It’s just not fair! When we hear this morning’s parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt 20:1-16), the shop steward deep within each one of us irks with sympathy for those who’ve laboured all day under the hot sun. Why do those who worked only an hour, in the cool of the evening, get the same wages and even get paid first!
The word pandemic comes from the Greek words pan meaning all – as in ‘panorama’ and ‘pandemonium’ – and demos meaning the people – as in ‘democratic’ and ‘demography’.
Perhaps the most famous father in recent pop culture is Homer Simpson. Since 1989 he has starred in most of the 684 episodes and 31 series so far of the animated sitcom The Simpsons.
Today the Church celebrates the Feast of St. Gregory the Great, a highly educated nobleman of sixth-century Rome, by then a city overrun by barbarians and an empire crumbling.
Simon has just made his great profession of faith in Jesus as God and Saviour, been praised and appointed future pope (Mt 16:13-20). All of a sudden the mood changes. Having just renamed him ‘Peter’, Jesus now calls him ‘Satan’ (Mt 16:21-7).
In his international best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey argues that there are three stages of maturity: dependence, independence, and interdependence. Together these three form what he calls ‘the maturity continuum’.
Go out to all the world to preach the Good News,” Jesus said (Mk 16:15; cf. Mt 28:19). Paul in our epistle today brags of his mission to the gentiles (Rom 11:13-15,29-32) and we know that he ultimately joined Peter in giving the witness of blood in Rome.
Most of Jesus’ miracles addressed people’s particular needs. Last Sunday He multiplied loaves and fishes to satisfy the hunger of the multitude.[1] The haul of fish and the changing of wine into water were on a similarly extravagant scale.[2] You might wonder if anyone really needed so much wine as He made for them at Cana, but if you watch the crowd-funded TV series, The Chosen, you’ll pick up the emotions, tension and potential humiliation around that wedding reception, and why the wine mattered so much.
For some, this pandemic-enforced retreat has been an opportunity to connect more deeply with family and God – to give time to conversation and prayer so often crowded out by the busyness of our lives. Many have maintained their connection to Mass and parish by live-streaming; others, who can’t normally come to Mass, have enjoyed Mass coming to them at home.
The Moirai or Fates were the good luck gods of the ancient world. People experienced many aspects of their lives as beyond their control. So much depended on where and when and into whose family you were born. On forces of nature, weather, accidents and plagues like COVID.
“To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power… to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking – knowledge which in fact we do not possess – is likely to make us do much harm.”[1] So said the Austrian-British thinker Friederich August von Hayek in his 1974 Nobel Prize acceptance speech.Hayek was an economist, political philosopher and social theorist. Having survived fighting in the First World War and being infected by the Spanish flu, he dedicated his life to building a better world through economics.
The Second Ecumenical Council of Lyons of 1274 was one of the largest the Church ever held. Presided over by Pope Gregory X, it was attended by five hundred bishops, observed by kings and ambassadors, and advised by another thousand prelates and periti. On the agenda were the conquest of the Holy Land and the reunion of the Eastern and Western churches, and so it welcomed representatives of the Patriarch of Constantinople, of the Byzantine Emperor and even of the Khan of the Tartars.
