Fr Paul Gooley reads today’s Gospel from Luke (5: 27-32) in which Jesus says to the scribes and Pharisees, who chastise him for eating with sinners ‘It is not those who are well who need the doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the virtuous, but sinners to repentance.” Fr [...]
Fr Paul Gooley reads today’s Gospel from Matthew (9: 14-15) in which John the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus, ‘Why is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’. Fr Paul says the Gospel reading seems at first sight a puzzling choice for the start of Lent, for it [...]
Fr Paul Gooley reads today’s Gospel from Luke (9: 22-25) in which Jesus says to his disciples, ‘What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose their very self?’ Fr Paul says these first four days of Lent, before the First Sunday of Lent, set the tone in [...]
As Lent begins, Fr Paul Gooley reads today’s Gospel from Matthew (6: 1-6, 16-18) in which Jesus says to the disciples ‘be careful not to parade your good deeds before men… your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you’. Fr Paul says this Gospel reading from Matthew is one [...]
Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Mark (8: 14-21) in which Jesus, after his disciples after they fail to understand him, says, “Do you not yet understand? Have you no perception? Are your minds closed? Have you eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear?”. Fr Paul says the [...]
Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Mark (8: 11-13) in which the Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign, to which he replies, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it”. Fr Paul says this little passage is really puzzling. The [...]
Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Luke (10: 1-9) in which Jesus sends seventy-two people out, two by two, ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go and told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, [...]
Fr Paul Gooley reads today’s Gospel from Mark (7: 31-37) in which Jesus touches the ears and tongue of the man who was deaf and mute and cures him, saying ‘Ephphatha!’ which means ‘be opened!’. Fr Paul says the roundabout route taken by Jesus from Sidon to the Lake via the Decapolis region [...]
Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Mark (7: 24-30) in which a woman, who was born in Syrian Phoenicia, begs Jesus to heal her daughter who was possessed by a demon. Fr Paul says now begins an important section of Mark’s Gospel. He is writing for a largely gentile audience, which [...]
Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Mark (7: 14-23) in which Jesus says, “Nothing that goes into a person from outside can make them unclean. It is the things that come out of a person that make them unclean.” Fr Paul says in this passage (which follows on from yesterday), Jesus [...]