6 March, Lenten Reading: ordinary, decent people

Windswept Barley, Kent.

The book of Ruth is a short read, a comfort read, at least by the time you reach the happy ending. Ruth, of course, is the 30x great grandmother of Egypt, her adventures with her mother-in-law Naomi part of his family history. And she was a foreigner, not a member of the people of Israel, but still one of the people of God.

This article by Fr Richard J Clifford, is from America magazine: The Book of Ruth reminds us to take seriously the lives of ordinary people. Read them in either order, and take more seriously your own life, and those of people around you. A good Lenten exercise!

17th February: The Wedding Feast: I.

Adrian and Carolyn get Married.

Marriages, throughout history, have been celebratory. In the Old Testament we read of lavish post-wedding parties and celebrations lasting a week, or even longer. Indeed today, if we press someone to describe a recent wedding they attended, more often they speak of the reception rather than the ceremony or ritual marking the couple’s union.

The bride and groom have always been the stars of the ancient wedding feasts, and this holds true for modern wedding receptions. The happiness of the married couple is apparent to all in attendance. The event is a celebration marking the beginning of a long and blissful life together. The parents of both the bride and groom are bursting with joy and pride, happy the bridal couple have been joined, and for the prospects of the couple to be together forever. And, all those invited, rejoice in the happiness of the bride and groom, and their families.

And, so it will be at the close of the age, of which St. John to wrote, “Blessed are those who have been invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” The blessed will celebrate Christ claiming the Church as his bride, to live happily together for all of eternity.

God calls us to both celebrate marriage and to honour the covenant made between man and woman to live the rest of their lives happily together. This is yet another example of man being made in God’s image; our marriages are modelled after the marriage of Christ and his Church.

DW.