Homilies

Kings and kingship: they frame the story of Jesus. The New Testament begins with Jesus’ family tree showing He’s a direct descendant of King David, via his step-father Joseph (Mt 1:1-17; Lk 2:4).

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

At the end of Shakespeare’s great tragedy Macbeth, the king is dead and Malcolm is hailed King of Scots.[1] He undertakes to serve “by the grace of Grace” unlike the “dead butcher and his fiend-like queen”,[2] Lady Macbeth. But would his wife be any better?

At the then-customary examination before Confirmation, a child was asked by a bishop to define Matrimony. She nervously recited from memory: “Matrimony is a place where souls suffer for a time after death on account of their sins.”

In the sixth century BC a slave named Aesop told the fable of a Fox who, being hard-hunted and having run a long chase, sought refuge from a Farmer who told the Fox to hide in his barn.

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 sparked the First World War and left his nephew Karl as heir presumptive. Karl had studied law and politics and was a military man.

They’re at it again. James and John are lobbying for special positions in Jesus’ kingdom (Mk 10:35-45; cf. 9:30-37).

The Hebrew word for wisdom חָכְמָה (chokmâh), the Greek word σοφια (sophia) and the Latin sapientia are all feminine nouns. So, naturally enough, the ancients personified Wisdom as a woman.

One of Karl Marx’s daughters once confessed to a friend that she had no religion and really knew nothing about it—unsurprising, given her father was the inventor of atheistic communism!

What’s in a word? We use words to name or describe, to reason, learn and remember, and to communicate to others. With words we write or speak our sacred texts, laws and decisions, records and contracts, essays and books, conversations and correspondence, newspapers and audio-visuals, poems and songs—disclosing ideas, norms, feelings and more.