Short Talks
This section of the website comprises short stand-alone talks and articles on different aspects of the Christian Faith, including the teaching of Jesus, the seasons of the Church’s Year and Feasts and Festivals. More talks/sermons/homilies/articles will be added in due course.
The section of the website entitled The Christian Faith provides more extended teaching on larger content areas, such as the Creed and the Sacraments.
The Christian's joy
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice” (NRSV, Philippians 4:4)
The keynote of the Christian Faith is joy, and when individual Christians truly accept that faith as the basis of their whole relationship with God, and freely allow it in all its depth and power to shape their thinking and to direct their lives, then there is of necessity found in them that essential element of joy.
Saviour and King
And Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (NRSV, Matthew 28:18).
You may have noticed that whereas crucifixes in this country and in Western Europe usually depict Christ as our Saviour hanging in agony on the Cross, those of the Eastern Church are of Christ the King in royal robes.
There is no contradiction here, for each gives expression to one part of the twofold theme of the Saviour-King which runs through the Christian faith. Thus before Our Lord’s Birth the angel told Joseph that Our Lady would bear a Son “and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (NRSV, Matthew 1:21). In contrast, Gabriel had told Our Lady that “of his kingdom there will be no end” (NRSV, Luke 1:33).
Made like unto Him
“…until all of us come…to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (NRSV, Ephesians 4:13).
Before Our Lord called his disciples, they had only one thing in common – they were steady and industrious men.
At one extreme there was Simon the Zealot – a member of the fanatical Jewish resistance against the Romans; and at the other Matthew the tax collector who collaborated with King Herod Antipas, the vassal of the Roman Emperor.