Scripture Reflections
Friday, 30 August 2019 11:49

A Father's Day reflection

Fr Frank Gerry SVD 150Father's Day can hold many emotions for both men and women - those who had a loving father that passed away, those who never knew their dad, those expectantly waiting to become a dad soon, and countless other situations ...

All who humble themselves shall be exalted 150I feel blessed to admit there is very little need for comment in today’s readings. They speak for themselves!

In today’s Gospel the story is told of how one of Jesus’ followers asks him if many or only a few will be saved. Jesus does not give a direct answer.

At first reading of this Sunday’s Gospel, we might be seriously wondering what Jesus is talking about. We all thought that Jesus came to this world as a “Prince of Peace”.

The Gospel reading for this Sunday invites us to be ready and dressed for action. We remember the Gospel from last Sunday, where the rich man, seeing the bumper harvest he had, thinks of building bigger barns and store all the wealth to himself and doesn’t even give a second thought of sharing it with the other.

To borrow a story from a good friend of mine, Fr Bel San Luis, SVD, there was a man who wanted to have a lot of money so badly that he promised the devil to do his work in exchange for a copy of the newspaper a day ahead before it was published so that he could get the winning Lotto number in advance.

Prayer and our relationship with God has always been a great mystery to me as a Christian and as a priest.

A contractor needed one more man to chop down trees for export. One day, two men appeared willing to do the job but only one could be employed so what the contractor did was to put the two men to a test, they were to chop down as many trees as they could in an eight-hour shift and the man who chopped down more trees got the job.

The familiar parable of the Good Samaritan is once again given to us today to reflect upon the need to reach out to the ‘other’.

Fr Frank Gerry SVD 150The readings in today's liturgy from the prophet Isaiah, from St. Paul and St Luke the evangelist, speak about people with character.

A number of years ago I “concelebrated” a wedding with a Baptist Minister. My cousin was marrying a girl who was a devout Baptist and whose parents were active in their Baptist Community.

For the first thousand years of Christianity, bishops, priests, and all the faithful would talk about the Christian Community as the “real” body and blood of Christ.

Among the different doctrines of our faith, nothing is more mysterious than the dogma of the Trinity.

Let me start with a story that I read from an article by a good friend of mine, Fr Atilano Corcuera, SVD.

At the scene of the Ascension, St Luke, the author of The Acts of the Apostles, makes mention of two men dressed in white who say to the Twelve:

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