Hope in All Things: Some Scripture Reflections

This series of reflections on scripture passages is based very much on the author's varied experiences of life. A Jesuit priest, he is also a medical doctor who provides medical services to homeless people in London.

"There will be one flock and one Shepherd."
Some people, even some Christians, wonder whether being a Christian really matters and whether having a Church and a priest and people going to Mass every Sunday really makes any actual difference in the world. I admit that I occasionally have those doubts myself. But then I think of the flocks of sheep that I have known without a shepherd.

A place to go and a person to trust
"The man who lives by the truth comes out into the light,so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God."When I was a novice, I used to work in a parish where - because they were giving me all the bad jobs - they put me on what we used to call "drinkers' duty". Every morning, from about 7 o'clock onwards, about 20-30 men and women would come up to the church and they would stop in and tell me how much alcohol they had drunk the previous day. And my job was to write it down -...