Bible and Saints
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Bible and Saints’
Grand Duke Dmitri of Moscow loosened the grip of the Tartar Horde on the people of Russia, but treachery robbed him of triumph.
The tale of St Dmitri of the Don is a tale of the quest to free a people from foreign domination, of hard-fought victory and of wholly avoidable defeat. In 1380, Grand Duke Dmitri I of Moscow, aged just twenty-nine, freed the city from generations of vassalage to the Tartar Golden Horde, only for treachery to bring all that he had achieved to nothing in the very hour of triumph.
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.
Goliath, a giant of a man from Philistia, has challenged Israel’s warrior-heroes to meet him in single combat, but only a shepherd boy is brave enough to step up.
When Goliath, a mountain of a man from Philistia, challenged Israel’s warrior-heroes to mortal combat only David, a shepherd boy, stepped up. King Saul felt shame that only this brave but hopeless boy was ready to fight for the nation. On the other hand, the prophet Samuel had foretold that a man ‘better than thou’ would take Saul’s crown, and it was a relief to know that there was no such man in all his kingdom.
As he sat in his guest room at Durham Abbey, Ranulf de Capella could think of nothing but finding someone to rid him of his painful toothache.
Reginald of Durham was a monk at the Benedictine Abbey in Durham from about 1153 until his death some forty years later. The Abbey church housed the coffin and body (untouched by time, despite being regularly opened to view) of seventh-century miracle-working bishop St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, and from the steady stream of pilgrims who came to visit the shrine Reginald collected a fund of amazing tales.
While the owner is away, the men he has hired to tend his vineyard conspire to seize it for themselves.
In the Old Testament, Israel is frequently represented as a vineyard, a vineyard so mismanaged by God’s hired tenants that the grapes are small and sour: the shrivelled, acid fruit of corruption and injustice among Israel’s kings and high priests. God sent prophets to warn them; now he has sent his own son. What, Jesus asked his rapt audience, will the owner do when his tenants kill his son, too?
A Jewish man is left for dead by bandits, but help comes from a most unexpected quarter.
‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is a commandment of the Law of Moses; but one lawyer wanted to know whom Jesus thought his neighbour was? Jesus, as was his wont, answered with a question of his own. When a man was left for dead in a notorious crime blackspot between Jerusalem and Jericho, which of three men proved to be his neighbour? Which of them did as he himself would be done by?