Peter Blog a few random thoughts

West Ham beating Spurs, Haribo, strictly come dancing, Chocolate cake, going for a walk on the sea front, a good game of rugby, reading a book, listening to music, going to the theatre, My Friends, my family and God. These are the things that I love or love to do. We use the word love for so many different things.  But to unlock  this Gospel we need to look more closely at the word love first. For as I have demonstrated the word love is one of the most overused word in the English language and when we use it is has so many different meanings. We can all list the things that we love and the way that we place a different meaning on each different item. My love for example for Chocolate cake is different to the love of my parents or a partner but yet we use the same word. When we look at the Greek word it surprisingly has 6 different meanings. So you can see how complicated it can become. Don’t worry I am not going to go through them now thats for you to have a look at yours...

I want to tell you about a friend of mine called Fred. Fred loves parties. For the first half of his life he lived in institutions and hardly ever said a word. He was rejected by society. Then he found his way by a chance encounter to Laurche community down in Bognor Regis. Now you cannot stop him talking. Now remember that I said that he liked parities. Every birthday he would spend the day getting ready for his birthday party making sure that every thing was just right. He would get dressed up in his finest gear and have a great time. One day Fred came into the scarcity as his usually did on the Sunday and tell me the weeks news. This week he was particularly excited because he had been invited to the Queens Garden party. So on the morning of this special party he got up early, made sure he had his special clothes and arrived early with his career for the party. On his return in his weekly update to me he was able to tell me everything what the queen was wearing and what as he desc...

The Gospel today in the parable of the wicked tenants directly challenges the Jewish leaders thats why they were so angry. When we break down the Parable to different parts we can see why they were so angry. The landowner is God the Vineyard Israel the Wicked Tenants the people of Israel The servants the Prophets and the Son Jesus. Jesus was directly challenging the Jewish authorities in their treatment of the prophets those who were going to tell them God’s ways. By using the quote from Psalm 118 Jesus then turns this parable and focuses on himself. For Jesus is the corner stone rejected by the Jewish leaders the Builders But the keystone is the new people of God which includes the Gentles.  It is also a story about good over coming evil. We know the end of the story. Jesus puts himself in the heart of salvation history of the story of the Old Testament prophets and shows that even he will be rejected and not listened too.  Parables also say something to us. They a...

This week we celebrated the Feast day of St Vincent de Paul. We all know him as a man who cared for the poor of society and helped them a lot. He is also a man who had to do a lot of changing in his life when he realised that the path he was following was wrong. Listening and discerning the will of God he became a champion of the poor. He had to change and he realised that change can be hard. It is a constant re evaluating of the heart.. It is a time when we need prayer and a listening ear to the voice of God. Over the next few months there is going to be a lot of changes, in the parish. It is a time not for lamenting about the past and what there was but looking in faith and hope to the future embracing the challenges and learning with each other how we can bring the Kingdom of God to all those whom we have been sent. It means that we will sometimes need a change of heart to embrace new ideas and also be challenged about where God is leading us. It is not a time to be scared but a ti...