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A young man abandons the family farm and goes looking for happiness in the pleasures of the city.
Many Jews in first-century Judaea compromised with Roman ways, and even collaborated with the invading power. Those who came to regret their choices found in Jesus a firm yet gentle mentor, but others grumbled at the welcome he gave. “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God” Jesus reminded them “over one sinner that repenteth”, and he told them this tale.
Solomon recommends taking lessons from one of God’s smallest but most hard-working creatures.
The Book of Proverbs is traditionally ascribed to Solomon, son of King David, and himself King of Israel early in the tenth century BC, though as with the Psalms some of it was compiled from the works of other authors, and some is of later date. The following passage was translated into English for the Authorized Version of 1611, and the result is quite masterly.
When Rhoda, maid to John Mark and his mother, said Peter was standing at the gate, nobody in the house believed her.
St Peter was imprisoned during the purge of Christians ordered by Herod Agrippa in AD 44, during which St James, brother of St John the Evangelist, was executed. Peter’s miraculous jailbreak is a tale into which another evangelist, St Mark, also comes; but the star of Luke’s superbly crafted account is Rhoda, the scatterbrained maid.
Three servants are engaged to invest their master’s money in the markets.
Jesus, now in Jerusalem, has been telling his disciples about the kingdom of heaven, perhaps better translated as ‘the reign of heaven’. He reminds them that this heavenly reign has begun and is getting wider, and that at some point in the future — he never says exactly when — God will require us to produce something to show for the errands he has sent us on, however small.
The Pharisees conspire to put Jesus in a seemingly impossible situation, by inviting him to take sides in the bitter politics of Jew and Roman.
The event described here is recorded at the start of the eighth chapter of St John’s Gospel. Two questions have nagged commentators: why some very early New Testament manuscripts missed it out, and what it was that Jesus wrote in the sandy ground. Neither question has been answered to the satisfaction of everyone, but the story is one of the most universally beloved in the Gospels.
King David expresses his trust in God in terms remembered from his years as a shepherd boy.
The Twenty-Third Psalm is one of the best-known of all Psalms, and one of the best-loved passages of Scripture. The tradition is that David, a shepherd boy who was chosen as King of all Israel late in the eleventh century BC, composed many of the Psalms, and nowhere is this tradition more plausible than in these few verses.
An angel appeared to Mary in her home in Nazareth, and offered her the chance to be part of nothing less than the reopening of the doors of Paradise.
Lady Day, or the Feast of the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary, is kept on March 25th each year, and celebrates the conception of Jesus Christ in the womb of his mother, a young woman named Mary from Nazareth in northern Israel. After Jesus died St John took her into his home, but tradition says that fellow evangelist St Luke, who left us this account, was also a lifelong friend and painted her first likeness.