Editor’s Notes

The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost recounts Our Lord’s parable of the Unmerciful Servant:

At that time, Jesus spoke to His disciples this parable: The kingdom of heaven is likened to a king who desired to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun the settlement, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And as he had no means of paying, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. But the servant fell down and besought him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will pay you all!’ And moved with compassion, the master of that servant released him, and forgave him the debt.

But as that servant went out, he met one of his fellow-servants who owed him a hundred denarii and he laid hold of him, and throttled him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ His fellow-servant therefore fell down and began to entreat him, saying, ‘Have patience with me and I will pay you all.’ But he would not; but went away and cast him into prison until he should pay what was due.

His fellow-servants therefore, seeing what had happened, were very much saddened, and they went and informed their master of what had taken place. Then his master called him, and said to him, ‘Wicked servant! I forgave you all the debt, because you entreated me. Should not you also have had pity on your fellow-servant, even as I had pity on you?’ And his master, being angry, handed him over to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him.

So also My heavenly Father will do to you, if you do not each forgive your brothers from your hearts.

This passage follows immediately on from Christ’s teaching on fraternal correction, and forms the natural continuation of that discourse: passing from the duty of admonishing one’s brother, the the higher duty of forgiving him.

The scene belongs to the later Galilean ministry, after Christ has withdrawn from Capharnaum and begun to prepare his disciples for the life of the Church. St Peter’s question, “How often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him?” opens the way for Christ to reveal the true measure of mercy in the kingdom of heaven.

The parable of the unmerciful servant contrasts the infinite and unpayable debt each man owes to God with the trifling debts owed between men.

For the Apostles, this lesson had immediate significance: it defined the spirit in which authority must be exercised within the Church. Forgiveness is becomes an imitation of God’s own divine sovereignty, and a means of reopening closed channels of grace, and preserving peace within the mystical body.

For us, the parable discloses a fearful symmetry between God’s mercy and our own. Each act of forgiveness becomes a key to God’s grace, while hardness of heart closes heaven itself.

The measure by which we forgive becomes the very measure by which we are judged.

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The Measure of Forgiveness

The Preaching of the Cross, Vol. I

Chapter IX
Fr Henry James Coleridge, 1886, 159-70
St. Matthew xviii. 21-35; Story of the Gospels, § 88
Burns and Oates, 1886.

Part I: Why must we forgive ‘seventy times seven’ times?

Christ teaches that forgiveness knows no limits, because mercy is the very measure of divine life within the soul.

1. Why must we forgive ‘seventy times seven’ times?

Part II: Why the unpayable debt of sin requires us to be merciful to others

Christ’s parable of the Unmerciful Servant shows that no offence against us is anything compared to our own debt to God.

2. Why the unpayable debt of sin requires us to be merciful to others

Part III: How to make prayers rebound on you as curses

Christ warns that unmercifulness destroys grace at its root, and shuts the very gates of God’s mercy upon the unmerciful.

3. How to make prayers rebound on you as curses

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BONUS ARTICLES

Private Revelations, Theology and the Crisis – What should be their relationship?

Private revelations cannot be used to contradict traditional theology or short-circuit open questions without creating serious problems, especially in the current ecclesiastical crisis.

• Private Revelations, Theology and the Crisis – What should be their relationship?

An ‘Ottaviani Intervention’ on Signs and Wonders

Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani – author of the famous ‘Ottaviani Intervention’ critiquing the Novus Ordo rite – clarifies the place of signs and wonders in Christian life, and how to avoid being deceived.

• An ‘Ottaviani Intervention’ on Signs and Wonders

True and false miracles in the life of the Church explained

Miracles play a central role in confirming and making credible the claims of Christ and his Church. But what about false miracles? We need be on our guard and hold to doctrine before everything else.

• True and false miracles in the life of the Church explained

‘Bread from their hands’: Private revelation and Catholics today

Fr Reid Hennick sets out the proper place of private revelations in the life of Catholics.

• ‘Bread from their hands’: Private revelation and Catholics today

How should Catholics treat private revelations?

It is essential that Catholics grasp the relationship between private revelations and Catholic teaching. The Church’s magisterium cannot be replaced or supplied by private revelations.

• How should Catholics treat private revelations?

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

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Editor’s Notes

The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost recounts Our Lord healing the son of the royal official at Capharnaum.

At that time, there was a certain royal official whose son was lying sick at Capharnaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and besought Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Jesus therefore said to him, Unless you see signs and wonders, you do not believe. The royal official said to Him, Sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said to him, Go your way, your son lives. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and departed. But even as he was now going down, his servants met him and brought word saying that his son lived. He asked of them therefore the hour in which he had got better. And they told him, Yesterday, at the seventh hour, the fever left him. The father knew then that it was at that very hour in which Jesus had said to him, Your son lives. And he himself believed, and his whole household.

The miracle occurs at the outset of Our Lord’s public ministry – soon after he had spent a few days among the Samaritans. It marks the transition from his early work at Judea, back to Galilee – which will be the new centre of his work for souls.

The central lesson of this passage is the testing and perfecting of faith. The nobleman begins with an imperfect belief, desiring Christ’s bodily presence; but he grows to a purer trust in His word, and receives not only the healing of his son but the enlightenment of his whole household.

The miracle demonstrates that Christ’s power is not confined by space, and that even his words carry healing efficacy.

For us, it is a reminder that our faith is in God’s revelation, already delivered once to the Apostles, and sufficient for us. In our day, many base their faith – or at least their opinions about the crisis in the Church – on private revelations and accounts of miracles which they have read about online. This is very unsound, as the bonus articles below will demonstarte.

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The Healing of the Nobleman’s Son

The Ministry of St. John the Baptist

Chapter XXV
St. John iv, 43-54; Story of the Gospels, § 27
(Read at Holy Mass on the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost)
Burns and Oates, 1886.

Part I: Why does Christ rebuke those who seek signs and wonders?

And why does Jesus seem to prolong the agony of a desperate father seeking healing for his son?

1. Why does Christ rebuke those who seek signs and wonders?

Part II: Does St John’s Gospel contain non sequitur phrases?

Some phrases from the Fourth Gospel might seem surprising or mystifying – but once we understand the author’s purpose, it all makes sense.

2. Does St John’s Gospel contain non sequitur phrases?

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BONUS ARTICLES

Private Revelations, Theology and the Crisis – What should be their relationship?

Private revelations cannot be used to contradict traditional theology or short-circuit open questions without creating serious problems, especially in the current ecclesiastical crisis.

• Private Revelations, Theology and the Crisis – What should be their relationship?

An ‘Ottaviani Intervention’ on Signs and Wonders

Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani – author of the famous ‘Ottaviani Intervention’ critiquing the Novus Ordo rite – clarifies the place of signs and wonders in Christian life, and how to avoid being deceived.

• An ‘Ottaviani Intervention’ on Signs and Wonders

True and false miracles in the life of the Church explained

Miracles play a central role in confirming and making credible the claims of Christ and his Church. But what about false miracles? We need be on our guard and hold to doctrine before everything else.

• True and false miracles in the life of the Church explained

‘Bread from their hands’: Private revelation and Catholics today

Fr Reid Hennick sets out the proper place of private revelations in the life of Catholics.

• ‘Bread from their hands’: Private revelation and Catholics today

How should Catholics treat private revelations?

It is essential that Catholics grasp the relationship between private revelations and Catholic teaching. The Church’s magisterium cannot be replaced or supplied by private revelations.

• How should Catholics treat private revelations?

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

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Editor’s Notes

The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost recounts Our Lord’s parable of the Wedding Feast:

At that time, Jesus spoke to the chief priests and the Pharisees in parables, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like a king who made a marriage feast for his son. And he sent his servants to call in those invited to the marriage feast, but they would not come. Again he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, behold, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatlings are killed, and everything is ready; come to the marriage feast.’

But they made light of it, and went off, one to his farm, and another to his business; and the rest laid hold of his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. But when the king heard of it, he was angry; and he sent his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burnt their city.

Then he said to his servants, ‘The marriage feast indeed is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy; go therefore to the crossroads, and invite to the marriage feast whomever you shall find.’ And his servants went out into the roads, and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; and the marriage feast was filled with guests.

Now the king went in to see the guests, and he saw there a man who had not on a wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet and cast him forth into the darkness outside, where there will be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.’ For many are called, but few are chosen.

This parable was delivered in Holy Week, after Christ’s triumphal entry and His denunciation of the Pharisees. The chief priests had just withdrawn in anger after the parables of the Two Sons and the Wicked Husbandmen.

Our Lord reveals the rejection of Israel and the calling of the Gentiles, warning that even those admitted to His Church must retain the “wedding garment” of faith and obedience. The parable, which is a development of that of the great banquet, moves from the sentence upon the Jewish nation to the moral conditions of belonging to the new Kingdom.

It marks a transition from judgment to instruction – Christ discloses both the generosity and the severity of the Gospel. The new covenant is universal, merciful, and regal – and yet it demands much from its subjects.

For those who are already members of the Church, it is a reminder that we have been blessed, but a warning that outward profession of faith is not sufficient without actual faith and charity in our souls.

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The Wedding of the King’s Son

Passiontide, Part I

Chapter VI
St. Matt. xxii. 1-14; Story of the Gospels, § 137.
Burns and Oates, London, 1886.
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Part I: Why did Christ speak of a wedding feast after condemning the priests?

After the priests withdraw in anger, Christ turns to the people with a new parable — revealing that the Synagogue will give place to a universal Kingdom of both justice and mercy.

1. Why did Christ speak of a wedding feast after condemning the priests?

Part II: The terrifying warning of the parable of the wedding feast

The ‘wedding garment’ and the command to come to the wedding feast give this parable, told in the Temple in Holy Week, a different meaning to the similar one told before.

2. The terrifying warning of the parable of the wedding feast

Part III: ‘The Wedding Garment’ and membership of the Church

A popular interpretation of the parable sees ‘the wedding garment’ as supernatural grace in the soul – but it also has an application to membership of the Church.

3. ‘The Wedding Garment’ and membership of the Church

Part IV: ‘The Wedding Garment’ and supernatural charity

The wedding garment is not merely virtue in general, but that charity which unites man to God and his Church.

4. ‘The Wedding Garment’ and supernatural charity

Part V: How the Parable of the Wedding Feast reveals the judgement of the wicked

‘Friend, how camest thou in hither?’ The question uncovers the soul’s helpless silence at God’s judgment, where every excuse has vanished, and only truth remains.

5. How the Parable of the Wedding Feast reveals the judgement of the wicked

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost always follows September’s Ember Days in the Missal – although not necessarily in the Calendar. This year, it happens to follow John XXIII’s revised dating of the Ember Days. recently explained the connection as understood by some authorities:

“In some ancient arrangements it was a Dominica vacat, an ‘empty Sunday.’ This is because the Saturday Ember vigil had continued into Sunday morning, leaving no separate Sunday formulary. As provision was made for places where that vigil was not observed, the Church gave this Sunday its own Mass formulary. Thus the sequence of readings from Ephesians is interrupted, and we hear the opening thanksgiving of 1st Corinthians.”

Dom Prosper Guéranger seems a little sceptical of this:

“It has been thought, by some, that its having the number it bears has caused it to be inserted in the Missal immediately after the Ember Days of autumn. We will not, like the Liturgists of the Middle Ages, (Berno Aug., Chap. 5, etc.) discuss the question as to whether we should consider it has having taken the place of the vacant Sunday, which formerly used always to follow the ordination of the sacred ministers, (Microlog., Chap 29) in the manner we have elsewhere described. (Gueranger, Advent: Ember Saturday)”

He concludes by acknowledging the links that seem to exist between this Sunday’s Propers and the Ember Days – particularly in its references to the priesthood and ordination, as is present in today’s Gospel – but adds:

“[T]he Liturgy of the present Sunday is doubly telling, when it immediately follows the Ember Days of September. But this coincidence is far from being one of every year’s occurrence, at least as the Liturgy now stands; nor can we dwell longer on these subjects without seeming to be going too far into archæology, and exceeding the limits we have marked out for ourselves.”

As Guéranger suggests, the long Ember Saturday Mass and ordination rite has not been a feature for many centuries, and so this Mass formulary became, according to some authorities, part of the regular post-Pentecost cycle.

In the Gospel on this Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Our Lord heals the paralytic man let down through the roof – after first forgiving his sins.

At that time, Jesus, getting into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. And behold, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a pallet. And Jesus, seeing their faith, said to the paralytic, Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven you. And behold, some of the scribes said within themselves, This man blasphemes. And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why do you harbor evil thoughts in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise, and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, - then He said to the paralytic - Arise, take up your pallet and go to your house. And he arose, and went away to his house. But when the crowds saw it, they were struck with fear, and glorified God Who had given such power to men. (Matt 9.1–8)

This event occurs early in the Galilean ministry, soon after the cleansing of the leper and the preaching tour that followed.

Christ returned to Capharnaum to teach before a large, mixed audience of the devout, curious, sceptical and immoral. It certainly included Pharisees and doctors of the Law: Fr Coleridge points out that this event took place prior to widespread hostility on the parts of these men – and emphasises that many of them would have been of good will, and would have made up the converts spoken of by Acts and the Gospels themselves.

The short Gospel passage provides a great deal of material for reflection in Coleridge’s chapter, from the nature of punishment for sin, the role of miracles in the Church, and the importance of Confession and the Priesthood.

Given the centrality of the priesthood to an event involving the forgiveness of sin, it is fitting that this incident is immediately followed by Our Lord calling Matthew/Levi (whose feast day falls around this time of year).

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The Healing of the Paralytic

The Training of the Apostles, Part I

Chapter IV
St. Matt. ix. 1–9; St. Mark ii. 1–14; St. Luke v. 17–29
Story of the Gospels, § 139
Burns and Oates, London, 1884
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Part I: Why Jesus’ timing in healing and forgiving the Paralytic was important

The start of Our Lord’s ministry must have seemed like one stupendous miracle after another. But it was deliberately leading up to something...

1. Why Jesus’ timing in healing and forgiving the Paralytic was important

Part II: Who was in the crowd of religious leaders when Jesus healed the Paralytic?

Were they actually as hostile as they are often depicted?

2. Who was in the crowd of religious leaders when Jesus healed the Paralytic?

Part III: Why Jesus said ‘Thy sins are forgiven’ before healing the Paralytic

What is the connection between the miracle, sin and punishment?

3. Why Jesus said ‘Thy sins are forgiven’ before healing the Paralytic

Part IV: How Jesus used the Pharisees’ doubts to make his point

Christ’s answer to the Pharisees acknowledges the main plank of their reservations as a means of proving his divine power.

4. How Jesus used the Pharisees’ doubts to make his point

Part V: Can men receive the power to forgive sin?

Everyone who witnessed the miracle understood the point, and rejoiced at it – even though many heretics deny the doctrine today.

5. Can men receive the power to forgive sin?

Part VI: The value of priests and confession, proved by the healing of the Paralytic

The miracle of the paralytic points to the mercy of God: the forgiveness of sins through men, for men — a power feared by devils, denied by heretics, and neglected in the modern world.

6. The value of priests and confession, proved by the healing of the Paralytic

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

In the Gospel on the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Our Lord discusses both “the great commandment” and the relationship between King David and the Messias.

“At that time, the Pharisees came to Jesus and one of them, a doctor of the Law, putting Him to the test, asked Him, Master, which is the great commandment in the Law? Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.

“Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus questioned them, saying, What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is He? They said to Him, David’s. He said to them, How then does David in the spirit call Him Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool? If David, therefore, calls Him Lord, how is He his son? And no one could answer Him a word; neither did anyone dare from that day forth to ask Him any more questions.” (Matt 22:34-46)

The Gospel reading is divided into two parts, and Fr Coleridge addresses it across two chapters.

The event takes place during Holy Week, after Christ’s triumphal entry, and the cleansing of the Temple. His enemies attempt to ensnare him, but he reduces them to silence. Fr Coleridge draws out some of the rivalries between the Jews at this time, emphasising the opposition between the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

In this first chapter (Parts I–II), Fr Coleridge explains why the law of charity is greater than any external observances – and that even sacrifice is only the external manifestation of this absolutely fundamental virtue.

In the second chapter (Parts III-IV) he explains why Our Lord’s comments are an assertion of his divinity, and the purpose for phrasing it in this way at this time.

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The Great Commandment

Passiontide, Part I

Chapter IX
St. Matt. xxii. 34-40; St. Mark xii. 28-34
Story of the Gospels, § 140
Burns and Oates, London, 1887
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Part I: How love of God and neighbour outweighs every sacrifice in the Law of Moses

Christ teaches that all the Law and the Prophets rest on the twofold love of God and neighbour, surpassing every ceremonial observance.

1. How love of God and neighbour outweighs every sacrifice in the Law of Moses

Part II: What is the meaning of the ‘fourfold’ love of God?

Why must we love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength – and how can we see which area we need to develop?

2. What is the meaning of the ‘fourfold’ love of God?

The Son of David

Chapter X
St. Matt. xxii. 34-40; St. Mark xii. 28-34
Story of the Gospels, § 140
Burns and Oates, London, 1887

Part III: Why Jesus asks, ‘What think you of Christ, whose Son is he?’

In posing a question about King David, Our Lord offered his enemies one last lifeline.

3. Why Jesus asks, ‘What think you of Christ, whose Son is he?’

Part IV: How Christ used David’s Psalm to expose the misconceptions of his enemies

Christ’s question about David’s ‘Lord’ revealed the their inability to recognise the divine Person who stood before them.

4. How Christ used David’s Psalm to expose the misconceptions of his enemies

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

The Gospel on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost takes us back to the house of a Pharisee on the Sabbath, returning to the episode recounted in part on the Second Sunday after Pentecost.

In this Gospel, we see Christ healing a man with dropsy, and then teaching the guests about the Sabbath and humility.

“At that time, when Jesus entered the house of one of the rulers of the Pharisees on the Sabbath to take food, they watched Him. And behold, there was a certain man before Him who had the dropsy. And Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath? But they remained silent. And He took and healed him and let him go. Then addressing them, He said, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fall into a pit, and will not immediately draw him up on the Sabbath? And they could give Him no answer to these things.

“But He also spoke a parable to those invited, observing how they were choosing the first places at table, and He said to them, When you are invited to a wedding feast, do not recline in the first place, lest perhaps one more distinguished than you have been invited by him, and he who invited you and him come and say to you, ‘Make room for this man’; and then you begin with shame to take the last place. But when you are invited go and recline in the last place; that when he who invited you comes in, he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher!’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who are at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.” (Luke 14:1-11)

Dropsy, also known as oedema, is a disease which causes the fluid retention and swelling in the body’s tissue – and although it has been taken to represent pride spiritually, it must also have been a most humiliating affliction. It was a fitting moment, therefore, to teach his listeners about the importance of humility.

Immediately following the text read at this Mass, Christ tells the Parable of the Greater Supper, and warns his guests that Israel was in the process of rejecting their Covenant with God, and calls them to embrace the cost of being his disciples.

This incident comes towards the end of Christ’s ministry, following his controversies with the Pharisees and Scribes and his many warnings against worldliness and carelessness.

Note: Fr Coleridge’s treatment of this incident is part of a chapter which also deals Our Lord’s parable of the Great Banquet, which is read (as mentioned) on the Second Sunday after Pentecost. We are be providing those sections below – along with the final reflections in this chapter, on what Christ means by his comments about “hating” those closest to us.

The passages particularly for today are Parts I and II.

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Our Lord in the Pharisee’s House

The Preaching of the Cross, Part II

Chapter VIII
St. Luke xiv. 1-35.
Story of the Gospels, § 111-3
Burns and Oates, London, 1887
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Part I: Why did Christ provoke His enemies with miracles on the Sabbath?

Our Lord is watched closely as He enters the house of a leading Pharisee on the Sabbath. A man with dropsy stands before Him—perhaps placed there as a trap. What will he do?

1. Why did Christ provoke His enemies with miracles on the Sabbath?

Part II: Why humility is necessary even on the natural level

At a Sabbath meal in a Pharisee’s house, Christ explains why anyone with an ounce of self-respect must strive to be humble, or else look completely foolish.

2. Why humility is necessary even on the natural level

BONUS ARTICLES

Part III: Christ’s warning: The Banquet will go on—with or without you

Our Lord shows the terrible danger of refusing grace, even for things lawful in themselves.

3. Christ’s warning: The Banquet will go on—with or without you

Part IV: How the call to the Church passed from Israel to the Gentiles

The contempt for Christ on the part of his people opened the door to the Gentiles. But what two classes of Gentiles are represented by the two classes of men in the parable?

4. How the call to the Church passed from Israel to the Gentiles

Part V: Does Jesus actually want us to ‘hate’ our family members?

Christ tells us the cost of discipleship: not only must we carry our cross, but we must ‘hate’ father, mother, wife and children—even our own life. But what did he mean?

5. Does Jesus actually want us to ‘hate’ our family members?

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

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Editor’s Notes

On the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads St Luke’s account of Our Lord raising the widow of Naim’s son.

“At that time, Jesus went to a town called Naim; and His disciples and a large crowd went with Him. And as He drew near the gate of the town, behold, a dead man was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and a large gathering from the town was with her.

“And the Lord, seeing her, had compassion on her, and said to her, Do not weep. And He went up and touched the stretcher; and the bearers stood still. And He said, Young man, I say to you, arise. And he who was dead, sat up, and began to speak. And He gave him to his mother.

“But fear seized upon all, and they began to glorify God, saying, A great prophet has risen among us, and God has visited His people.”

(Luke 7:11-16)

In some modern texts, “Naim” is often rendered as “Nain”.

This occurred during a preaching tour of Galilee, soon after the healing of the centurion’s servant, and before the embassy of St John the Baptist’s disciples.

There are only three accounts of Christ raising the dead, namely the widow’s son, Jairus’ daughter, and Lazarus. In this first such miracle, Christ manifests his power over life and death without being asked, foreshadowing greater resurrections to come.

Anecdote: ‘The Widow’s Son’, Freemasonry, Oscar Wilde, Manning and Newman

In passing, let us share an an interesting anecdote about “the widow’s son”, and the role this concept plays in Freemasonry.

While the term might allude to the Gospel, in Freemasonry, it refers to Hiram Abiff, the central character in the sect’s ritual. The phrase “Is there no help for the widow’s son?” is allegedly a key phrase in the ritual of the third degree of master mason, and the ultimate masonic “distress signal,” which no freemason may ignore.

Oscar Wilde gave testimony to this in an account of his life in prison:

“As I was walking round the yard one day I noticed that one of the men awaiting trial was signaling to me by Masonic sign. I paid no attention until he made me the sign of the widow’s son, which no mason can ignore. He managed to convey a note to me. I found he was in for fraud of some kind and anxious that I should get my friends to petition for his release. He was quite mad, poor fellow. As he would always insist on signaling and I was afraid the warders would get to notice it, I persuaded Major Nelson to let me wear black goggles until he was convicted and sent to Portland.”

This is not the only masonic phrase that appears to refer to Christianity, and is liable to deceive the uninitated. The freemason Yasha Beresiner gives another example, again in relation to Wilde:

“‘J & B’ are interpreted by Oscar, at the instigation of [J.E.C.] Bodley, as ‘St John the Baptist,’ on which Oscar, in his maiden speech to the Brethren and other non-Masonic guests, says:

‘… I have heard that St J(ohn) the B(aptist) was the founder of this order. I hope we shall emulate his life but not his death – I mean we ought to keep our heads!’

“His comments and wit are responded to with ‘Yells of laughter’. Scholars have been at a loss to understand why Oscar’s comments should have caused ‘Yells of laughter’, as recorded by Bodley in his diary.

“The explanation may lie in that the Masons present would have appreciated the substitution and thus the misinterpretation of the letters J & B as referring to John the Baptist’s. The words used in the Masonic ritual refer to the two pillars in King Solomon’s Temple as described 1 Kings 7:15-22:

‘...He erected the pillars at the portico of the temple. The pillar to the south he named Jakin and the one to the north Boaz The capitals on top were in the shape of lilies. And so the work on the pillars was completed’.

“Oscar himself will have remained unaware, having only gone through one single ceremony, of the correct words used in the ritual and thus his reference to John the Baptist will have been all the more amusing to those familiar with the correct wording.”

J.E.C. Bodley, who is mentioned as deceiving Wilde as to the meaning of these letters, was also responsible for initiating Wilde into Freemasonry in 1875.

This same Bodley wrote a biography of Henry Edward Cardinal Manning, and has been described by Roy Jenkins as “almost certainly [Manning’s] most intimate non-Catholic friend.” This biography seems to be the only source for the claim that Manning believed Cardinal Newman, Fr Coleridge’s friend and associate, to be guilty of “ten distinct heresies.”

This same biography also praised Manning for allegedly being uninterested in securing converts to the Catholic Church, partisan loyalty as an Anglican, and for “unreserved liberality” on the topic of the dogma outside the Church there is no salvation. You can read more about all this here:

• Did Cardinal Manning really accuse Cardinal Newman of ‘ten distinct heresies’?

Now, we do not put store by any of these claims; nor do we do not wish to impugn Manning for friendship with Bodley – though some purveyors of the “anti-Newman legend” have tried to impugn Newman for far more tenuous acquaintances.

The point, however, is that Newman’s critics should consider the unsavoury and unreliable provenance of this anecdote before raising it against him.

So much for the Masonic version of “The Widow’s Son”. Let us now turn to something more wholesome.

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The Raising of the Widow’s Son

The Training of the Apostles—Part II

Chapter XII
St. Luke. vii. 11-16; Story of the Gospels, § 51
Burns and Oates, London, 1882
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Part I: Why did Christ choose Naim for his first raising of the dead?

Naim, where Christ raised the widow’s son from death, was not a place where he was well-known. So why did he go there?

1. Why did Christ choose Naim for his first raising of the dead?

Part II: The raising of the widow’s son at Naim – how it unfolded

At Naim, Christ raises a widow’s only son before many witnesses, revealing his divine authority.

2. The raising of the widow’s son at Naim – how it unfolded

Part III: Why YOU are the dead son of the Widow of Naim

The Prophets Elias and Eliseus raised the dead, but only with great effort and prayer. The ease of Christ’s miracle teaches an important truth about the New Covenant and the sacraments.

3. Why YOU are the dead son of the Widow of Naim

Part IV: The effect of raising the Widow’s Son at Naim

The miracle was a sign to both the people and to St John the Baptist and his followers – and a message to the religious establishment in Jerusalem.

4. The effect of raising the Widow’s Son at Naim

BONUS: Did Cardinal Manning really accuse Cardinal Newman of ‘ten distinct heresies’?

What does “The Widow’s Son” have to do with the often-repeated anecdote, that Cardinal Manning accused Cardinal Newman of “ten distinct heresies”? The rabbit hole is deeper than you might think.

• Did Cardinal Manning really accuse Cardinal Newman of ‘ten distinct heresies’?

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

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Editor’s Notes

On the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads one of the most beautiful sections of the Sermon on the Mount:

“At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: No man serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will stand by the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

“Therefore I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, what you shall eat; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life a greater thing than the food, and the body than the clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of much more value than they? But which of you by being anxious about it can add to his stature a single cubit? And as for clothing, why are you anxious?

“Consider how the lilies of the field grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed like one of those. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which flourishes today but tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more you, O you of little faith!

“Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or, ‘What shall we drink?’ or, ‘What are we to put on?’ - for after all these things the Gentiles seek; - for your Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the Kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be given you besides.”

(Matt 6:24-33)

We may have grown familiar with what Our Lord says about reliance on the providence of God – and we may find Fr Coleridge’s exposition sheds new light upon it.

That is because he explicitly links the trust which we are to have in God with the words at the start of this extract about our state of servitude. As Fr Coleridge shows, we might even understand ourselves as the slaves of God.

In what sense might we be called the “slaves” of God? Our Lord said to the Apostles that they were his friends rather than servants, which would seem to exclude a fortiori any notion of slavery:

“This is my commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you.

“Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do the things that I command you.

“I will not now call you servants: for the servant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends because all things, whatsoever I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.”

Similarly, great Bishop Bernard Ullathorne wrote in 1866:

“We are not the slaves even of God, but, as St. Paul says, our service is a free and reasonable service.”

On the other hand, the word used by Our Lady to the Angel denotes not just “handmaid” or “female servant” but “female slave” of the Lord. There is also St Louis de Montfort’s devotion of “holy slavery”, whose place in the Church’s life is unimpeachable.

It seems clear, especially in light of Coleridge’s texts, we are and are not the slaves of God, depending on what is meant by the word. In some sense, we are less and lower than slaves, in relation to God; in another sense, we are granted an exalted place as adopted sons in the Son.

This is because “slavery” is a complex concept. The word “slavery” provokes strong reactions, and Catholics have debated whether the practice of slavery is intrinsically immoral, or whether just and unjust forms of slavery can be distinguished.

This became a current issue in mid-2026, when Leo XIV apologised for what he presented as the Church’s role in slavery. I addressed this issue in the following article, which is interesting not because we can desire to re-establish the institution of slavery, but because claiming slavery is intrinsically evil (which the Church did not do) raises problems for the Church’s indefectibility, as well as the historical record:

• The Church ended slavery. So why is Leo XIV apologizing?

Readers may find that the limited form of slavery recognised by the Church as legitimate (even if regrettable, and now to be avoided), purified of its historical contingencies, sheds light on the wholly honorable and desirable “holy slavery” to God – the title, Fr Coleridge explains, by which we can expect from God everything that we need.

Bishop Donald Sanborn also praised this article as “excellent” and suggested that Leo XIV himself should read it. I expanded on the issue in another article, comparing the Church’s nuanced position towards slavery with her wholly oppositional stance towards gladiatorial blood sports:

• ‘Shout-out’ from Bishop Sanborn for slavery article – Plus: gladiatorial blood-sports vs. slavery

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Single Service

The Sermon on the Mount (To the End of the Lord’s Prayer)

Chapter VII
St. Matt. vi. 24; Story of the Gospels, § 33
Burns and Oates, London, 1878
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Part I: God will not be outdone in protecting his servants

It may not always be in the form that we desire or expect, but that’s because God’s protection exceeds our limited ideas.

1. God will not be outdone in protecting his servants

Part II: Are we the ‘slaves’ of God – and what happens if we refuse his dominion?

If God is our Master, are we his servants... or slaves?

2. Are we the ‘slaves’ of God – and what happens if we refuse his dominion?

Part III: If we are ‘slaves,’ what kind of Master is God?

The two masters that Christ puts before us are wholly different. It is emphatically not ‘Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven,’ as Milton put it.

3. If we are ‘slaves,’ what kind of Master is God?

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

On the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads the account of Our Lord healing the ten lepers.

“At that time, Jesus was going to Jerusalem, He was passing between Samaria and Galilee. And as He was entering a certain village, there He met ten lepers, who stood afar off and lifted up their voice, crying, Jesus, Master, have pity on us. And when He saw them He said, Go, show yourselves to the priests.

“And it came to pass as they were on their way, that they were made clean. But one of them, seeing that he was made clean, returned, with a loud voice glorifying God, and he fell on his face at His feet, giving thanks; and he was a Samaritan. But Jesus answered and said, Were not the ten made clean? But where are the nine? Has no one been found to return and give glory to God, except this foreigner?

“And He said to him, Arise, go your way, for your faith has saved you.”

But Fr Coleridge’s exposition of this incident falls in a chapter which also deals with other events in this part of St Luke’s Gospel.

Here are the preceding verses, to which Fr Coleridge also refers:

“And he said to his disciples: It is impossible that scandals should not come. But woe to him through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves. If thy brother sin against thee, reprove him: and if he do penance, forgive him. And if he sin against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day be converted unto thee, saying: I repent: forgive him.

“And the apostles said to the Lord: Increase our faith. And the Lord said: If you had faith like to a grain of mustard seed, you might say to this mulberry tree: Be thou rooted up and be thou transplanted into the sea. And it would obey you.

“But which of you, having a servant ploughing or feeding cattle, will say to him, when he is come from the field: Immediately go. Sit down to meat. And will not rather say to him: Make ready my supper and gird thyself and serve me, whilst I eat and drink; and afterwards thou shalt eat and drink Doth he thank that servant for doing the things which he commanded him. I think not. So you also, when you shall have done all these things that are commanded you, say: We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which we ought to do.”

These teachings and miracle take place in the late Judæan/Peræan phase of Our Lord’s ministry, which ended in his final journey to Jerusalem and to the Passion. At this time, Our Lord intensifies his formation of the Apostles and the others who followed him.

After the other topics in the chapter, Fr Coleridge reaches St Luke’s account of the healing of the lepers, which provides him with the opportunity to discuss the importance of gratitude in the Christian life.

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Various Teachings and Counsels

The Preaching of the Cross, Vol. III

Chapter I
St Luke xvii. 1–19
Story of the Gospels, § 117, 118
Burns and Oates, London, 1888
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Part 0: The final stage of Our Lord’s pre-Passion ministry

As the Passion approaches, Our Lord intensifies his formation of the Apostles, preparing them for the kind of lives they will have to lead when they are sent to teach, govern and sanctify the Church.

0. The final stage of Our Lord’s pre-Passion ministry

Part I: Why scandals are inevitable – and are especially evil in the clergy

No-one should be more afraid of causing scandal than those in Holy Orders, Fr Coleridge says.

1. Why scandals are inevitable – and are especially evil in the clergy

Part II: The power of faith in seemingly impossible situations

The Christian life is as arduous as uprooting a mulberry tree – made possible by supernatural faith.

2. The power of faith in seemingly impossible situations

Part III: Even the best are ‘unprofitable servants’ – and this is a source of joy

We have an unpayable debt to God, as he made us and holds us in existence.

3. Even the best are ‘unprofitable servants’ – and this is a source of joy

Part IV: What are we supposed to learn from Jesus healing the ten lepers?

Only one of the ten lepers returned to thank Our Lord.

4. What are we supposed to learn from Jesus healing the ten lepers?

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

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Editor’s Notes

On the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads Our Lord’s parable of the Good Samaritan:

“At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Blessed are the eyes that see what you see! For I say to you, many prophets and kings have desired to see what you see, and they have not seen it; and to hear what you hear, and they have not heard it.

“And behold, a certain lawyer got up to test Him, saying, Master, what must I do to gain eternal life? But He said to him, What is written in the Law? How do you read? He answered and said, You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole strength, and with your whole mind; and your neighbor as yourself. And He said to him, You have answered rightly; do this and you shall live. But he, wishing to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?

“Jesus answered and said, A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell in with robbers, who after both stripping him and beating him went their way, leaving him half-dead. But, as it happened, a certain priest was going down the same way; and when he saw him, he passed by. And likewise a Levite also, when he was near the place and saw him, passed by. But a certain Samaritan as he journeyed came upon him, and seeing him, was moved with compassion. And he went up to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. And setting him on his own beast, he brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I, on my way back, will repay you.’

“Which of these three, in your opinion, proved himself neighbor to him who fell among the robbers? And he said, He who took pity on him. And Jesus said to him, Go and do also in like manner.”

Our Lord recounts this parable towards the start of what Fr Coleridge calls “the preaching of the Cross” – during the later Judaean ministry, after the mission of the Seventy, and before Our Lord’s visit to Martha and Mary.

The occasion of the parable was a question from a “lawyer.” The “lawyers” are normally associated with the factions of the Pharisees and Scribes, and are awarded with two “Woes” from Christ in the chapter following this Parable:

Woe to you lawyers also, because you load men with burdens which they cannot bear and you yourselves touch not the packs with one of your fingers. […]

Woe to you lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves have not entered in: and those that were entering in, you have hindered.

St Luke also tells us, in the following chapter, that:

As he was saying these things, the Pharisees and the lawyers began violently to urge him and to oppress his mouth about many things, lying in wait for him and seeking to catch something from his mouth, that they might accuse him.

Because of this, it is understandable that many explanations of this parable present the “lawyer” as trying to catch Our Lord out, and to present himself in the best light – based on the Gospels saying that he sought to “test” or “tempt” Our Lord, and to “justify” himself.

However, the question that prompted this parable came before this, and before the “Woes” already mentioned.

And in fact, Fr Coleridge shows that this more negative interpretation of the lawyer is based on several assumptions which are far from certain – and which may change our understanding of this whole incident.

In addition to exploring this issue, Fr Coleridge’s reflections provide much of value to modern day traditionalists and conservatives. The many liberals that profess heresy in the name of the Catholic religion (and thus whose charity is at best naturalistic, if not insincere) cannot blind us to the reality that faith is the foundation of the Christian life, and not its end – and that the liturgy and external traditions are means to help us achieve that end.

And that end is is love of God and of our neighbour.

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The Good Samaritan

The Training of the Apostles, Vol. IV, Chap. XV

St. Luke x. 25-37
Story of the Gospels, § 100
Burns and Oates, London, 1886
Read on the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.

Part I: Have we made the wrong assumptions about the Good Samaritan parable and its context?

Was the lawyer who prompted the parable trying to trick Our Lord, and make himself look good – or something else?

1. Have we made the wrong assumptions about the Good Samaritan parable and its context?

Part II: External rituals and theological debates are nothing without love

The parable of the Good Samaritan reveals both practical and theological truth – and shows that without love, religion can deteriorate into emptiness.

2. Liturgical rites and theological debates are nothing without love

Part III: The Good Samaritan and using religion as an excuse for neglect

Our Lord shatters narrow debates by showing that love of neighbour is proved only in action: the Samaritan saw a brother where others saw a burden.

3. The Good Samaritan and using religion as an excuse for neglect

Part IV: Why Jesus is the Good Samaritan of the parable

Why does Christ call Himself a Samaritan, accepting a name of reproach – and how does the parable match up to the Incarnation and Redemption?

4. Why Jesus is the Good Samaritan of the parable

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

On the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads Our Lord’s healing of the deaf and dumb man.

At that time, Jesus departing from the district of Tyre came by way of Sidon to the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the district of Decapolis. And they brought to Him one deaf and dumb, and entreated Him to lay His hand upon him. And taking him aside from the crowd, He put His fingers into the man’s ears, and spitting, He sighed, and said to him, Ephpheta, that is, Be opened. And his ears were at once opened, and the bond of his tongue was loosed, and he began to speak correctly. And He charged them to tell no one. But the more He charged them, so much the more did they continue to publish it. And so much the more did they wonder, saying, He has done all things well. He has made both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.

This miracle takes place towards the end of the period Fr Coleridge calls “the training of the apostles,” and before that in which Our Lord’s preaching becomes more focused on the Cross. It is immediately preceded by the healing of the Syrophœnician woman’s daughter, and followed by the second multiplication of loaves for the four thousand.

Taking place in the Gentile Decapolis, this miracle points to the Gospel’s reach beyond Israel. Coleridge explains how the incident is used to teach the Apostles the virtues of prudence and discretion in their ministry.

It is also a crucial event in the life of every Christian, in that the “Ephpheta” in the solemn rite of Baptism is taken from this event.

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The Deaf and Dumb Healed

The Training of the Apostles, Vol. IV, Chap. XV

St. Mark vii. 31-37
Story of the Gospels, § 77
Burns and Oates, London, 1885
Read on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost.

Part I: What Christ’s seven steps in healing the deaf and dumb mean for Christians today

When Christ heals a deaf-mute, he uses seven preparatory acts, culminating in the ‘ephpheta’ – which the Church retains in Baptism today.

1. What Christ’s seven steps in healing the deaf and dumb mean for Christians today

Part II: The link between the healing of the deaf-mute and the Agony in the Garden

Christ’s groan before healing the deaf-mute reveals the sorrow, humility and power behind every miracle – and the danger of misusing restored gifts.

2. The link between the healing of the deaf-mute and the Agony in the Garden

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

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Editor’s Notes

On the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads Our Lord’s Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.

Christ tells he parable during his final journey towards Jerusalem, following other parables on prayer (e.g., The Unjust Judge and the Widow), and before his encounter with the Rich Young Ruler.

It offers a warning against pride, and a revelation of the true attitude towards God which we should adopt in prayer. It would be most appalling if we, who have been blessed with a certain level of understanding about the current situation in the Church, were to adopt the Pharisees attitude towards others – perhaps something like this:

“I give Thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, Novus Ordites, Recognise and Resisters, or those who are wrong in some way about the precise nature of the crisis in the Church.”

It would be wrong to suggest that this is a particular temptation for “traditionalists”: it is a temptation for everyone, and there is no shortage of “Novus Ordites” who adopt it themselves.

But the reality is that what understanding we might have of the crisis is a gift from God, and we are not worthy of it, or anything else which we have received. Many of those on whom we might be tempted to look down, would have corresponded better to this gift had they received it, and might well be corresponding better to the graces which they have received than we are.

This is why the prayer of Publican is so important. It is, famously, used by Christians of the Byzantine rite in “The Jesus Prayer”:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Coleridge also suggests that Our Lord was recounting a real event, rather than merely a story – an idea which he also addresses a few chapters later in relation to Christ’s encounter with Zaccheus.

In the first part, in addition to mentioning the link between this parable and the sacrifices of the Temple, Coleridge treats the prayer of the Pharisee. The second treats of the Publican’s prayer, and lists the dispositions needed by Catholics for their own prayer.

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The Preaching of the Cross, Part III, Chap. VI

St. Luke xviii. 9–14
Story of the Gospels, § 123
Burns and Oates, London, 1889
Read on the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost.

Part I: Why the Pharisee’s prayer was not heard

A proud Pharisee and a humble Publican go up to the Temple – but only one goes home justified. Fr Coleridge unpacks why the Pharisee’s prayer did not please God.

1. Why the Pharisee’s prayer was not heard

Part II: Why the Publican’s prayer was heard – and how ours can be too

The publican uttered just one sentence—but it was enough to secure the grace of God. Father Coleridge shows how this can help us pray properly too.

2. Why the Publican’s prayer was heard – and how ours can be too

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

On the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, the Roman Liturgy returns to Holy Week – with words taken from the first Palm Sunday, and then from the following day.

At that time, when Jesus drew near to Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it, saying, If you had known, in this your day, even you, the things that are for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will throw up a rampart about you, and surround you and shut you in on every side, and will dash you to the ground and your children within you, and will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you have not known the time of your visitation. And He entered the temple, and began to cast out those who were selling and buying in it, saying to them, It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of thieves. And He was teaching daily in the temple. (Luke 19:41–47)

St Luke’s account suggests that the Temple was cleansed immediately upon Our Lord’s arrival. However, St Mark’s account makes clear that it occurs on the following day – Our Lord having retreated to Bethany for the evening. In the interim between the two events recounted in the Gospel, Our Lord curses a fig tree; after the second event, the Apostles find it to have withered away. This may appear to be a very strange miracle, but Fr Coleridge explains why Our Lord acted in this way, and why he seems to “change the subject” after the event.

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The Procession of Palms

and

The Barren Fig-Tree

Passiontide, Part I, Chapters II and III

St. Matt. xxi. 14-17; St. Mark xi. 1-11; St. Luke xix. 29-44; St. John xii. 12-18 and St. Matt. xxi. 19–22; St. Mark xi. 13–26; St. Luke xix. 45–48.
Story of the Gospels, § 132 and § 134
Burns and Oates, London, 1889
Read on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost.

Part 0: Why Christ wept over Jerusalem in Holy Week

It was not too late for them to repent – nor is it too late for us.

0. Why Christ wept over Jerusalem in Holy Week

Part I: Cursing the fig tree: Jesus’ strangest miracle?

Why did Christ curse the fig tree if it wasn’t even fig season?

1. Cursing the fig tree: Jesus’ strangest miracle?

Part II: Christ’s cleansing of the Temple – and what happened next

After cursing the fig-tree, Jesus enters the Temple, casts out the traders, and begins His solemn teaching. And the key to it all is the fig-tree.

2. Christ’s cleansing of the Temple – and what happened next

Part III: How Christ explains the cursing of the fig-tree

After revealing the judgment on a fruitless faith, Our Lord explains that the miracle of the fig tree demonstrates to the power of true prayer.

3. How Christ explains the cursing of the fig-tree

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

On the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads the Parable of the Unjust Steward:

At that time, Jesus spoke to His disciples this parable: There was a certain rich man who had a steward, who was reported to him as squandering his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear of you? Make an accounting of your stewardship, for you can be steward no longer.’

And the steward said within himself, ‘What shall I do, seeing that my master is taking away the stewardship from me? To dig I am not able; to beg I am ashamed. I know what I shall do, that when I am removed from my stewardship they may receive me into their houses.’ And he summoned each of his master’s debtors and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ And he said, ‘A hundred jars of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bond and sit down at once and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred kors of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bond and write eighty.’

And the master commended the unjust steward, in that he had acted prudently; for the children of this world, in relation to their own generation, are more prudent than the children of the light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves with the mammon of wickedness, so that when you fail they may receive you into the everlasting dwellings.

(Luke 16:1-9)

This is one of the most perplexing parables in the Gospel.

It occurs during Our Lord’s final journey towards Jerusalem and his Passion. It falls between Our Lord’s parables of the Prodigal Son and the Lost Sheep, and that of Lazarus and the Rich Man.

Focusing on the correct stewardship of temporal goods, Our Lord contrasts the “prudence” of worldly men with the negligence of those believing themselves aiming for spiritual goods. He reminds us that all we have is from God, and invites us to find ways to use these gifts in the interests of charity and eternal life.

After explaining the parable, Fr Coleridge addresses the effect which it had on the Pharisees, who “derided him” for it.

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The Unjust Steward

The Preaching of the Cross, Part II

Chapter X
St. Luke xvi. 1-13
Story of the Gospels, § 115
Burns and Oates, London, 1887
Read on the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost.

Part I: The Unjust Steward: The most difficult parable of all?

Why on earth does Christ hold up a worldly trickster in this parable? His comparison calls us not to admire deceit, but to expose the spiritual laziness of ‘the children of light.’

1. The Unjust Steward: The most difficult parable of all?

Part II: How can money build eternal friendships?

The unjust steward was praised not for his dishonesty, but for his foresight. Christ urges us to use our passing possessions for eternal gain.

2. How can money build eternal friendships?

Part III: Trying to serve God and Mammon is impossible

Everything we have is held on trust from God. While that means that the goods of this world are not true riches, they will decide what we are fit to receive in eternity.

3. Trying to serve God and Mammon is impossible

Part IV: Why guilty consciences mock Christ and his Church

Despite their diversity of age, rank, and doctrine, all heretics and founders of false religions bear the same spiritual mark.

4. Why guilty consciences mock Christ and his Church

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

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Editor’s Notes

On the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads part of Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount.

“At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do men gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father in heaven shall enter the kingdom of heaven.”

(Matt. 7:15-21)

The Sermon on the Mount was delivered early in Christ’s public ministry, after the first Passover and our Lord’s initial preaching and miracles.

It comes amidst Our Lord’s injunctions to have confidence in God, and to be cautious in judging others. We should note, however, that one cannot “beware of false prophets” without judging that someone is or is likely to be a false prophet.

Thus, the idea that one must assume the best of an evident false prophet, or await the intervention of authority before acting accordingly, is not correct.

Although it is a short Gospel passage, Fr Coleridge discusses it over three chapters. What follows is the serialisation of the first part – and some bonus articles.

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The False Prophets

The Sermon on the Mount (To the End of the Lord’s Prayer)

Chapter XV

St. Matt. vii. 15—20; Story of the Gospels, § 34
Burns and Oates, London, 1878
Read on the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost.

Part I: Why did Christ warn of false teachers so early in His ministry?

Christ’s earliest warnings included calling his followers to beware of false prophets, both within and without the Church.

1. Why did Christ warn of false teachers so early in His ministry?

Part II: What is the ‘appetite for destruction’ that drives false prophets?

Christ predicts the malice of those priests who would betray Him then, and for centuries to come.

2. What is the ‘appetite for destruction’ that drives false prophets?

Part III: Why the Apostles and New Testament were so fierce in condemning heresy

Christ’s warnings about false prophets already began to be fulfilled in the New Testament itself.

3. Why the Apostles and New Testament were so fierce in condemning heresy

Part IV: What the founders of heresies and false religions have in common

Despite their diversity of age, rank, and doctrine, all heretics and founders of false religions bear the same spiritual mark.

4. What the founders of heresies and false religions have in common

Part V: ‘Wolves in sheep’s clothing’ – perfect description of heretical teachers

The foulest heretics always present themselves as angels of light, citing Scripture and mimicking the Church – but beneath the externals lies a hatred for truth and souls.

5. ‘Wolves in sheep’s clothing’ – perfect description of heretical teachers

BONUS ARTICLE: Good Shepherd Sunday

On the Second Sunday after Easter, Our Lord tells us how and why he is ‘the Shepherd and Bishop’ of our souls.

• Good Shepherd Sunday – Second Sunday after Easter

BONUS ARTICLE: Does charity require us to assume orthodoxy and good will?

The idea of a dogmatic ‘benefit of the doubt’ is contradicted by the Catholic authority.

• Does charity require us to assume orthodoxy and good will?

BONUS ARTICLE: ‘Anathematise those who teach new doctrines’ – St Robert Bellarmine

St Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, taught that laymen can discern true pastors from false by their contradiction of previous teaching, and that they should anathematise them.

• ‘Anathematise those who teach new doctrines’ – St Robert Bellarmine

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

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Editor’s Notes

On the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads St Mark’s account of the feeding of the four thousand.

It takes place after healing the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter and the deaf-mute man in Decapolis; before Our Lord’s return to Galilee and the confrontation with the Pharisees over ritual purity.

Although some might assume that it is simply a retelling of the feeding of the five thousand, it is in fact the second multiplication of loaves. Nor can this be doubted: both St Matthew and St Mark recount it as the second such miracle.

If this were not so, many would assume that it must be otherwise. As Coleridge mentions at the end of the chapter, this incident is a standing warning against those who have “a false estimate of the accuracy of the Sacred Texts,” and who approach them without the docility necessary for Christians.

The two miracles of this kind are also a double rebuke to those who try to make “the real miracle” a mere sharing of food amongst the crowd.

We could also consider the following. St John makes clear that the feeding of is orientated principally towards the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist. The feeding of the four thousand, however, is more about Christ’s love for mankind, and his determination not to leave them orphans – as Fr Coleridge makes clear.

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The Feeding of the Four Thousand

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV, Chapter VII

St. Matt. xv. 29—39; St. Mark viii. 1–10.
Story of the Gospels, § 32
Burns and Oates, London, 1885
Read on the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost.

Part I: The feeding of the four thousand was a second, separate miracle

The second multiplication of loaves, given even to Gentiles, shows Our Lord was not afraid to deal with those whom corrupt religious authorities held to be “unclean.”

1. The feeding of the four thousand was a second, separate miracle

Part II: How did the second multiplication of the loaves flow from the first?

Christ repeats the miracle of the loaves to demonstrate his compassion—and to test the disciples’ readiness to expect new favours in light of past ones.

2. How did the second multiplication of the loaves flow from the first?

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

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Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Fr Coleridge tells us...

• How grace fulfils the prophets’ promises and draws souls to Christ.

• That faith requires both outward preaching and inward light, freely embraced by the soul.

• Why only the Son can perfectly reveal the Father to mankind.

He shows us that divine grace is what enables faith to flourish.

This is the last part of Chapter X.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Chapter X
St. John vi. 25–72; Story of the Gospels, § 74
Burns and Oates, London, 1885.
(Read on Corpus Christi)

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

9. The unreasonableness that devours those who want to be blind

10. What is necessary for faith?

What Isaias and Jeremias

Our Lord then confirms His assertion respecting the drawing of the Father by the words of one of the great prophets, who had foretold that, in the times of the Messias, the whole people, and all mankind, would be taught by God.

The prophecy is mainly one of the conversion of the Gentiles to the Church, and her consequent enlargement. And in the course of the prediction the words are found, ‘All thy children shall be taught of God, and great shall be the peace of thy children.’1 Our Lord says the prophets, and not only the prophet, for this kind of prediction is repeated in other places, as for instance in the great passage of Jeremias, in which the prediction of the virginal Conception is contained, ‘A woman shall compass a man.’

In the same chapter Jeremias goes on to speak of the new Covenant that God will make with His people:

‘Not according to the Covenant which I made with their fathers… But this shall be the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel in those days, saith the Lord, I will give My law in their bowels, and I will write it in their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be My people, and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know Me, from the least of them even unto the greatest, saith the Lord.’2

He goes on:

‘Every one that hath heard of the Father, and hath learned, cometh to Me.’

It seems that the distinction between hearing and learning amounts to this, that some who hear will not learn, but that all who learn must first have heard. The learning is not without their own cooperation, and it generates faith in the soul. The hearing is the enlightenment offered to them by God. In truth, there are two kinds of hearing, the external hearing of the Word of God by the mouth of teachers and witnesses sent by Him, and the interior listening to the same Word which is the work of grace in the heart.

These two things make up that teaching of the Father, which our Lord here declares to be necessary. It is so necessary, that faith cannot be without it, and as this interior teaching of the Father was that which was wanting in these people in the synagogue of Capharnaum, our Lord insists on it as the one requisite.

What is necessary for faith

Thus for the generation of faith, which had not taken place in these listeners to our Lord, there are in truth more things than one necessary.

The outward preaching of the Word is necessary, and the attention and goodwill of the hearers themselves are necessary, and beyond these, the interior teaching of the Father by His grace, corresponding to the external Word, and aiding the human consent and readiness, is necessary.

So necessary is this, that, as has been said, our Lord speaks of this alone, in the same way, it may be said, as He speaks of the accomplishment of the will of the Father and not of His own will, as the one reason why He has come down from Heaven. Because the power of the Divine command laid upon Him for the salvation of mankind moved His human will so forcibly and overwhelmingly as to be the one great motive on which it acted, burning as was the Sacred Heart for the very same accomplishment of the salvation of mankind.

So in this process of the genesis of faith, which our Lord describes as coming to Him. Men come or come not by their own free will, that is, they do not come, if they do not come, because they do not choose to come. But if they come, they come willingly, yet their own willingness is not enough without the aid of God.

Our Lord might have reproached these people for their unwillingness to believe. But instead of reproaching them directly, He says they do not come, because they have not been willing to be assisted by God, and thus are both unable and unwilling, unable because unwilling, though their ability would depend on God not on themselves.

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St. Paul to the Thessalonians

The whole process is drawn out in the passage of St. Paul in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians, in which he expresses his thankfulness to God for their faith, ‘because that when you had received of us the Word of the hearing of God, you received it, not as the word of man, but as it is indeed, the Word of God, Who worketh in you that have believed.’3

Here we have the external word of the preacher, for faith cometh by hearing, and the willing listening of the hearers, and beyond all these, the working of God in those who have believed. For it is Paul who plants, and Apollo who waters, but it is God that giveth the increase. It was this last element, the working of God in their hearts, which was wanting in these people to whom our Lord was delivering this great discourse, and therefore they were not able to receive the truths which He set before them, claiming their faith in His word as that of One Whom God had accredited to them by miracles and other evidences.

As to their inability, it was occasioned by the want of the teaching of God in their hearts, but this was so, not because God was not willing to teach them, but because their hearts were not fit to receive His teaching on account of their own obstinacy. The action of the Father had not taken place, but it had not been refused to them arbitrarily. It had been hindered by their own fault.

No man hath seen the Father

To make His teaching still more clear, and also, it seems, for the purpose of shutting out a possible misconception, our Lord adds the words which follow.

‘Not that any man had seen the Father, but He Who is of God, He hath seen the Father.’

It follows, therefore, that this teaching or drawing of the Father, which is necessary for the formation of faith, is a teaching which is not received in the ordinary way, as when a master has his disciples around him and they listen to his doctrine.

This is the way, more or less, in which the external teaching is carried on, of which St. Paul speaks in the passage just now quoted. The teaching of the Father is invisible and spiritual, it is addressed to the heart and soul, like all the other whispers of grace. It accompanies the external teaching, in the case of those who receive that external teaching in a simple and childlike spirit.

But our Lord’s words explain that it is interior only, and does not conflict with, or remove the necessity of, the external teaching of the messengers of God. And it was quite possible that these people to whom He was speaking on this occasion, so literal and unspiritual in their minds and hearts, might think that He was really speaking to them of the necessity of some sensible and tangible and external communication between those whom the Father was thus to teach and the Father Himself.

Necessity for this truth

It was necessary therefore to assert the great truth, that no man hath seen the Father, and that the only One Who has this right to speak in His Name and to state the truth concerning Him, as knowing Him, is the Son Himself Who is of God, that is, Who has from Him by generation the Divine Nature itself. It is the same doctrine which He had laid down to Nicodemus, when He found him hesitating and making difficulties about what He told him as from God:

‘No man hath ascended into Heaven, but He that descended from Heaven, the Son of Man Who is in Heaven.’4

And we find the same truth at the opening of this Gospel of St. John, whether in the words of the Evangelist himself, or in those of the blessed St. John Baptist:

‘No man hath seen God at any time, the only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.’5

And there is the same teaching in St. Matthew, in the place where he records our Lord’s exultation of spirit on the rejection of the wise and prudent and the revelation of the Divine truth to little ones.

‘No one knoweth the Son but the Father, neither doth any one know the Father but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal Him.’6

And these words are a kind of commentary on the passage before us, for they show the Father leading people to the knowledge of the Incarnate Son, and the Son in turn revealing the Father to those whom He chooses so to enlighten, His choice being decided by their own fitness to receive light, and their readiness to correspond to it when received.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

9. The unreasonableness that devours those who want to be blind

10. What is necessary for faith?

Previous Chapter:

The Discourse in the Synagogue

1. The announcement of the Blessed Eucharist in John VI

2. How Our Lord gradually unveiled the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist

3. How Jesus used the loaves to explain his doctrine to the people – and to us

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

From:
The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

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Father Coleridge Reader Mug

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Editor’s Notes

On the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, the Church reads the following from Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount:

At that time, Jesus said to His disciples: Unless your justice exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘You shall not kill’; and that whoever shall kill shall be liable to judgment.

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment; and whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ shall be liable to the Sanhedrin; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’, shall be liable to the fire of Gehenna.

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift before the altar and go first to be reconciled to your brother; and then come and offer your gift.

The Sermon on the Mount was delivered early in Christ’s public ministry, after the first Passover and our Lord’s initial preaching and miracles.

The section itself appears early in the Sermon, in the section which Coleridge titles “Evangelical Justice.” It begins with Our Lord’s comments about having come to fulfil the Law and the Prophets; following his treatment of the fifth commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”) and anger, he treats divorce, oaths, and other matters.

Our Lord shows that the demands of the Gospel radically exceed the teaching of the Pharisees and the Scribes—awakening an awareness in his listeners of their dependence on God, rather than themselves.

This is a difficult passage, and easily misunderstood. One reason for this is that the word anger refers both to a passion, and a sin.

We have addressed this matter in more detail below:

To summarise:

• The passion of anger is a good part of our nature. Like all the passions, the Fall has made anger difficult for reason to govern. Experiencing this passion is morally indifferent, and it may move us to an act of virtue or of sin, depending on the circumstances.

• The sin of anger is that which is not regulated by the order of reason. It may be a mortal or venial sin depending on the circumstances.

Losing sight of these distinctions has caused much confusion in our day, as have confused explanations of this particular Gospel passage.

The text from Fr Coleridge

Our Lord’s purpose in this passage was to present the scope of the Fifth Commandment (“Thou shalt not kill”), rather than to present a thorough analysis of anger, or the passions in general.

The point is that the Fifth Commandment includes interior malice, and not that anger can never be justified.

This is why Fr Coleridge’s text focuses on the sin of anger. He does not address the concept of just or righteous anger; nor does he exclude it, or suggest that all forms or feelings of anger are sinful. His focus is on a deliberate “malice and evil intention” which is contrary to temperance, justice and charity.

It is also a salutary warning – because in some cases, what we feel to be justified anger may not really be so. Our Lord’s words may serve as a check on a wounded sense of self-love, and hold us back from seeking revenge or justice in a disproportionate way.

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The Gospel Law as to Anger

The Sermon on the Mount (To the End of the Lord’s Prayer)

Chapter V
St Matt. vi. 20-30
Story of the Gospels, § 32
Burns and Oates, London, 1878

Part I: What Christ teaches about contempt, anger, and judgement of others

Christ condemns not just murder, but the anger, contempt, and malice that lead to it—revealing that justice must begin in the heart.

1. What Christ teaches about contempt, anger, and judgement of others

Part II: What kind of anger deserves the fires of Hell?

Our Lord teaches that anger can be a grave sin against the order of charity he came to establish, and merit eternal punishment in Hell.

2. What kind of anger deserves the fires of Hell?

Part III: Does non-Catholic worship please God?

Our Lord teaches that no worship can be acceptable while we harbour malice in our hearts, or stand outside the unity of the Church.

3. Does non-Catholic worship please God?

Part IV: Reconciliation must be sought before the Day of Judgment

Christ warns us not to delay reconciliation with God or neighbour, lest we face divine justice on the last day.

4. Reconciliation must be sought before the Day of Judgment

Part V: How Christ refers to Purgatory in his warning about sinful anger

In his treatment of the Fifth Commandment, Christ’s image of prison implies not necesaarily Hell, but Purgatory—a warning that we must pay the price of rejecting grace.

5. How Christ refers to Purgatory in his warning about sinful anger

BONUS: Anger and revenge can be virtuous: St Thomas explains

Christ warns us not to delay reconciliation with God or neighbour, lest we face divine justice on the last day.

4. Anger and revenge can be virtuous: St Thomas explains

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

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Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Fr Coleridge tells us...

• Why the Jews rejected Christ’s heavenly claims, despite the miracles and promises set before them.

• How faith requires the Father’s interior grace, corresponding to the outward witness of Christ’s works.

• What Our Lord’s gentle reply reveals, directing unbelievers to seek the grace they lacked.

He shows us that God’s grace alone enables souls to recognise and embrace Christ by faith.

For more on this series, see Part I.

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Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Chapter X
St. John vi. 25–72; Story of the Gospels, § 74
Burns and Oates, London, 1885.
(Read on Corpus Christi)

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

9. The unreasonableness that devours those who want to be blind

Murmuring of the Jews

‘The Jews therefore murmured at Him, because He had said, I am the Living Bread which came down from Heaven. And they said, Is not this Jesus the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How then saith He, I came down from Heaven?’

All our Lord’s words about faith, and the giving of the Father, and the life everlasting, and the raising up at the last day, were lost on them.

They went back to the difficulty created by their own dulness and incredulity, the difficulty founded on His human nature and apparently common origin. The sublime doctrines contained in the few last sentences of our Lord were all nothing to them.

They seem to have caught at His words about the Living Bread, and to have understood Him to say that it was He that came down from Heaven, as indeed the same meaning is conveyed by His words that He is the Bread of Life and that He came down from Heaven not to do His own will, but that of His Father. What He might mean by the Bread of Life, they did not ask, nor whether the wonderful miracles which He had wrought did not give Him a right to their faith, even if He seemed to claim some dignity or power which they did not understand.

Thus all the evidences of His Divine Mission and character are set aside, and they fix on the evidence, as they think, that He is a mere man like themselves, and that therefore He could not have come down from Heaven. He is to them Jesus the Son of Joseph, whose father and mother they know. He is not even John the Baptist risen from the dead, or the prophet that should come into the world, or Elias, who had been caught up into Heaven, and so might have come down again, He is only the Son of the carpenter of Nazareth.

So unreasonable are men when they are determined to make objections to supernatural truths. They shut their eyes to the evidences which reason ought to force them to admit, and they take no account of sublime doctrines, however full of promise and beneficence to themselves. When He had spoken to them of the Bread of Life, they had cried out, ‘Lord, give us always this Bread,’ and now that He has told them of the will of the Father, and of all the blessings which He is bound by that will to procure for them and impart to them, it might be expected that they would say, Lord, let Thy Father give us to Thee, Lord, let us have this everlasting life, Lord, raise us also up at the last day!

But they say nothing of the kind, for they are blinded by their grovelling prejudices that in Jesus the Son of Joseph there can be nothing great or wonderful, however inexplicable may be His miracles, however unearthly the power of His words.

Answer of our Lord

‘Jesus therefore answered and said to them, Murmur not among yourselves. No man can come to Me except the Father Who hath sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day.’

The murmuring among themselves could only be rightly founded on the supposition that He had said something impossible or wrong, in claiming to have come down from Heaven.

But the truth was that He had not claimed anything at all for which His miracles might not have prepared them, and which they ought not to have been ready to receive on His word, if they had made due use of the evidences which had been accumulated in His support by the Providence of the Father, Who was also ready to supply that which was necessary to make the evidences take hold of them and produce in them the required faith, namely, to give them His Divine interior grace corresponding to the external witness of the miracles and the other proofs of His Mission.

Their not receiving the truth which He had asserted concerning Himself, did not depend on the weakness of the proof or on the impossibility of the thing to be proved, but on the absence in their minds and hearts of the grace requisite for faith.

If this was the thing wanting, then the proper remedy for their difficulty was not to murmur against Him Who had said the truth, but to seek to repair in themselves the deficiencies which prevented them from closing with the truth which He asserted. This could only be done by the working of the Father, and therefore the proper means for them to take would have been the earnest supplication to the Father to have mercy on them, and to enlighten them.

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Addressed to their present needs

Thus our Lord’s words most perfectly answer to the present needs of their souls.

He might have reproached them with their dulness, with their unreasonable obstinacy, with the moral faults, the worldliness, and the like, which fastened their hearts to the ground, as it were, and prevented in them the formation of the first elements of faith. But He does not reproach them or rebuke them, except indirectly. He only points out to them the way by which they might even yet be brought to a better mind.

‘No man can come to Me, except the Father Who hath sent Me draw him, and I will raise him up at the last day.’

He speaks of God as the Father Who has sent Him, as if to imply that it belongs to God, when He sends a prophet or a messenger into the world, also to act on the souls of those to whom the messenger is sent. The doctrine and the messenger may both be Divine, and yet there is still the work of grace to be done in the hearts of men, without which the good seed will have been cast abroad in vain.

And it cannot be thought of God, that He would ever send external means of grace, without also being ready to give the interior graces corresponding thereto to those in need of them. But, when the Father has thus drawn men to His own envoy, that will take place which He has already said would follow, namely, that the Son Whom they see and believe in, will execute His commission for which He was sent, and raise them up at the last day.

And so, though they might think of Him only as the Son of Joseph, His word would certainly be verified, and He would raise men up at the last day as He had said, and this would be in itself a sufficient proof that He was the Bread of Life which came down from Heaven.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

9. The unreasonableness that devours those who want to be blind

Previous Chapter:

The Discourse in the Synagogue

1. The announcement of the Blessed Eucharist in John VI

2. How Our Lord gradually unveiled the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist

3. How Jesus used the loaves to explain his doctrine to the people – and to us

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

From:
The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

Give a gift subscription

Father Coleridge Reader Mug

Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:

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Editor’s Notes

In this piece, Fr Coleridge tells us...

• Why Christ rejoiced in the eternal glory awaiting all whom the Father gives him – even though they cannot yet fully appreciate it themselves

• How the Blessed Eucharist communicates Christ’s own life, and prepares souls for resurrection

• What it is that reveals Christ’s boundless love, given continually as the Bread of Life.

He shows us that Our Lord delights in leading his faithful into everlasting union with himself.

For more on this series, see Part I.

Subscribe now

Faith in the Son of Man

The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Chapter X
St. John vi. 25–72; Story of the Gospels, § 74
Burns and Oates, London, 1885.
(Read on Corpus Christi)

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

Our Lord’s work in souls

Another thought which is contained in these words of our Lord is that of the character of the work which He is to accomplish in them. It is no light or transitory work. He describes it in very few words.

First it is that He will not cast them out.

Then it is that they shall not be lost, but raised up at the last day.

Then this is somewhat expanded, where He says that the will of the Father is that they should have life everlasting, and that He should raise them up at the last day.

These words convey little in comparison to us. They represent great realities and great acts of our Lord, which are different, indeed, in His mind and in truth, from what they are in our poor conceptions.

It is a great thing not to be cast out, not to be without a share in the great work which our Lord came on earth to do, from which, nevertheless, very many who were intended by Him to profit by it are excluded for faults of their own, which compel Him to say to them that He never knew them, and even in this life to leave them outside His Kingdom.

It is a great thing to have life everlasting, even only in expectation and promise, to have a right and title to it, of which nothing but ourselves can deprive us.

It is a great thing to be raised up by our Lord at the last day, not by that universal and common resurrection which will be the lot of the whole human race, in consequence of the Incarnation, but by that glorious resurrection which is to be the condition and the beginning of the true eternal glories of the saints in light.

The glories and delights of the body, the glories and delights of the soul, the unfading crowns, the ineffable bliss in the companionship of the blessed angels and saints, and the inconceivable and yet not unsupportable rapture of the Beatific Vision—these are words and little more to us. But to our Lord they were the realities on which His Sacred Heart continually dwelt, and which inundated Him with joy when He reflected on how many millions of souls most dear to Him He was to confer them, as the consequence of the Resurrection which was to be His own work.

He mentions them here, because they were the truths which it was fit should now be set forth to this dull-hearted multitude, but they were nevertheless the source to Himself of joy inextinguishable and unutterable.

Raising up as part of Himself

And there is something still unmentioned in the words before us, implied though not fully expressed in the truth that He is to raise up the blessed at the last day.

He will raise them up as His own members, as parts of Himself, as united to Himself with a tie so close and so inseparable, that it will be closer even than that sacramental union with Him in Holy Communion which is now a foretaste of Heaven, and which has so much mysterious connection with the resurrection and the future life of glory.

It will not only be His work, as the creation was His work, but it will be a raising them to a participation of His own life. He will live in them, and they in Him, He will enjoy in them the vision of ineffable bliss, He will see God in them, and partake in them of the unalterable peace and tranquil possession of all goods of body and soul which will be their lot for ever. Every glory and every joy will be His work, and it will come back to His own Heart as a fresh joy and glory of His own.

Our Lord’s intelligence, then, of these wonderful boons which He was to bestow throughout all eternity on those whom the Father gives Him, must have been a distinct element on the prospect to which His Sacred Heart was now occupying itself.

He is the principle of life

And there is yet one more subject of importance, contained in these words, or rather contained in what we know to be, as it were, wrapped up in these words.

It is not our Lord’s design, in this part at least of His discourse, to explain fully how it is, by what means, or by what actions of His own, this great effect is to be produced of imparting eternal life and raising up the faithful at the last day. He has laid down the principle from which all this result is to flow down.

He has said that He is the Bread of Life that came down from Heaven. He is the principle, therefore, of everlasting life in His Incarnation and Sacred Humanity. When He speaks of the Bread of Life, He hints at the truth and at the particular manner in which He will impart that life of which He speaks, and plant, as it were, in the human body the seeds of the future resurrection which it is to owe to Him at the last day.

For if Life is to be conveyed as from Bread, it must be by the way in which bread supports natural life.

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How he is the Bread of Life

Life might be imparted as light, as by rays from the sun, or it might be given as the air which is breathed, and the like. But in that case He would not have called Himself the Bread of Life.

We know from the miracle to which this discourse is attached, as well as from the continual direction given to it by our Lord, by the successive truths which He adds to what has been given before, and most of all from the plain and unmistakeable language in the later sections of the discourse itself, that our Lord had in His mind from the very beginning the marvel of the Blessed Eucharist.

After a time, as it were, He restrains Himself no longer, and He forces on them, little prepared as they were, the truth concerning this great miracle of love. And when, as it were, He lets His words flow on without check, we see that He connects the reception of His Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament with these two fruits, resurrection at the last day, and everlasting life. It is right therefore to say that the earlier passage includes also the thought of the manner, in which the results of His love to those whom the Father has given Him are to be brought about, by means of this Heavenly Food.

This will have to be explained a little later on, when we come to the words in which this truth is more directly enunciated. In the meantime we may remind ourselves that here also is a head of ineffable consolation to the Sacred Heart. Not only are these great results to be produced by Him, not only are they to be to Himself the cause of such wonderful joy. But they are also to come about in consequence of a continual excess of love on His part to which there is no parallel, even the giving His own Flesh and Blood to those whom He loves so much to be their food.

He said Himself that there was no greater love, than to give His Life for His friends. But if anything could be greater than the love shown by dying for them, it must surely be that love which makes Himself not only once their Victim, but day after day, securing to them eternal life.

Faith in the Son of Man

1. The multiplication of loaves pointed towards the Eucharist – but the crowd weren’t interested

2. What miracles like the multiplication of loaves are supposed to achieve

3. Jesus worked miracles to draw out faith in himself, the one sent by God the Father

4. How talk of the manna helped the crowd understand the Bread of Life

5. Why some people believe – and some refuse

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

7. Those who have faith are the Father’s ‘gift’ to his Son

8. Raising us up as members of himself – Why Jesus gives himself to us as the Bread of Life

Previous Chapter:

The Discourse in the Synagogue

1. The announcement of the Blessed Eucharist in John VI

2. How Our Lord gradually unveiled the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist

3. How Jesus used the loaves to explain his doctrine to the people – and to us

4. How Jesus presented the Eucharist in the face of dulness and antagonism from the crowd

5. How Christ can demand faith in his teaching on the Eucharist

6. How the Sacred Heart loves those whom the Father has given

From:
The Training of the Apostles, Part IV

Here’s why you should subscribe to The Father Coleridge Reader and share with others:

• Fr Coleridge provides solid explanations of the entirety of the Gospel

• His work is full of doctrine and piety, and is highly credible

• He gives a clear trajectory of the life of Christ, its drama and all its stages—increasing our appreciation and admiration for the God-Man.

If more Catholics knew about works like Coleridge’s, then other works based on sentimentality and dubious private revelations would be much less attractive.

But sourcing and curating the texts, cleaning up scans, and editing them for online reading is a labour of love, and takes a lot of time.

Will you lend us a hand and hit subscribe?

Subscribe now

Share The Father Coleridge Reader

Subscribe to The WM Review

Give a gift subscription

Father Coleridge Reader Mug

Follow our projects on Twitter, YouTube and Telegram:

• The WM Review

• Twitter (The WM Review)

• YouTube

• Telegram