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 Four Last Things

On the four Sundays of Advent, it has been traditional to consider the Four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Hell and Heaven.

Death

“…we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7)

Death severs the soul not merely from the body, but from everything else that is of this world.  For when we die we take with us only the character which we have been fashioning for ourselves.  All else is left behind – house and garden, furniture and personal effects, food and clothes, worldly comforts and amusements; and we shall find ourselves in an entirely different world in which the values, to which we have been accustomed here, are turned upside down.  What things here are first in the world’s esteem – money, pleasures, position – these are the last. And those that here are last – forgetfulness of self and devotion to God – are first.

Read more: Death

Judgement

“…it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgement…” (NRSV Hebrews 9:27)

When death severs the soul from its earthly body, the brief time of our probation and our opportunity is ended.  “…night is coming when no one can work” (NRSV, John 9:4).  We have no second chance then of proving whether we are worthy of the life which God has given us, for we shall already have proved it.  Nothing can alter the things we have done in this world or left undone.  They stand for ever in the record.  And although they themselves are past, yet they live on in the results they have produced in the soul, in its pride, its self-love and its self-satisfaction.

Read more: Judgement