This archive entry brought from our old site. All entries written by Father Tom Sullivan.
Friday 04/30/10 Readings Posted 04/29/10 10:25pm
Most of us grew up knowing those words of Jesus: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” One way of understanding them is to put a colon after the word way, making it, “I am the way: the truth and the life.” It then says there are two ways by which he enables us to get to the Father. He is first the true teaching about God. He is second the life of grace that empowers us to get to God.
Where this modern text speaks of many dwelling places, most of us first heard it as many mansions. That translation came from a long ago England when the word mansion meant any place to dwell.
Actually what Our Lord did was compare his advance mission to the Promised Land to that of the emissaries of Moses who scouted out the land west of the Jordan, dividing it into sections for each of the tribes and each of their clans.
Thursday 04/29/10 Readings Posted 04/28/10 10:05pm
The first sentence in our reading from the Acts tells us something that happened after Paul and Barnabas sailed from Cyprus up to Perga (in modern day Turkey.) “John left them and returned to Jerusalem.”
That John was actually Mark who wrote the first of the Gospels. Paul gave up on Mark for being a disciple who would give up because of being homesick. Later, after completing this first of their missionary journey’s, when they were embarking on a second Barnabas (who was Mark’s uncle) assured Paul that Mark had matured enough to become a trustworthy associate. Paul would not give Mark a second chance, so he and Barnabas split up over their difference.
