I’m trying something new: small bits of text on large images, trying to use the online Canva tool. This first one is an extract from the second letter of S. Paul to S. Timothy which gave us first readings at Mass last week. The picture is from a photo of the main portals of the basilica of S. Paul outside-the-walls, near Rome, where the relics of the Apostle are preserved. Christian iconography often portrays martyrs with the instrument of their martyrdom, in S. Paul’s case a sword.
Here is a Christian approach to life and death. Life is a race and death is a crown. How we live in this life is how we will die, how we live is what we shall carry into eternity. Here is a fuller quote, in which he asks his bishop Timothy to be vigilant and work out his salvation while spreading the Gospel of Christ – a work not only for bishops, but for all of us as well:
“But be thou vigilant,
II Timothy 4: 5-8
labour in all things,
do the work of an evangelist,
fulfil thy ministry.
Be sober.
For I am even now ready to be sacrificed:
and the time of my dissolution is at hand.
I have fought a good fight,
I have finished my course,
I have kept the faith.
As to the rest,
there is laid up for me a crown of justice,
which the Lord the just Judge
will render to me in that day:
and not only to me,
but to them also that love His coming.”
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 