I first produced notes on the Sunday gospels for the three year cycle for this website in July 2007, and the series of postings came to their natural end in November 2010, when the three year cycle had been covered in full. Since then, I have been revising the notes – correcting the many anomalies and the legion of typing and other errors with a possible view to publication some day, so here they are again in updated, edited, corrected (although I have every confidence in my lack of proof reading abilities, so apologies in advance for typographical and other errors!), and hopefully more systematically developed.

The notes concentrate almost entirely on the Sunday gospels; occasionally, there may be a reference to the other two readings, but these will be relatively infrequent. They are offered as a resource for preachers or indeed anyone who makes use of the lectionary for personal or catechetical purposes and who wishes to understand a bit more fully the liturgical scriptural texts. They are offered as a commentary on the lectionary readings; they are not ‘sermon notes’ as such, at least not in the sense of providing ready made homilies or of suggesting themes for homilies: they offer a distillation of up-to-date biblical scholarship on the gospels, edited according to what I hope will provide useful exegetical information and scholarly opinion which may make life easier for preachers and catechists, leaders of scripture study groups, and those who desire to know more about the background not only to each passage, but to the gospels themselves as a whole. In the reflections for each Sunday, attempts are made to link to previous Sundays where appropriate (especially in Ordinary time), and pointers are given as to where themes have already been, or will subsequently be encountered; one of the biggest problems in the understanding of the gospels for preaching is, it seems to me, a lack of awareness of the way in which a given evangelist places individual episodes within a larger context. These notes may help to keep track of ongoing themes developed through shorter episodes, and running over a series of weeks. Hence, the notes are arranged in ‘chapters’ which are governed by units, or an amalgamation of units from within the gospel.

Introduction