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Course

Jonah Summer Reading Challenge

Join Bishop Paul in this year’s Summer Challenge reading the book of Jonah. Sign up to this course and you will receive weekly emails encouraging you to read sections of Jonah alongside the companion book - Journeying with Jonah: the struggle to find yourself’ by the Roman Catholic scholar Denis McBride. Find out more about the challenge and how you can get involved.

Last Summer Bishop Paul issued a challenge to the Diocese to read St Mark’s Gospel, with a recommended commentary by Jeremy Duff to accompany those who took up the challenge fully.

This year we move to the Old Testament (OT), Bishop Paul told us, “We’ll be reading the book of Jonah together. With its picturesque story-language and its humour, Jonah can seem like a lightweight book – ‘When you’re down in the mouth, think of Jonah; he came out all right!’ But in fact those four brief chapters consider issues of huge importance - human identity, the church’s mission in a fallen world, and much more.”

His recommended accompanying commentary this year is ‘Journeying with Jonah: the struggle to find yourself’ by the Roman Catholic scholar Denis McBride. The commentary contains the whole text of Jonah - all five pages as an appendix. Bishop Paul added,

“Denis McBride guides us through the four chapters of this wonderful little OT book with real wisdom and insight. His concluding chapter is entitled “God’s indiscriminate mercy”. This echoes words of Pope Francis with which I’ll leave you today:

In ‘The Church of Mercy’ Pope Francis writes: “Here I think of the story of Jonah, a really interesting figure, especially for these times of great change and uncertainty… Go and read the book of Jonah! It is short, but it is a very instructive parable, especially for those of us in the Church.”

How to take part

Sign up for a weekly reflection and challenge from Bishop Paul

Sign up here to receive weekly emails

The first email will be sent on Monday July 29th

Buy the book

We're working with the companion book Journeying with Jonah: the struggle to find yourself by Denis McBride

You can buy your copy from the Cathedral Shop, online (click here) or in person.

In this course

Tags

  • God
  • Called To Read
  • Bible
  • Reading
  • Jonah
  • Whale

Curator

Stuart Haynes

Date

15/07/19

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