We may look to others to answer it for us. Our job or role we play in society may help us to answer it. Our friends and family also may help us by what they tell us and how they act around us. But at the end of it all we may still be asking the question that Jesus asks his disciples in today’s Gospel “Who do people say I am?” And for most of the time we are unable to answer it successfully. There are in life so many different things that define us that we need sometimes to be striped back to discover who we really are and what really matters. It is not a simple answer and in many respects it takes a life time to discover the real you. Rather than getting more complicated than I am already getting I would like to reflect on one aspect of who we are that affects us all. One thin...

After my break away you may be pleased to know that I am back and here is my Blog for the next week.  There are a few things that strike me today in the Gospel and one is the word “Ephphatha” and as we discover through Mark’s Gospel this word means “Be opened.”  This is preceded with an action of touch. Jesus reaches out to touch the sick and the poor. Notice also that he does this action in private he draws the person away from the main crowd. Jesus does not want to draw attention to him. Jesus is not some TV evangelist wanting to draw the attention to him but he wants to give his full attention to those who needs him the most the poor and the sick.   So let us look at each of these ideas in turn. Often we say that we were touched by someone when they said a kind word or have done a kind thing. This shows the importance for human contact. I was very aware of this in seeing family in my trip to Australia. Modern technology like facebook and especially Skyp...