The Fellowship of St. Columbanus

Epistle: Hebrews 9: 11-15 Gospel: StJohn 8: 46-59 The importance of the ceremonies of Passiontide and Holy Week is hard to overestimate. It would be no hyperbole on anyone’s part to say that in this season, we, Christians, are given the occasion to meditate and truly commune with the central mysteries of our faith: hoc opus nostrae salutis ( literally “ this work of our salvation ”) [1] . The conditional statement (one of a series) of the Apostle is well known: “ If Christ be not risen, your faith is in vain; ye are yet in your sins ” (1 Cor 15:17). But, for there to be any resurrection at all, there needs to be death, and suffering and passion to precede it. And Christ’s death was not natural – he did not fall asleep, nor was he taken up without suffering or dying, as those in error would have it. Rather, he was bound, judged, mocked, tortured and led to a most violent death upon a cross: “ he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter ” (Isaiah 53:7). ( Pange Lingua with ...

II Chronicles 36:14-16; 19-23 Psalm 137 Ephesians 2:4-10 St. John 3:14-21 "The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.)" David Roberts (1850) This week's lessons revolve around the themes of sin and exile, appropriate to the season of Lent. Our Old Testament lesson describes the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of her people as a result of their sin (II Chr. 36:14-16). The Temple especially is mentioned, (vv. 18-19), as the emblem of the sight of God's presence in Israel, and the emblem of the covenant between God and people (see I Kng. 8:27-30). The Exile makes concrete what the Church claims about sin: that it estranges us from God. Sin creates distance between God and the sinner, and impairs our communion with him. This heart-rending condition is evoked so well in our psalm, "how shall I sing the song of the Lord upon alien soil?" (v. 4) Alienated from God and his sanctuary, the Psalmist cannot even sing the hymns of prai...

Exodus 20:1-17 Psalm 19 I Corinthians 1:22-25 John 2:13-25 Most of this Gospel passage is pretty straightforward narrative- until the last two verses take a bit of an unsettling turn, into the mind of Christ. What is it exactly that Jesus understands well about human nature, that he would not entrust himself to these “many” who began to believe? Why such emphasis on it? JESUS MAFA. The parable of the sower, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. Reading back, it becomes apparent that it has to do with the “signs” that have now been referenced several times in our New Testament readings. “...Many began to believe in his name when they saw the signs he was doing.” Jesus could not trust their belief that was based on signs. Their faith perhaps had no substance, but arose from the euphoric awe of witnessing something extraordinary. It reminds me immediately of the seeds that fell on rocky soil in the parable of t...

Epistle: 1 Thess 4:1-8        Gospel (Roman): St Matt 17: 1-9 ;     (Sarum& BCP): St Matt 15: 21-28 Collect : Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves; keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. In the midst of life’s travails and worries, in the face of our personal failures and frustrations, we are often prone to wallow either in self-pity and pride, or in despair. We may even grumble against God and dispute the ordinances of his sovereign will. The magnitude of our sufferings weigh us down so much that we dare not call out for help. We settle upon well-rehearsed excuses (all too readily supplied by a modernist and Godless psychology) for our sins, habitual or not. We sometimes erect our sorrows and our sins...

Genesis 9:8-17                  There is a concept found in many cultures and traditions that has always attracted me. Put simply, it is the idea of the interconnectedness of all things. The ant that crawls on the stem of some forgotten leaf scratches some light itch of the universe. We are all permutations of stardust, from whence we come and shall return. This “ we ”, as God reminds us in the story of Noah, is not limited to just humanity. Birds, livestock, wild, domesticated, all living things were touched by the flood, just as all living things are affected by the actions of each member within the ecosystem. To see a World in a Grain of Sand  And a Heaven in a Wild Flower  Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand  And Eternity in an hour (Wm. Blake, Auguries of Innocence) (An icon of the Creation of the Universe) We can see in the Scriptures and the tradition that ...

Spending Ash Wednesday ill in bed, I was unable to write an appropriate reflection for the Fellowship, or even attend mass. The only devotion I managed was reciting Psalm 103 in my little Authorized Version psalm book. Of course, I chose this psalm because I remembered that it echoed the line from Genesis, "Dust you are and to dust you shall return." (Gen. 3:19) Imagine my surprise, then, to realize when I reached verse 14 that in fact it read, "For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust." Polish priest imposing ashes (unknown, 1881) The Psalmist has taken a refrain from throughout the Old Testament, a reminder to mankind that we are mortal, that we are sinful, and that we must act accordingly, (see Eccl. 5:15, Ps. 104:29, Isa. 40, and Ps. 90) and turned it on its head. There is more to "Ashes to ashes and dust to dust" than only the command to "redeem the time, because the days are evil." (Eph. 5:16) There is another side: t...

Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46 I Corinthians 10:31-11:1 St. Mark 1:40-45 By: Matthew David Wiseman Leprosy is usually associated with what is called Hansen's Disease, and not without some reason. Both are highly contagious skin infections which have traditionally excluded people from society. However, even a cursory reading of today's lection from Leviticus makes it clear that the biblical leprosy is not the same as Hansen's Disease. There is no deformation of fingers and toes here, and the lesions are rather different from Hansen's. The truth is that there is no clear disease or pathology which these chapters of Leviticus describe. In fact, some Jewish commentators conclude from this that there is no such disease, but rather that leprosy was a special curse from God. Ikon of Christ cleansing the leper All of this only contributes to the strangeness of what is already, for modern readers, a very strange story in St. Mark chapter 1. In our socially conscious, ev...