Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion In this Sunday Gos­pel read­ing, we con­tin­ue to read from the sec­tion of the Gos­pel accord­ing to Mark’s Gos­pel that reports Jesus’ jour­ney to Jer­u­s­alem. Last week we heard Jesus lament the par­tic­u­lar chal­lenges those with many pos­ses­sions face in order to enter the King­dom of God. This is con­tained in the con­ver­sa­tion between Jesus and a cer­tain man who enquired from him what he must do to inher­it the king­dom of God. A require­ment he was unable to ful­fil, due to his inability…

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Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion The ques­tion on etern­al life is an exist­en­tial and per­en­ni­al ques­tion. Even the so-called athe­ists and agnostics can­not avoid won­der­ing the ‘how’ of life after this earthly sojourn. It is in this con­text that we have to under­stand the ques­tion of the Jew­ish ruler who inter­rog­ated Jesus on the cri­terion for gain­ing etern­al life. The con­text of this con­ver­sa­tion is the king­dom of God and the require­ments for enter­ing it. Judging from the dis­cus­sions and the inter­ven­tion of the ruler, it appears the ruler…

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Read­ing Time: 3 minutes Intro­duc­tion After his teach­ings on the import­ance of becom­ing great by serving, Jesus left Caper­naum and trav­elled to the region of Judea and bey­ond the Jordan. As usu­al, Mark says “crowds gathered around him; and, as was his cus­tom, he again taught them” (Mark 10:1). The Gos­pels emphas­ize Jesus went about teach­ing. Everything he did was foun­ded on teach­ing. Teach­ing to heal people phys­ic­ally and spir­itu­ally. This week’s Gos­pel read­ing is par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing. It con­cerns mar­riage or more spe­cific­ally, the sac­ra­ment of mat­ri­mony. It is…

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Read­ing Time: 3 minutes Intro­duc­tion Last week, we reflec­ted on indif­fer­ence and its effects. This week, the Gos­pel mes­sage presents to us oth­er evils afflict­ing our world. Recall that last week we heard Jesus chas­tise his dis­ciples for their argu­ment about who among them was the greatest. Jesus taught them that the greatest among them will be those who serve. Not those who exer­cise power and author­ity over oth­ers. In this Sunday Gos­pel, the dis­ciple John ques­tions Jesus about an unknown per­son who was driv­ing out demons in Jesus’…

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Read­ing Time: 3 minutes Intro­duc­tion Even the most dis­trac­ted per­son must have noticed the alarm­ing rate of selfish­ness and indif­fer­ence in our soci­ety, pre­cisely on the part of the vari­ous civil and reli­gious lead­ers espe­cially, in Niger­ia. After remind­ing the crowd and the dis­ciples the con­di­tions for fol­low­ing him, Jesus warns that “if any­one is ashamed of me and my words in this adul­ter­ous and sin­ful gen­er­a­tion, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Fath­er with the holy…

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