Lectionary Devotions by Father Gethin

Our journey of conversion, which is the growth and deepening of our Christian faith, gradually makes its way towards the goal of heaven; and that spiritual journey is the earthly meaning of our calling to be God’s people, to be here and now the citizens of His kingdom.

The lections for last Sunday, the eighth Sunday after Trinity, direct us toward the new character of life that comes from our conversion to Christ, and the way of faith which that conversion entails…

Today the church commemorates the life and witness of St. James, Zebedee’s son, and brother to St. John. There is a good deal of confusion surrounding the figures who share the name James from the New Testament…

His voice had a terrible authority—not, said the people, like the teaching of the Pharisees—and a terrible beauty, unlike any sound or voice they had known, a sound that gathered them…

We know that salvation does not merely come to individuals, as we heard two weeks ago, how the Father seeks to redeem and restore the whole creation, which groans for the good working of His grace—just as in the beginning it was the whole creation, taken together, that God exalted as ‘very good’…

One of the most difficult challenges to our faith is our apprehension and acceptance of the sheer scale of God’s goodness towards us…

The Word of God, by Whom the world was made, comes to us, moved by the Father’s goodness, so that in His incarnate body He may confront death, and thereby change it…

That ‘father of lies’, whose program of rebellion and falsehood has opposed our race from the beginning, tempting Eve with vain words in the garden, continues to advance his cause of an anti-God world governed only by its own godlessness…

The Sunday Scripture readings for the first part of this Trinity season challenge us with a patient and faithful consideration of our human condition in all of its mortal and sinful frailty. This is by nature counter-intuitive for us, as we face a world bent on independence and self-promotion…

It is an unattractive idea that we should be in a continual process of growing up into our faith, and that our progress toward a glorified Christian life is in continual need of help and guidance…