‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!

The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, John Martin 1852

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 14th July 2026

‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!, says Jesus (Matthew 11:20-24).

He has been travelling around Galilee, including these towns, and nearby Capernaum, proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven has come near, calling on the inhabitants to repent and believe the good news, and healing the sick. But for the most part, they have ignored his call. Now he bewails their indifference.

They are his own Jewish people. They have seen and heard him, they have witnessed his deeds of power. But they have not responded. He says that in the long run, ‘on the day of judgement’, they will rue their indifference, more than the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon, more even than the city of Sodom. Tyre and Sidon were gentile, Phoenician cities, notorious among Jews for their sinfulness. They could not be accused of ignoring his message, because he had not preached there. Sodom was the city destroyed by God in the far distant past, according to the strange story of Lot in Genesis. It was and still is a byword for wickedness, whose very location has been forgotten.

It is sometimes suggested that Jesus was cursing these cities. But that would not be like the merciful and loving Jesus of the Gospels. The Greek word ‘ouai’ translated as ‘woe’ expresses sorrowful pity rather than anger. Jesus is heartbroken that his own people do not respond to the good news he preaches. He mourns for what will become of them. Those who have responded to him surely mourn too. But all is not lost. As Jesus declares in the Beatitudes, ‘Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.’

Today we are living through a growing crisis of global heating and loss of biodiversity, a result of human ignorance and greed. Our earthly home is in danger, and all its creatures including ourselves. To continue business as usual would be a blasphemy against the world that God has given us, and that he sees to be very good.

For decades now scientists have been warning us that we must change our behaviour, or suffer the consequences. Christian and other leaders are calling on us to change and move rapidly to a just transition away from fossil fuels. But the global response has been quite insufficient – so far.

If Jesus were to return today, I am certain that he would be crying ‘Woe’ in sorrowful pity over our cities and towns. Woe to you, Nenagh! Woe to you, Dublin, Belfast, Limerick, Cork, and Galway! Woe to you, London, Paris, Moscow, New York, Tokyo and Mexico City! As we roast in this unprecedented heat wave, as we mourn the accelerating breakdown of our climate, we must not give up hope. Let us listen to him, and to the climate scientists, before it is too late. Because he blesses us, saying ‘those who mourn … will be comforted’.

 

The Parable of the Sower

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 12th July 2026, the 6th after Trinity

Sowing the Seed

Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel (13:1-9, 18-23) is commonly called the Parable of the Sower.

A parable is a story describing a scene from everyday life, which conveys a deeper meaning. I think Jesus taught so often in parables because they conjure up memorable images. They lead those who hear them to reflect on their meanings, and to discover the truth in them for themselves. No lesson is better learned than one you tease out for yourself! Parables are a bit like slow-release fertilizer, gradually yielding up their truth to people who ponder them.

The parable of the sower comes in Mark’s and Luke’s Gospels as well as Matthew’s, and in startlingly similar words. Scholars believe the vivid image was remembered and recorded, and an edited version was used by the Gospel writers when they composed their texts years later. All three Gospels also contain the same authoritative explanation by Jesus of what the story means.

So let us in our imaginations picture the scene, let us reflect on the parable’s meaning, and let us tease out its relevance for us now, 2000 years later.

Let us begin by entering into the parable in our mind’s eye.

So many people wanted to listen to Jesus that he used a boat to address the crowd on the beach. The beach was on a lake, the Sea of Galilee. I’ve never been there, but I see it as rather like Lough Derg. It’s about 40% larger in area, and wider but not so long. Imagine the people crowded on the beach at Dromineer, and Jesus a few yards off shore in a lake boat talking to them.

Did Jesus see a man sowing in a nearby field? Perhaps this prompted the parable, and everyone could literally see what he was talking about. In my minds eye it could be my neighbour Padraig Slattery's field.

The sower isn’t using a seed-drill; he is broadcasting the seed by hand, just as our ancestors would have done only 150 years or so ago. The seed is in a bag or a basket, and he walks steadily up and down the field, taking a handful of seed and throwing it out as evenly as he can. Even at a distance it is quite clear to everyone what he is doing: they have seen it hundreds of times before, and many have done it themselves.

Imagine a big field divided like allotments into strips, each one belonging to one family, with paths between them, beaten down hard by the passage of many feet. The crowd can see the birds following the sower swooping down to gobble up the seed that inevitably falls on the path, for all the sower’s skill.

Everyone would understand that different parts of the field are of different quality.

Some parts are stony: don’t imagine small pebbles, imagine great sheets of rock just under the surface, with just a few inches of soil on top, like parts of the Burren, for instance. The soil above the rock warms early, and the seeds germinate quickly, but without a depth of soil the young seedlings will soon run out of nutrients and water and shrivel up in the sun.

Some parts of the field are infested with perennial weeds: imagine scutch grass and creeping thistle, which will quickly outgrow the delicate crop, choking it.

But other parts of the field are good land, with a deep, clean soil. Here the crop will have nutrients and water enough. It will flourish and produce a harvest of thirty, or sixty, or a hundred times the grain sown on it.

Jesus said many other things to the crowd that day in parables, we’re told. We don’t know what they were, but I think we can take it that Jesus was ‘proclaiming the good news of the kingdom’ as Matthew tells us elsewhere (Mat 9:35).

‘Let anyone with ears listen!’ Jesus finishes.

Jesus himself explains the parable in terms of the word of the kingdom he preaches.

When his disciples ask him why he teaches in parables, Jesus interprets the parable for them, no doubt to reassure them that they do indeed understand what he is getting at:

The seed sown on the path is the word heard, but not understood, which the evil one snatches away, before it ever has the chance to sprout.

The seed sown on rocky ground is the word received with joy, but by a person without roots, without character, whose initial enthusiasm cannot withstand trouble or persecution.

The seed sown among thorns is the word heard by those who are so trapped by worldly cares and the lure of wealth that they cannot act upon it.

And the seed sown on good soil is the word heard by those who understand it, and act upon it. Only such people will yield a harvest of good.

Like those who crowded to the lakeshore 2000 years ago, we are the soil in which Jesus sows the seed.

On a personal level, the message of his parable remains what it was then: we need to cultivate our character so that as good soil we yield a rich harvest. Each one of us must strive to develop the character traits of attention, persistence, and detachment. Attention, so that we do not miss God’s call when it comes. Persistence, so that we can withstand trouble or persecution when we answer God’s call. And detachment, so that we are not distracted from acting on God’s call by the cares of the world and the pursuit of wealth.

 But we cannot do so by our own will - we need the help of the Holy Spirit at work within us. 

For Jesus, the sower is one who proclaims ‘the word of the kingdom’.

That is himself of course. But it is also his closest disciples, the twelve apostles, whom he sent out saying ‘Proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near”’ (Mat 10:5-7). No doubt the twelve took comfort from the parable that even when their teaching seemed to show poor results, enough people would accept it to make it all worthwhile.

Before his ascension Jesus commissioned the apostles to go out and make disciples of all nations. Their commission was handed on to others in the developing Church, which in all its varied traditions still proclaims Jesus’s good news of the kingdom today. In Paul’s memorable words Christians are all part of Christ’s body the Church. Today the Church is the sower. 

Is there then a message for the Church in this parable? I believe there is.

The Church’s sowing of the seed may not seem to be producing a good harvest these days. The fact is that here in Ireland, and in Europe generally, taking a broad view across all traditions, more and more people are losing contact with Christ’s Church. We see falling Church attendance, fewer baptisms, and insufficient ordinations to maintain the stock of full time clergy. We need to understand why and do something about it, and for that we need the Holy Spirit to guide us.

But we should not despair. Jesus himself was completely realistic about the prospects for his teaching, and so should we be as his Church. As Jesus realised, no matter how good a job we do as sowers, the sad fact is that many people will not become his disciples, and will not be led to the kingdom of heaven by his or the Church’s teaching. Yet those who do, make up for those that don’t by the rich harvest of good fruit they yield – as Jesus put it, 30, 60 or 100 fold.

So to sum up, we can learn these things today from the parable of the sower:

As Christians we need to cultivate the soil of our own characters, to develop the Christian virtues of attention, persistence, and detachment from the world, so that we may yield a plentiful harvest of good grain.

And we should not despair at the state of Christ’s Church today. Rather we should rejoice in the rich harvest of Christian souls the Lord already has. And we must pray for the Holy Spirit of God to guide his Church, and each one of us, to be better sowers of the word in future, so that the Lord’s harvest may be even greater.

Breaking the cycle of loss, anger, and violence

 

Man attacked by babies, bronze by Gustav Vigeland,
in the Vigeland Sculpture Park, Oslo, showing
a father struggling with the responsibilities of parenthood.

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Friday 26th June 2026

How (can) we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?

So says the author of Psalm 137, a portion of which we have just heard. It is a great cry of lament, of painful loss.

The background is this. The Babylonian empire had attacked and defeated the Israelites. Many, if not most of them, had been taken captive back to Babylon, with its great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. They had been forced to leave their homes, their businesses, the Temple in Zion where they sang praises to God. Everything dear to them had been ripped from them, and they were hundreds of miles from home, a subject people.

The Israelites loved music. A central part of their identity was to sing prayers and songs of praise to God in their Temple. Now they did not feel they had anything to sing about. Their captors mocked them, asking them to ‘sing the songs of Zion’ for their tormentor’s pleasure. No wonder they hung up their harps on the riverside willows.

Their first response was to remember all they had lost, to hold on to the memories. They vowed never to forget Jerusalem. We all respond to loss in this way, don’t we? We human beings cling to memories and keepsakes to remind us of joys we used to have, but have no longer.

We have all experienced loss in our lives of one kind or another. Speaking personally, I suffered a painful divorce, the loss of my home, and the close presence of the family I loved. I was angry, frustrated, and besieged by dark thoughts. I sank into depression. But thank God, I came out the other side, and I still have a close loving relationship with my children.

We can relate to the distress and bitter anger felt both by Israelis mourning the victims of Hamas, and by Palestinians, whose loved ones, homes and businesses the Israeli army has destroyed. Loss breeds anger, and anger breeds violence. It is the way we human beings are made. All too easily we can slip into a vicious cycle of anger and violence.

The compilers of the lectionary chose to omit the last 3 verses of Psalm 137. No doubt they felt they were unsuitable to hear in church. But I shall read them to you:

Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem's fall, how they said, "Tear it down! Tear it down! Down to its foundations!" O daughter Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us! Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!

What a terrible scream of rage! What should we make of the Psalmist’s desire for revenge? What should we make of his wish to see his enemies’ children brutally murdered?

We must not avoid confronting our fallen human nature. We must look it directly in the face. We can recognise the Psalmist’s rage in our own response to loss. It is not wrong to vent our feelings in prayer before our God, who knows our most intimate thoughts. But if we give in to our human desire for revenge, we feed a cycle of escalating violence, which damages ourselves as much as it damages our enemy.

Jesus shows us a better way, a way to break the cycle of anger and violence. ‘Love your enemies’, he tells us. ‘Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you’ (Matthew 6:27-28). God our Father is loving and merciful, so we must be too. Faced with loss, we must pray that the Holy Spirit may teach us to respond with the love and mercy of God our Father, that his Son models for us.

To finish, let us recall what became of the exiled Israelites. Some few years after Psalm 137 was written, the Babylonian Empire was destroyed by the Persians, who allowed the Israelites to return home. They did so peaceably. They never did smash any babies against rocks. It seems they vented their anger in their prayers, not their deeds, a far healthier response to their loss.

 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow - Part 2

 A reflection in the June 2026 issue of Grapevine, the parish magazine of the Nenagh Union of Parishes

The Doxology, a much loved hymn of praise, was written in 1674 by Thomas Ken, Bishop of  Bath & Wells

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Last month, I began to tell the story of creation in a new way, based on the findings of modern science. It does not conflict in any essential way with the old story we read in Exodus, in which we learn that God sees all he has made to be very good, and that we human beings are made in his image.

The God-given laws of nature are fine tuned to make possible the galaxies, stars and planets we observe. Through the continuing process of evolution, the same laws of nature have led to the bewildering diversity of life on our planet Earth, and quite possibly elsewhere in the universe. Evolution is the way our God continually creates diversity.

Evolution is not just a blind force of competition, in which the strong survive and the weak die – ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. More important is the natural selection of cooperative behaviour. Looking back over the history of life on Earth, we see our Creator at work building relationships between his creatures, and communities in which all may flourish. It would be a blasphemy not to cherish these relational communities.

Evolution favours cooperation between diverse creatures, building ecosystems: relationships and communities in which they flourish mutually. Consider, for example, the beautiful three-cornered dance between insects which pollinate plants in return for nectar and pollen, plants which produce fruit and seeds to feed animals, and animals which disperse seeds to make new plants.

Evolution also favours altruistic behaviour in social species. Sterile worker bees and ants tend and protect the eggs and larvae of their fertile sister the queen. Most birds and mammals will defend their babies even at the cost of their own lives.

Praise him all creatures here below!

So what about human beings like you and me? At our best we extend the altruism we see in other social species to our pets, to strangers, and to the rest of creation. This is the basis of the human emotion we call love. It is an echo of the self-giving love of God we discern in Jesus Christ. We are made in God’s image.

God has forged us through evolution from clever apes. Of all God’s creatures here on earth, we are the only ones who can imagine a future, make plans to achieve it, and act to do so. But for all our cleverness, our human plans do not always work out. Our future is always uncertain. We do well to remember that we are not masters of the universe: God is, and his laws don’t change.

Just as God has made us clever, so God has made us in his image to be moral beings, to be souls. Souls with the capacity we call conscience to distinguish right from wrong, truth from lies, love from hate - and to prefer good to evil, as he does. It is through our conscience that God’s Holy Spirit inspires us to make the right choices, so reaping a harvest of good which nourishes our souls.

We are not masters of our own souls, any more than we are masters of the universe. Our souls are as God made them, with free will, vulnerable to temptation. It is hard to be good. All too often we fail. We name that sin. And when we fail and sin, the evil we do poisons our soul.

But like a loving father, God does not wish the consequences of our sins to poison our souls, to consign us to eternal death, cut off forever from his loving kindness. He has given us the example of the life and ministry, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ to show us how to escape that fate. If we repent of our sins, God will forgive them. And as St John tells us, Jesus prays to his loving Father for us, asking him to give us eternal life in him, ‘And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent' (John 17:3).

Eternal life is not the same as everlasting life. Our lives are finite. They are like threads winding through the four dimension of space and time, interacting with the threads of other creatures. They begin at our conception and end at our death, after which all that makes us human is dispersed. But our God is outside the confines of space-time. He loves us unconditionally. He rejoices at the love we show for each other and for his other creatures summed over the whole of our life-thread, while he weeps over our failures to love as he does. Our resurrection to eternal life is not physical. It is to abide in the timeless presence of our loving God, who knows and loves us completely, from our first beginning to our very end.

Praise him above the angelic host!

So what of the future? We human beings are the product of an unfinished process. God continues to create the universe he loves, and our species, through evolution.

The French palaeontologist and Jesuit priest Teilhard de Chardin suggested that the biosphere of which we are part is evolving to become a noösphere. This consists of human minds and souls interacting with each other and with the rest of creation, moving toward a final point of unification with God. He named this the Omega point. He speculated that it resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is ‘God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, through him all things were made’.

If Teilhard de Chardin is right, then perhaps we imperfect human beings will evolve over countless eons towards the Omega point of unity with God. Perhaps our descendants in the far distant future will become the angelic host, perfected saints!

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost!

The glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ

 Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 9th June 2026

1898 negative of the image on the Shroud of Turin, by Secundo Pia

It is unlikely that St Paul ever saw Jesus in the flesh, face to face.

But he tells the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 4:5-10), ‘It is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’.

In Acts we read that Paul, then called Saul, had a blinding vision of light on the road to Damascus. He heard a voice saying, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:4-5). This encounter with the risen Christ changed everything for him. He became the Apostle Paul. He worked unstintingly to bring others to the knowledge of Christ. For Paul, I am sure, to see the face of Jesus is to feel the presence of the risen Christ in the most intimate way.

Like Paul, we have not seen the face of Jesus in the flesh. But we too meet the risen Christ in scripture, and in the sacraments. We have come to understand that ‘God… has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’. And we have heard Jesus declare ‘Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28:20).

Paul is clear that he is the slave of those he writes to, for Jesus’s sake. It is his ‘knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ which drives him to work for others, to be a slave for Jesus’s sake. And the same must be true for us.

But we are frail human beings. In Paul’s words, we are clay jars. The power to work for others is not our own. It ‘belongs to God and does not come from us’.

Paul goes on to acknowledge the trials the Corinthians are experiencing, and encourages them, saying, ‘We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed’. He tells them it is because he and they are ‘always carrying in the body the death of Jesus …that the life of Jesus’ may be revealed to others through them.

Like Paul and the Corinthians, we must feel in our innermost being, in our guts, the self-sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Then we can see ‘the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’. Then we need not fear anything, not affliction, not perplexity, not persecution, nor being struck down. Then we can live up to our calling, which is to show God’s love to others in the way we live our lives.

Love your enemies

 A reflection a morning worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 12th May 2026

Donald Trump deleted this image after many criticised him for posting it.
He may see himself as a Messiah, but he is the opposite.

‘Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you.’ How easy it is for us to say these words, but how hard it is for us to abide by them!

The reading we’ve just heard (Luke 6:27-38), is part of the ‘Sermon on the Plain’. It comes just after the Beatitudes which we said at the start of our service. In the reading, Jesus commands his disciples – then and now – both you and me - to respond to hatred with love, something which runs contrary to our natural human instincts.

Yet there is great psychological wisdom here. The key is the ethical principle of nonviolence. If we respond to hatred and violence with our own hatred and violence, we escalate conflict. We damage both our enemy and ourselves. Our mental health suffers.

There is nothing specifically Christian in this. Jains in India consider the highest ethical value of all to be nonviolence towards all living beings, in action, word and thought. Gandhi, a Hindu, drew on the long history of nonviolence in Indian religious thought in his successful campaign to force the British out of India.

But there is something much deeper in this for us as Christians. We believe that all human beings are created in the image of our loving God. Our God loves our enemies, just as much as he loves us. To hate our enemy is to reject God’s love for us. To take the speck of sawdust out of our enemy’s eye, we must first take the log out of our own eye.

What are the practical implications of this? Consider the President of the United States, Donald Trump. His cruel domestic policies are tearing families apart in his own country. His policy of using tariffs to bend other countries to do his bidding threatens livelihoods around the world. His boosting of fossil fuels puts at risk Earth’s natural systems upon which all life depends. And his reckless use of military force has brought only death and destruction. I can only see Trump as my enemy, and the enemy of all that is good in the world.

How should I as a Christian respond to Trump? Pope Leo IV shows us the way, I think. He has not bowed to Trump’s bullying. He has called him out, saying, ‘Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them. And Sarah Mullaly, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has expressed solidarity with Pope Leo, calling Christians to work and pray for peace, and to urge political leaders to pursue every possible peaceful and just means of resolving conflict.

In a spirit of nonviolence, I can speak truth to Trump and his supporters – by doing so I show my love for him. I can support those who reject Trump’s evil regime, even if it costs me – by doing so I do good to him. I can ask God to bless Trump by awakening his conscience to do good, not evil – by doing so I bless him. And I can pray that God will soften Trump’s hard heart - by doing so I pray for his immortal soul, that he may not be cut off from God’s love forever.

Only the people of the United States can remove Trump and his hate filled MAGA gang, of course. Mid-term elections are due in the autumn, and Americans increasingly reject him, according to opinion polls. We may hope that his capacity to do harm may soon be limited.

God’s love will surely defeat Trump’s hate in the end.

Anticipating Ascension and Pentecost

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan church on Sunday 10th May 2026, the 6th Sunday of Easter

Jesus' Farewell Discourse, Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255–1319)

On this 6^th and last Sunday of Easter, we continue to celebrate the central event of our faith, the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But today’s reading from John’s Gospel (John 14:15-21) leads us to look forward, to peek over the horizon so to speak, toward the great events of the Ascension next Thursday, and Pentecost in 2 weeks’ time, when we celebrate the coming of the Spirit which Jesus promised us.

The reading is just a small part of Jesus’s farewell discourse to his disciples. John sets the scene as after the last supper. Jesus has washed his disciples’ feet to teach them his example of service. He knows how things will play out. Judas Iscariot has already left to betray him to the authorities, who will arrest and execute him. Time is short for Jesus to prepare his followers for what must come, so his words are dense with meaning. Let me reflect on what they mean to me.

‘I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you’, says Jesus.

Even as Jesus endures Judas’s betrayal and waits to be taken to his death, he puts aside his own distress to comfort his disciples. He loves them. He will not desert them. And he promises he will continue to be present for them, whatever befalls.

 ‘In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me’, he says. The Gospels tell us the risen Christ appeared to the disciples between the Resurrection and his Ascension, when he returned to his Father - they experienced his presence physically. But I do not think this is what Jesus means here. Jesus is looking beyond the day of Ascension, through the millennia to our own time and into the distant future. Throughout the ages Christians continue to experience Jesus’s reassuring presence, as friend, brother, and redeemer. As Matthew (28:20) tells us, Jesus said, ‘Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age’. Jesus continues to be alive for us.

‘Because I live, you also will live’, says Jesus. We live – we can be fully human as God wants us to be – because we know, as Jesus tells us, ‘I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you’.

‘I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever.

Jesus promises his disciples they will receive the gift of another Advocate - ‘the Spirit of truth’, the Holy Spirit - to teach and support them as a mentor. As we read in Acts, they did indeed receive the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost. The Spirit led them to go out boldly, declaring their belief in Christ, to make disciples of others. The disciples they made in turn received the Spirit and did the same, and so on - down through the years, the centuries, the millennia. Christians continue to be inspired by the Spirit to this day. The result is the Church we know, in all the glorious variety of our traditions. The Spirit will be with us for ever, Jesus promises, helping us to discern the truth.

Notice, Jesus asks the Father to send the Spirit. He does not ask him to send scripture – not the Gospels, nor the letters of Paul, nor any other scripture. The primary gift Jesus asks for us from the Father is the Spirit, the Spirit of truth. Scripture is secondary – while we believe it is divinely inspired, we must also believe that we need the Spirit of truth to help us interpret it and discern the truth.

The disciples recognised the Spirit when they felt it working in them and saw its effects in others. So can we. ‘You know (the Spirit)’, says Jesus, ‘because he abides with you, and he will be in you’.

‘If you love me’, says Jesus, ‘you will keep my commandments’.

We need to take these words very seriously, I think. Jesus loves his disciples, but not in any soppy, sentimental way. His love demands obedience from his disciples. Just as loving parents demand obedience of small children, so that they do not run in front of cars, or burn or electrocute themselves.

‘Those who love me will be loved by my Father’, continues Jesus, ‘and I will love and reveal myself to them’. We cannot expect to feel the loving presence of Jesus, nor the love of God the Father, unless we are obedient.

But just what are these commandments of Jesus? We surely need the continuing help of the Advocate, the Spirit of truth, to enlighten us. But scripture is pretty clear on the bones of it, I think.

·         Matthew (22:36-40) tells us that when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, he answers, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’”

·         And John (13:34) tells us that Jesus says shortly before today’s reading, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another’.

If we follow these 3 commandments, I don’t think we can go too far wrong. But we need the help of the Spirit to do so. And when we fail, as we surely will from time to time, we need to seek the forgiveness that God freely offers to those who are truly penitent.

I hope you will take 3 things away from my words today:

1^st, as we celebrate Ascension Day next Thursday, let us give thanks for the continuing reassuring presence of Jesus, our friend, our brother, and our redeemer.

2^nd, as we look forward to Pentecost in 2 weeks time, let us give thanks that the Spirit, which the Father gave us at Jesus’s request, will continue to lead us to discern his truth.

And 3^rd, let us pray that the Spirit may guide us to keep Jesus’s commandments: to love God, to love our neighbours as ourselves, and to love one another as he loves us, so that we may know the loving presence of Jesus and the love of his Father.

I finish with the Collect of the Word set for today:

O God,
you have prepared for those who love you,
joys beyond our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love for you,
that, loving you above all else,
we may obtain your promises
that exceed all we can desire:
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen

 

Praise God from whom all blessings flow! Part 1

 A reflection in the May 2026 issue of Grapevine, the parishmagazine of the Nenagh Union of Parishes

The Doxology, a much loved hymn of praise,
was written in 1674 by Thomas Ken,
Bishop of Bath & Wells

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

I am starting to write this on Earth Day, 22^nd April, marked around the world as an annual opportunity to celebrate our wonderful, living planet. On this warm, sunny spring day, flowers are blooming, birds are singing, trees are leafing, and bees are buzzing. How can we not express our joy through praise to the Creator?

Genesis chapter 1 tells us how God made Earth and the heavens, and living creatures, including people like you and me. It is a myth, but like the best myths, within it we find important nuggets of timeless truth. Two are central to our faith, I think. First, God sees all he has made to be very good. And second, we human beings are made in the image of God our Creator.

Today, modern science compels us to tell the story of creation in a new way, perhaps even more glorious in its breadth and depth. The story is still being written, and there is much we do not understand yet. But it does not, I believe, conflict in any essential way with these timeless truths. Here is a precis of the story.

The Universe came into being from nothing around 13,000 million years ago in a hot burst of energy. After inflating rapidly, it started to cool, and the simplest elements, hydrogen and helium, began to clump together into the first galaxies and stars. The stars shone brightly through thermonuclear reactions, making ever heavier elements. They lived and died, and many exploded as super-novae, spewing heavy elements into clouds of cosmic dust. From this dust new generations of stars were born, and are still being born, many with planetary systems. About 4,000 million years ago our Earth formed, a small planet circling the star we call the Sun, on the outer edge of the Milky Way, one of innumerable galaxies in the observable universe.

If fundamental physical constants were not much the same as they are, none of this would have happened – there would be no galaxies, no stars, no planets, and no Earth on which biochemical processes could generate living beings. What an extraordinary fact. The God-given laws of nature have been fine-tuned to make our living world possible!

Praise him all creatures here below!

Life began to appear on Earth thousands of millions of years ago. At first simple single-celled organisms, like bacteria, using DNA as an instruction template, evolved to feed, grow, and reproduce. They competed against each other. They ate each other. But some evolved to cooperate, to form relationships with other cells where both benefited. Some even became engulfed in the cells of others. This is the origin of cellular structures called organelles, such as mitochondria, which power respiration, and chloroplasts, which make sugars from light, water and CO2. Both were once free-living single cells, and still retain their own DNA.

Complex, multi-cellular organisms, plants, fungi and animals, evolved as cells divided and differentiated into specialised organs. Bacteria and viruses evolved to live inside these creatures, forming communities such as our gut microbiome, so important to health. Later, fungi began to cooperate with higher plants to form the mycorrhizal root systems, which are essential for most plants to grow well.

The Creator fine-tuned the laws of nature to make the process of evolution possible. Evolution is the way he has made the bewildering diversity of life on Earth today, all descended from a single common ancestor. He will continue to use evolution into the distant future to create new worlds and communities we cannot even imagine.

Until recently, people have thought of evolution as driven by competition to eat and reproduce – ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. But more important than competition is cooperation, the selection of cooperative behaviour. By cooperating in different ways, different creatures flourish better together than they can apart. Looking back over the history of life on Earth, I see our Creator at work building relationships between his creatures, and communities in which all may flourish. It would be a blasphemy not to cherish these relational communities.

Next month I shall examine what God has created human beings like you and me to be. We are souls, with the capacity we call conscience to tell right from wrong, distinguish truth from lies, and prefer good to evil. And I shall peer into the distant future to speculate what we may become.

Joc Sanders, 24^th April 2026

The Good Shepherd

Address given at St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on the 4th Sunday of Easter, 26th April 2026.

Christ the Good Shepherd, attributed to Josep Vergara

‘The sheep follow (the shepherd) because they know his voice’.

So says Jesus, in today’s reading from St John’s Gospel (John 10:1-10). These words always used to puzzle me. It just didn’t chime with my own experience.

I remember helping to move my Grandfather’s sheep as a child. Those sheep certainly didn’t recognise anyone’s voice, let alone mine aged 12! You couldn’t lead them. In fact it was the divil’s own job to stop them charging off the wrong way. We stood in gaps, we waved our hands and we hunted them as best we could to their new field of fresh grass - but they just wouldn’t follow! Surely, I thought, shepherds in Jesus’s time must have had a very different relationship with their sheep to us.

But then some years ago a farmer explained it to me. He was amused by my difficulty moving sheep. ‘I never have any difficulty getting sheep to follow me’, he said. ‘I just carry a bag of sheep nuts with me, and they come running.’ There’s more than one way to move sheep - the sheep follow the shepherd who shows them the way to food!

‘The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack nothing’.

So begins the 23^rd Psalm we read earlier. We all love it, don’t we? It is such a favourite because it is so filled with comforting images of God caring for us and keeping us safe.

This metaphor of the shepherd runs right through Hebrew scripture. That’s hardly surprising because the Israelites were a pastoral people.

God is often likened to a shepherd, as in Psalm 23, or as Isaiah writes (Isaiah 40:11): “(The Lord God) will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.”

But Ezekiel 34:2 applies the metaphor to the leaders of Israel, in a great indictment for their bad leadership and corruption: “Ah you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?” The same indictment might be made of some of the great and powerful in the world today. I do not need to name them, do I?

Jesus chooses to use this metaphor of the shepherd in today’s reading (John 10:1-10).

It is the first part of a longer parable about his relationship with his disciples. In the very next verse, which the lectionary keeps for another day, Jesus continues “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

The image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is both familiar and lovely. We have all seen pictures of him as the strong, self-reliant, country man keeping his little flock safe from harm, carrying the lost sheep back to the flock on his shoulders.

In the rugged Judean countryside sheep had to be kept in a sheepfold at night, to prevent them straying into the crops, and to protect them from wild animals and rustlers. In the two halves of the passage we have just heard, Jesus is probably talking about two different kinds of sheepfolds.

The first kind is a large communal fold near a village, surrounded by fences with a gate. The village would employ a gatekeeper to protect the sheep in the communal fold. In the morning the gatekeeper would open the gate to the shepherd who would call his own flock out. The other flocks wouldn’t recognise his call and would stay behind until their own shepherd came.

The second kind of sheepfold would be up in the hills, far from the village, and much smaller. It would be used in summer when a single shepherd would stay out with the sheep for days or weeks on end. To protect the flock at night, the shepherd would lead them into a small enclosure, perhaps just a dry-stone wall he had built. Instead of a gate, he would lie down to sleep in the entrance, where any movement in or out would wake him up. I’ve found similar structures up in the Burren hills. When Jesus said “I am the gate”, everyone would understand what he meant.

In this passage I think Jesus is deliberately doing two things:

Firstly, he is promising his disciples – sheep who recognise his voice - that he will care for them. He will keep them safe and feed them. “Whoever enters by me will be saved”, he says.  They “will come in and go out and find pasture”. It is also his promise to us, today.

But secondly, Jesus is implicitly accusing the leaders of his own day for being bad shepherds, just as Ezekiel had done centuries before. “All who came before me are thieves and bandits;” he says, “but the sheep did not listen to them”. The thieves and bandits are surely those who mislead and oppress the people, whether in the time of Jesus or in our own day. As his disciples we must not listen to them, but rather we must listen to the gentle, loving voice of Jesus, our Good Shepherd, who leads us to green pastures beside still waters.

Jesus will always be our Good Shepherd.

We should hold on to that comforting, familiar image, and listen to his words. After all he has told us “Remember, I am with you always.”

But Jesus has handed on his shepherd’s mantle to others too, starting with the apostles. John (21:15-17) tells us that Jesus said to Peter “Feed my lambs … tend my sheep … feed my sheep”. Bishops from that day to this have inherited a shepherd’s mantle, as Bishop Michael has.

We give thanks for Bishop Michael’s wise and loving Christian leadership which it is his job as a bishop to give us. We give thanks too for the shepherding of our Rector Keith. They both need our prayers as they lead us to face many challenges. The thieves and bandits have not gone away, you know!

But shepherding is not just a job for those who are ordained. Jesus has commissioned every one of us - disciples who follow him - to continue his mission. We are all called to be shepherds in our different ways. Let us be attentive to the Holy Spirit prompting us to tend to the needs of our families, our friends, and the communities of which we are part.

So I finish in prayer with the Collect of the Word appointed for today:

God of all power,
you called from death our Lord Jesus,
the great shepherd of the sheep;
send us as shepherds to rescue the lost,

to heal the injured,

and to feed one another with understanding;

through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever. Amen

 

Living in Community

Reflection at Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator on Tuesday 14th April 2026

St Barnabas

‘Everything (the first Christian congregation in Jerusalem) owned was held in common’, we are told.

Does this mean that Christians today should practice some kind of primitive communism? I think not, because most Christians have never done so.

The first Christians in Jerusalem decided among themselves to live as a religious community, surrounding the apostles, and sharing all personal possessions. Their community must have been much like the monasteries that grew up in Ireland in the early days of the Irish church. Or much like the monasteries that developed in the high Middle Ages, following a ‘rule of life’ bound by vows of poverty, obedience and stability. Some few Christians today still decide to live together, sharing everything in community. While we may admire their lives of prayer and service, we are not all called to it.

In today’s reading (Acts 4:32-37), we heard the first mention of a Levite, Joseph, nicknamed Barnabas.

‘He sold a field that belonged to him, then brought the money, and laid it at the apostles’ feet’, we are told.

Later, the Christian community in Jerusalem sends Barnabas to oversee the growing church in Antioch. He seeks out St Paul to help him. After a year, the church in Antioch sends them back to Jerusalem with money for the relief of the poor Christians in Judea. Barnabas then travels with Paul on his first missionary journey. Together they visit the Jerusalem community again for discussions with the Christian community there, which we know as the Council of Jerusalem. The question they seek to answer is whether Gentiles who do not follow Jewish practices, such as circumcision, can be included in the church. The Council confirmed that Gentiles need not follow the Jewish law to be included, authorised Barnabas and Paul to continue their mission to Gentiles, and asked them to maintain contact with the Community at Jerusalem.

What a life Barnabas had, and how much we owe him! We celebrate him as a saint and example, a true hero of our faith! Sent out by the Community in Jerusalem, with Paul he founded churches across the Eastern Roman Empire. At first these were probably what we would call ‘house churches’, meeting to worship in each other’s homes, without holding possessions in common. They kept in touch with each other, and with the community in Jerusalem by exchanging letters in the hands of messengers.

We who are members of the Community of Brendan the Navigator are part of a dispersed religious community.

We are rooted in the Church of Ireland but with an ecumenical outlook. We welcome as members any who are interested in walking with us.

We do not ask members to live together or hold their personal possessions in common, but we do expect them to follow a simple rule of life: to be regular in prayer and contemplation, to support Community events, and to commit to a personal spiritual practice, which members must work out and apply for themselves.

Through the Community, we experience fellowship on our Christian life’s journey. We come together and walk together in the spirit of pilgrimage, sharing our personal faith and experience with others, and bringing back the gifts of faith we receive from them to our home places.

On Saturday this week the Community of Brendan will hold a 16km pilgrimage walk between the Cathedral of the Assumption in Carlow and St Lazerian’s Cathedral, Old Leighlin. I plan to attend a shortened walk of about 6km – my old legs would not carry me any further. I would be glad to give a lift to anyone who would like to join me.

 

We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses

Reflection at Compline in Killodiernan Church on the Wednesday in Holy Week, 1st April 2026

‘We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.’

So says the anonymous author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the reading (Hebrews 12:1-3). But who are these witnesses?

For the author of Hebrews, it was all the Hebrew patriarchs and prophets who held to their faith in Yahweh, the God of Israel, as the one true God. He gives a long list of them in the previous chapter. As Christians, we still hold them in honour today as our ancestors in faith.

But to them we add all the named Christian apostles, saints, and martyrs. They are examples to us of people who held firm in their faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and his teaching, despite every discouragement. They are heroes of our faith.

But our cloud of witnesses is even bigger than that. It includes all those Christians whose names we have never heard of, but who died in the faith of Christ. 

And it also includes all those, living or dead, who have formed our own faith. We remember them with gratitude for their examples – may their names be a blessing to us!

How wonderful it is to be surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses!

We are not alone on our personal journeys of faith. Others have gone before us. Let us take inspiration from them. As Hebrews urges us, let us ‘lay aside every weight’ that holds us back. Let us lay aside ‘the sin that clings so closely’ to us. And ‘Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us’, the race to the kingdom of God, our promised land.

And in this Holy Week, let us focus our minds on Jesus, ‘the pioneer and perfecter of our faith’.

He endured the pain of the cross, and the mocking of hostile crowds, ‘so that (we) may not grow weary or lose heart’, as the author of Hebrews puts it.

It is Jesus who has inspired the cloud of witnesses who in turn inspire us. Jesus showed them, as he shows us, the way to defeat evil, the Way of the cross. He also promises us forgiveness when we fall out of the race, as we surely shall sometimes. Though we fall all too often, when we seek God’s forgiveness, Jesus gives us the strength to pick ourselves up, and continue the race. With his help we will win the ultimate prize, we will abide with our triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit in his eternal kingdom.

 

Deep despair and triumphant joy

An Orthodox Icon of the Parousia, Christ's 2nd Coming

A reflection in the April 2026 issue of Grapevine, the newsletter for the Nenagh Union of Parishes

I am writing this in the run up to Palm Sunday and Holy Week, with Good Friday and Easter almost upon us. The moods of the season, expressed in liturgy, swing wildly from triumphant joy to deep despair and back again. You may find it a bit unsettling, as I do.

We begin with Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Jesus rides into town on a donkey. Cheering crowds, lay their cloaks and palm branches in front of him. We sing joyful hosannas. Though we also listen to the long Passion Gospel, and hold up crosses made from palm leaves.

The mood darkens as Good Friday approaches. The Gospel readings intimate what is to come. In the Maundy Thursday Gospel, Jesus washes his disciples’ feet, setting them an example of servant leadership. And we act out the Last Supper in his memory, through which Jesus offers the bread and wine as his body and his blood.

On Good Friday, we mourn as we reflect on the enormity of Jesus’s death. We hear his anguished cry of desolation, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ And we re-enact his last earthly journey to Golgotha and his agonising crucifixion.

Then on Easter Sunday we greet his resurrection with abounding joy and shouts of ‘Christ has risen!’.

It is as if the very weather at this time of year echoes these wild swings between joy and despair, in what the literary critic John Ruskin called ‘pathetic fallacy’. One moment we suffer an arctic blast with freezing rain and frosty nights, and the next we rejoice in balmy sunshine. One moment our spirits are lifted by the spring flowers, and the next they are dashed by the sight of frosted shoots.

And this year, as bystanders, we see and hear the frightful news of wars and destruction in Ukraine, the Middle East, and other places in our broken world. Cruel national leaders stride across the world as if they were Gods, spouting venom and launching brutal attacks, then pivoting to words of peace, as markets gyrate and rich men profit. We dread what is to come, as we hope and pray for peace.

But listen and absorb the Easter message, which is this. The kingdom of God has come near. Jesus’s Good Friday death and Easter resurrection promise us that evil cannot win. Our sins will be forgiven if we only repent, and we shall enter God’s eternal kingdom of peace and justice. Spring’s wild swings will turn to summer’s steady, fruitful days. Wars will end and tyrants will be overthrown. Let us face the future filled with Easter hope.

Resurrection

Address given at Killodiernan Church on Sunday 22nd March 2026, the 5th of Lent 

The vision of the valley of the dry bones. Ezekiel 37:4-5. Illustration by Gustave Doré

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Ezekiel connected dem dry bones.
Oh hear the word of the Lord!

Forgive me for my poor singing, but after hearing the words of Ezekiel’s stirring vision in our OT reading, I couldn’t resist it!

Both readings today are about resurrection: the renewal of life in someone or something that to all appearances is dead. Ezekiel (37:1-14) prophesies the resurrection of the House of Israel, at a time of desolation and exile. And John (11:1-45) tells us the story of the raising of Lazarus.

So today I’m going to examine these readings more closely and ponder the meaning of resurrection. What a fine subject resurrection is for a fine spring day, when all about us seeds and plants and trees and lambs and calves are bounding into new life in our gardens and fields!

So firstly, what about Ezekiel’s dry bones?

Ezekiel is writing in Babylon around 580BC, shortly after Nebuchadnezzar’s armies had laid waste to Jerusalem and the Temple. The Israelite leaders and many of the people had been deported into exile by the banks of the Euphrates, close to Babylon in what is now modern Iraq.

Ezekiel conjures up such a vivid picture, doesn’t he? The unburied corpses of the Israelites killed in the Babylonian invasions have weathered to parched, dislocated and scattered bones. We are told they represent the whole people of Israel, the exiles crushed by despair, and the dislocated and disoriented Israelites left behind, not just the dead. And Ezekiel tells this devastated people that their God YHWH will not let them down; he will open their graves, he will give them life, and he will restore them to their land.

Ezekiel’s prophesy is, of course, a metaphor, a metaphor carefully crafted to give a devastated nation hope, hope that one day they will be restored to their land. His words resonated with the people of Israel, and helped to hold them together, until eventually the exiles were able to return to Jerusalem 50 years later, when Babylon in turn was captured by Cyrus the Persian. The ancient people of Israel did indeed experience a resurrection to new life!

These words resonated once again with the devastated Jewish people of Europe, emerging from the Nazi extermination camps after the Holocaust, the Shoah in Hebrew, as they created their modern state of Israel in Ezekiel’s ancient homeland. A heart-breaking consequence has been the devastation of the Palestinian people they displaced, which they call the Nakba, or Catastrophe in Arabic. As we walk with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem and the cross this Lent, let us pray for an end to the evil cycle of hatred and bloodshed there, for reconciliation with peace and justice, for a resurrection to new life for all in the Holy Land.

The black slaves transported to America were another devastated people. The plight of the Israelites in exile and Ezekiel’s message of hope resonated with them too, inspiring Gospel songs like ‘Dem bones’, which are now part of our common inheritance.

Now let’s turn to John’s Gospel and the raising of Lazarus.

It’s a rather long passage, and it’s a puzzling story, but the Evangelist fills it with so much incidental detail that the scenes really come to life. It is easy to imagine being there,

One lovely thing that shines out is how much Jesus loved Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus.

Luke also tells us about Martha and Mary, but not Lazarus. If you remember, Mary sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to him talk, leaving Martha to do all the housework. And when Martha complained, Jesus gently chided her for being so distracted by mundane tasks. How delightful it must have been for Jesus to visit these close friends, to relax, to be himself, and to drink in the warmth and love of their home. As a wandering teacher Jesus had no home of his own. I feel sure that he must have needed that sort of refreshment, just as much as we do.

But this visit was different. Lazarus was dead. Both Martha and Mary separately said to him ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died’. I think Jesus must have felt guilty for arriving late. When he saw Mary weeping, Jesus too broke down and wept. Our translation has it that he was ‘deeply moved’, but this really isn’t strong enough at all. The Greek word used by John is also used of a horse snorting. The meaning must be that Jesus’s heart was so wrung by anguish that he howled.

And then Jesus did what he had come to do: he called Lazarus out from the grave, back from the dead.

There are a number of things that puzzle me about John’s story:

Firstly, some of the words he puts in Jesus’s mouth seem rather out of character to me. Think for a moment about his declaration that Lazarus’s illness ‘is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it’. What a cold way to look at a friend’s suffering! Could Jesus really have said that? John's purpose in writing his Gospel was to convert Greek speaking Jews who were not believers. Did this lead him to put words in Jesus’s mouth?

Secondly, John makes it clear that the raising of Lazarus is the immediate reason why the Jewish authorities decided to do away with Jesus, leading directly to his crucifixion. Yet the other three Gospels say absolutely nothing about it, nothing at all! We know that at least one of the apostles was there, Thomas. So how could the other Gospel writers not have heard of and written about such an important miracle, with such momentous results, if John’s account is correct?

And then there’s the elephant in the room. How can we explain satisfactorily - scientifically - a four day old, stinking corpse rising up and walking? A person who has apparently just died might be woken from a coma. But one that has started to decompose?

There may be problems with John’s story. Some of us will believe that it all happened just as John sets down that it did. Others will be much less certain, or interpret it metaphorically. And we can never know for sure what exactly happened so long ago. But does it really matter whether or not Jesus literally brought a corpse to life in Bethany in AD30?

 

What really matters, I think, is the spiritual message.

That message is that that Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Perhaps John has crafted the whole story around that message.

 

Jesus said to Martha ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die’.

 

One thing is clear – Jesus is not speaking of physical life. We all know that Christians experience physical death just like everyone else. We will all die.

 

But if we believe in Jesus Christ, if we accept what he teaches us about his loving Father God as true, if we stake our lives upon it, then we enter into a new relationship with God, and we enter into a new relationship with life. We become certain of God’s love. We become certain that above all he is a redeeming God – if sin is death, forgiveness is resurrection. And the fear of death vanishes, because death means nothing more than a merging with God, the great lover of souls.

 

With faith in Jesus Christ, our life becomes a new thing, a strong thing, such a lovely thing, that we cannot imagine it ending incomplete. ‘Do you believe this?’ said Jesus. ‘Yes, Lord’ said Martha, ‘I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world’.

 

I shall finish in prayer with a Collect of the Word

Life-giving God,

your Son came into the world

to free us all from sin and death:

breathe upon us with the power of your Spirit,

that we may be raised to new life in Christ,

and serve you in holiness and righteousness all our days;

through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit. Amen