Fr Richard considers both the challenge and power of Jesus’ command to love our enemies, which can help to break the cycle of violence in our world. A reflection on the daily mass readings.

Readings for Saturday of the first week of Lent can be found here.

On 8 November 1987 in the town of Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, the IRA detonated a bomb during the Remembrance Sunday ceremony at the town’s war memorial. In one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles, 12 people were killed and 63 were injured. One of those who lost their lives was 20-year-old nurse Marie Wilson. Her father Gordon, who was there that day but survived, later impressed many with these words: “I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. I shall pray for those people [the bombers] tonight and every night”. 

Gordon Wilson’s attitude to his daughter’s terrible murder is surely a living embodiment of Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, Jesus says. Once again, he is urging his followers to go beyond the scope of the Old Testament law “love your neighbour”. The Old Testament never actually paired that with “hate your enemy”, as Jesus implies, but that was often the outcome. “Love your neighbour” was taken to be the limit. For Jesus, Christian love should have no limit – it should embrace everyone, even those who have wronged us or who we might have good reason to hate. 

Of course, this is not easy. It is an almost instinctive human reaction to want to retaliate towards those who have done us harm, to get our own back. This is why Gordon Wilson’s words in 1987 made such an impact. But retaliation only breeds more hatred and more violence, as the people of Northern Ireland and many other trouble spots know only too well. It took the attitude of “love your enemies”, of reaching out to the other side, to break the cycle of violence in Northern Ireland and allow the peace process to get under way. Gordon Wilson, who died in 1995, two years before the Good Friday Agreement, was an inspiration for that process. Let us pray that his attitude, the attitude of Jesus, the attitude of reconciliation not revenge, may take root in our lives, in our society, and in our world.

Mass today is in St Mary’s at 11.30am (Stations of the Cross at 11am).

If you’d like more resources for daily prayer, then check out our Day By Day pages.

We are faced with many choices in life. How do we know the right ones to make, and what their consequences will be? Fr Richard reflects on today’s daily mass readings.

Readings for Friday of the first week of Lent can be found here.

Often in life we are faced with choices, and it’s not always easy to know the right one to make. Sometimes, we won’t know if we’ve made the right choice until the consequences are known. For example, in a restaurant we are faced with a range of options on the menu. We might agonise over what to have, what will taste nice or be most healthy. Then when the food comes, it might be delicious or we might wish we’d chosen something else. There’s a split second from when a potentially humorous remark forms in our mind to deciding whether to say it. The person we’re addressing may find it funny, or be deeply offended.

Today’s readings are about the choices we make, and their outcomes. Ezekiel talks about a wicked person who makes the conscious decision to turn away from sin and follow the right path. But also, there is the case of a previously righteous person who decides to turn to wickedness. One path, Ezekiel says, leads to life, while the other will end in destruction. This theme is taken up in the Gospel, where Jesus says that right choices begin deep down inside us, in the heart. It’s a bit like knowing instinctively the right meal to choose or whether a remark will land well. For him, it’s not enough just to follow an instruction manual, to do what is written in the letter of the law, such as “you shall not murder”. That was the approach of the Pharisees. Jesus says that Christian righteousness must go further; it’s about choosing the right attitude (such as rejecting anger), and this will lead to the right outcomes. 

Going beyond the letter of the law can sometimes be a challenge – but Jesus often challenges us! It’s hard always to choose that right inner attitude that goes beyond the letter of the law. Thankfully, Jesus is always there to guide us. All we need to do is open our hearts to him, and he will help us to make the right choices for ourselves and for our neighbours.

Mass today is in St Saviour’s at 10am.

If you’d like more resources for daily prayer, then check out our Day By Day pages.

No matter our rank or status in this world, we can all come before God in prayer and are equal in his eyes. Fr Richard reflects on the daily mass readings.

Readings for Thursday in the first week of Lent can be found here.

There was a moving moment during the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September 2022. Just before the prayer of committal, all of the royal regalia – the crown, orb and sceptre – were removed from the coffin and placed on the altar of St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Then, unadorned, the Queen’s body descended to the earth just like the lowliest of her subjects. 

Death is a great leveller – it does not respect rank or status. The same is true of prayer. In our first reading, another queen, Esther, comes before God to plead with him for her people. Esther, a Jew in exile, had married the king of Persia. One of the king’s henchmen was planning to exterminate all the Jews in Persia, and Esther is about to plead with her husband that he might intervene and save them. Before she does this, she seeks God’s help in prayer. Esther acknowledges that her status counts for nothing: “I am alone”, she prays, “and have no helper but you”. In a verse missed out from the passage we heard, she also takes off her royal robes and covers her head with ashes and dung.

In the Gospel, Jesus is encouraging his listeners in the practice of prayer. Each and every person, prince or pauper, duke or dustman, can ask, search and knock, for all we all share the same heavenly Father. It can be tempting, as human beings, as Christians, and as a church, to compare ourselves with others. “I wish I was more like that person, who seems more accomplished than me”, we might think. “Why can’t our church be more like that one down the road, which appears more successful.” And then we are tempted to think it all depends on us, to strive more keenly, or work harder. And yet, when we come to God in prayer, there are no distinctions. All we need to do, like Queen Esther, is to throw ourselves on his mercy. Sometimes, that is all we have left, but what a treasure it is. 

Mass today is in St Dyfrig and St Samson, Grangetown at 10am

If you’d like more resources for daily prayer, check out our Day By Day pages.

A oes gennym ni ein llygaid ar agor i sylwi ar Dduw yn ein plith, neu a yw pethau eraill yn tynnu ein sylw? Myfyrodd ar ddarlleniadau dyddiol y Tad Richard.

Cliciwch yma am ddarlleniadau heddiw. Click here for today’s readings.

Am ddwy flynedd bron, arferwn yrru bob wythnos i weld fy nhad yng Ngwlad yr Haf. A chyn hynny wedi gwneud yr un daith bob yn ail wythnos am ryw dair blynedd. Fel y gallwch ddychmygu, daeth y daith yn adnabyddus iawn i mi. Yn wir, unwaith neu ddwy es i i ‘auto-pilot’. Un tro, pan oedd fy meddwl ar chwâl, bu bron i mi golli fy nhro oddi ar yr M5 tan y funud olaf. Dro arall, cefais fy hun ym Mryste heb unrhyw gof o groesi Pont Hafren.

Gall bywyd wneud hyn i mi weithiau. Down mor gyfarwydd â sefyllfa neu dasg nes i ni beidio â gweld yr hyn sydd o’n blaenau. Dyma’r cyhuddiad y mae’r Iesu yn ei wneud yn erbyn ei genhedlaeth ef ei hun yn yr Efengyl heddiw. Maent wedi mynd ynghlwm â’u pethau beunyddiol nes iddynt ffaelu sylwi fod Mab Duw yn eu plith, yn eu galw i edifeirwch ac i newid.

Gwrthgyferbynia’r Iesu yr osgo yma yn erbyn pobl y clywwn amdanynt yn yr Hen Destament. Jonah, y proffwyd anfodlon, a yrrwyd i bregethu edifeirwch i drigolion Ninefe, sef dinas Mosul yn Irac heddiw. Gallai’r bobl fod wedi anwybyddu Jonah ond fe wrandawon nhw, ac o’r person isaf i’r brenin ei hun daethant i edifarhau. O’r herwydd, gwaredodd Duw y bobl.

Mewn stori arall, gwelir Brenhines Sheba (Brenhines y De) yn cydnabod fod Solomon yn llawn doethineb Duw a theithiodd yn bell i’w weld, trafod gydag ef a gwrando arno. Cafodd y Frenhines a phobl Ninefe agoriad llygaid. Maen nhw’n cydnabod fod gweithredoedd Duw o’u blaenau ac yn ymateb iddynt. Cofiwn mai o’r Cenhedloedd mae’n nhw’n hanu, pobl y tu allan.

Mae’r Iesu’n dweud wrth ei genhedlaeth, “Gwnaeth pobl Ninefe a’r Frenhines yn well na chi, er fod rhywbeth mwy o’ch blaen chi.” Beth amdanon ni, heddiw? Ydyn ni wedi mynd yn ddi-ofal ac yn gwrthod cydnabod fod Duw ar waith? Felly, yn ystod y Garawys hwn, gadewch i ni fod yn ymwybodol o’r hyn y mae Duw yn ei wneud yn ein bywydau ni, bywydau eraill, ac yn ein cymuned. Gadewch i ni fod yn ddigon dewr i ymateb.

For almost two years, I would drive every week to visit my father in Somerset. And before that, I was visiting every other week for about three years. As you can imagine, I became very familiar with the route. So familiar, in fact, that once or twice I seemed to go into “auto pilot” mode. On one occasion, with my mind elsewhere, I nearly missed the junction on the M5 where I had to turn off, and only realised at the last minute. Another time, I got to Bristol and realised I had had no memory of crossing the Severn Bridge!

Life can do that to us sometimes. We become so used to a situation or a task that we stop noticing what is right in front of us. This is the charge that Jesus is making about his generation in our Gospel reading. They have become complacent, so caught up in their own lives, that they have failed to realise that the Son of God is in their midst, calling them to repentance and change. 

Jesus contrasts their attitude with that of people we read about in two stories from the Old Testament. Jonah was the reluctant prophet who was sent to preach a message of repentance to the people of Nineveh, the modern-day city of Mosul in Iraq. The people could have ignored Jonah, but instead they listened, and repented, from the lowliest person to the king. The result, of course, was that God spared the people. 

In the other story, the Queen of Sheba (or Queen of the South), recognised that King Solomon was full of God’s wisdom, and she travelled a great distance to see him, speak with him, and listen to him. Both the people of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba had their eyes open. They recognised where God was at work in front of them, and they responded. What’s more, they were both Gentiles, or outsiders. 

Jesus is saying to his generation: “the people of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba did better than you, and yet you have something greater to notice than they had”. And what about us? Have we become complacent, and stopped noticing where God is at work? This Lent may we be on the lookout for what he is doing in our lives, in the lives of others, and in our community, and then have the courage to respond.  

Yr Offeren yn Gymraeg heno yn Eglwys Sant Dyfrig a Sant Samson am 5.30pm. Mass in Welsh tonight is in St Dyfrig & St Samson at 5.30pm.

Prayer was at the heart of Jesus’ life and ministry and so it should be in ours, writes Fr Richard in today’s reflection on the daily mass readings.

Readings for Tuesday in the first week of Lent can be found here.

On trips to the seaside as a child, whether it be Weston-super-Mare, Burnham-on-Sea or even Tenby, I remember being fascinated by sticks of rock. I was – and still am – intrigued about how they get the lettering to go all the way through. No matter where you break the stick of rock, you find the same letters and words. 

Today’s Gospel comes from the very centre of Jesus’ major teaching known as the Sermon on the Mount. And what do we find when we break into the middle of his teaching? What is written all the way through? It is, of course, the Lord’s Prayer. It is as though this prayer is summing up all that Jesus is trying to say. This should come as no surprise to us, for prayer ran through the heart of Jesus’ life and ministry, like writing through a stick of rock. Many were the times when he got up early to go and pray on his own; no doubt he spent much of those 40 days in the wilderness in prayer; and we all know that moving scene in the Garden of Gethsemane where he prayed to the Father. Even while hanging on the Cross, Jesus continued praying, especially the Psalms.

It goes without saying, then, that prayer ought to run through the centre of our lives as Christians and our life as a church. We need to deepen our relationship with God if we are to serve him. The Lord’s Prayer, if we look at it carefully, is also a radical call to action. “Your kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven” is asking for nothing less than the transformation of this world into something more like the life of heaven. The first session of our Lent group tonight focuses on this theme, as we look at the quest for justice shown by the Old Testament prophets and how we might follow in that tradition today. But the Lord’s Prayer also acknowledges that transformation begins on the personal level. We are called to practice the forgiveness and reconciliation with each other that we have received from God. We need not only to say the Lord’s Prayer, but put it into action. If we have its words running right through us, then we can begin to change the world.

Mass tonight is in St Mary’s at 6.30pm.

If you’d like more resources for daily prayer, then check out our Day By Day pages.