25/08/2022

St Paul's letter to the Corinthian was written les than 40 years after Jesus, God and Man  had walked the earth. The people who had joined to be one mind in their worship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit were Pagans as well as Jew. The Jews would have had some knowledge of God's dealing with mankind  from Scriptures which they read when keeping the Sabbath. How did the Greeks and other races become believers? 

This unbeautiful but eloquent tentmaker had come to them with stories of a visitation to our world by the only one God. He had condemned Zeus Athena Aphrodite and all the Olympian  Pantheon as non-existent and hence powerless; the Son of this God was not a hero or superhuman; he was from an unknown family of peasant artisans in that strange province from which all the Jews that they knew had come. The carpenter had done wonders but made no attempt to take over the State. He taught that the Love of his Father in Heaven was the only source of being. That poor and destitute were the objects of his special care and that to the violent there was to be no resistance. He was a king but his kingdom was not of this world.

Nothing in the basic story of  Jesus was attractive in any way to the epicures and sophisticated intellectuals of the Greek world. He even died as a common criminal naked and humiliated before the mob of his countrymen who had rejected him. He rose from the dead. Those five words are  the core of the Good News brought by all the Apostles on their missionary journeys. Those words uttered  and expounded by all the Apostles, known and unknown, must have been accompanied by an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on them and their listeners for the Word is spread in our hearts by God and it is through God's grace that we can come to be ready for his coming. Maranatha!

Dear Lord may the beginning of this day stay in my mind and let my soul rest in your grace. Let me be ready for anything you might need from me and let the support of your Holy Mother and all the saints be with the poor and suffering who are greatly in need of your Love.