19/11/2025

It is about two hundred and fifty years before the final revelation, the Resurrection, confirms that the death of our bodies is not the end of our being that the events of this morning's first reading took place in Jerusalem .

The mother of the seven sons knew that each had been formed in her womb but that she was not the source of their life and that the whole world was also the work of IAMIAM. This is the base on which we all have to build our lives in this world.

Even if human intelligence were capable of truly knowing God human language is not capable of communicating that knowledge. Matthew, Mark and Luke often make assumptions about Jesus' motives in teaching when and what he does.

Today Luke feels justified to presume that Jesus was motivated to teach this parable because of  his, with his followers, proximity to Jerusalem and their ever present hope that he would soon establish a new Davidic Kingdom, a never-ending Jewish state.

This is another parable which leaves me with a feeling of disquietude as it does not fit easily into the definite "My kingdom is not of this world" declared before Pilate. The words "To them that have more will be given" is definitely true in the Billionaire World of Mammon but I am at a loss how to apply them in my spiritual life that strives to be "true to every word that comes from the mouth of God".

The conclusion to this parable said by the king who rewards in this world "Bring them here and slaughter them before me" is also not at all "Christian". 

It is, however, condemned by the message of his whole life in this world as lived by Our Saviour and so is probably some sort of textual aberration rather than a true saying  of Jesus.