Gospel reading Matthew 25:31-46 ‘The sheep and the goats.’ It is a very familiar reading. As is often the case though with familiar stories, that very familiarity can bring us to make assumptions or to miss what the passage is really about. The easy, but mistaken interpretation of the story bluntly put is that if we are kind and good to people we go to heaven, if we are not we go to the other place! In fact if asked, many people would describe a Christian as someone kind

Dear friends in Christ, I sit to write this article as we continue in November, the Month of the Holy Souls. This inevitably leads to thinking about the subject of death, and of resurrection – of our own mortality too. It also leads me to think about funerals, since this is the most common time for me to come into direct contact with what might be described as the ‘common view of death.’ This is a re-write of an article I wrote a few years ago. The questions raised for me by

Have you ever met a saint? I suppose most of us, if asked that question would say yes, we have. That is not surprising. For most of us, in common parlance a saint is someone who is very good – perhaps a person who has coped with a great deal of trouble perhaps “Oh she is such a saint.” We might perhaps mean someone who is a good in terms of care for others. Another meaning that we might refer to is someone whom we regard as a good Christian. In New Testament times the ter