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.
Natural and supernatural
“Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep but kept awake, and they saw his glory…” (Catholic edition RSV, Luke 9:32)
Before we leave a place where we have lived but which we shall never see again, we take one farewell look round, and then with that memory in our minds, go on our way. And Our Blessed Lord did exactly the same thing before he left this earth and returned to his glory in Heaven. As his ministry in Galilee ended and he prepared to make that last journey to Jerusalem and to Calvary, he first took his Apostles with him to the most northern point of his travels, to Mount Hermon.
The Transfiguration, Crucifixion and Resurrection
“…he was transfigured before them…” (NRSV, Matthew 17:2)
Our Lord began his public ministry in the populous and nationalistic district of Galilee, and by the end of the first year it was clear that his ministry had failed. The people remained heedless of his call to repent and allow God to rule them in their daily lives. They just looked on him as a miracle-working prophet and thought of him in political and military terms as a potential resistance leader against the Roman occupying power.
Read more: The Transfiguration, Crucifixion and Resurrection
Holy Cross Day
Background information
Golgotha
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem stands over the site identified from earliest Christian tradition as being the place where Jesus was crucified and buried. (1) Archaeological findings reveal that at the beginning of the first century AD, the site was a disused quarry outside the city walls. Tombs were cut into the vertical west wall of the quarry. On the east wall the quarrymen had cut around a mass of inferior cracked stone leaving it jutting out. These facts show that the site is compatible with the details given in the Gospels. First, Jesus was crucified at a place called the Skull (Golgotha) which suggests that the jutting out stone may have been in the shape of a skull. Second, we know that near to Golgotha there was a grave. Third, windblown soil and seeds would have created an environment in the disused quarry that could be called a garden. (2)