05/10/2022

Paul's inspiration to continue to teach the final revelation by God of Himself, Father Son and Holy Spirit, was a direct command which had blocked the persecution that he had intended for the Church in Damascus. After three years he went back to Jerusalem, where he had guarded the clothes of those who stoned Stehen, had met Peter then and James but none of the other Apostles. His preaching in what is now Syria and Anatolia was continued for a further 14 years before he returned to Judea, the Holy Land especially blessed by God. It was then that the Apostles, they who had been companions of Jesus, recognised the validity of the message preached by their former persecutor; his dogma was accepted by the nucleus of the Church still growing in Judea, less than twenty years after the Resurrection, as the truth taught to them by Jesus.

Jesus had taught once and for all that it was not the letter of the Law, the religion founded by God in his revelation to Moses but built up as a human social system by over meticulous Pharisees, that should rule our beings but the Love of our "Father who art in Heaven". When Peter's Jewishness (was this encounter before or after Peter's rejection of dietary laws) took over his prayerfulness Paul was able to correct him. 

"Correct him" is what Paul did. The first leader of our Church was in error. The innumerable words and thoughts contained in the equally innumerable records of the Vatican and other Church centres neither add to nor change what is written in the Scriptures. If we cling fast to the feet of the Lord as did Mary the sister of Lazarus and Martha, we will be able to follow the Lord faithfully even though his footsteps may lead us to a personal Calvary.

Dear Lord, you know all of us, living and dead. You know human holiness and sinfulness. Let your grace fill our hearts with the joy of your Resurrection which is our life and salvation. We are weak but with you as our strength we can grow in love for you until the day of our death. May Mary at the foot of the cross have her sorrows comforted by the prayers many of us make through her to the Glory that is her Son in Eternity