29/12/2022

Jesus' followers were only human in the same way that  we are. They were highly blessed to have been alive in the presence of Jesus and to have walked around Palestine listening to his peaching and to have been commissioned to do the same themselves. St Paul had not known the blessing of being in the physical presence of Jesus but had been blasted into blindness by the sight of God on the road to Damascus. A blindness that accompanied the Glory which he saw and although cured needed another two years to come to the full knowledge and love of Father Son and Holy Spirit. And then he acted.

The original apostles were called by their fellow Jew and witnessed the miracles and absorbed the lessons of Jesus' Life. "What's in it for me?" then as now was their first human reaction to everything they encountered and did. Even I, writing these few thoughts am aware that I am hoping that they are acceptable to God as a weak penance for my sins.But they bolstered by "Kingdom of God" hoped to receive political rewards from their Rabi whom they continually disappointed by missing the point.

Thomas a Becket was a servant of a Church that considered itself to be the Superior to the State and expressed his devotion to that Church by defiance of the King. Jesus showed that he is not a political rival to Caesar. He, the Evergreater, accepted in complete humility the political solution to the problem he posed to both the Temple and the Empire. The Church of St Thomas' day was still fighting to become Caesar and it is out of this basic denial of Jesus' teaching that we have arrived at the deplorable state our  Church is in today. She founded by the suffering and Resurrection of our Incarnate God cannot speak out with any authority against the sinfulness that is promulgated in every corner of the World by the technology that has become its own truth while the author of all being, life and truth has become "the little man" on a piece of personal adornment.

Dear Lord only you can help us for the power of Mammon and Satan have infiltrated the holiness of your Church and we your people are without food for our souls, we are sheep without  a shepherd.. May Mary your Mother teach us all to pray with her by pondering your works and imitating your resistance to temptation and acceptance of suffering.