14/01/2023

So much of what I have understood of Church teaching during my life until 2023 was very quickly established in the very first years of the Apostles' acceptance of Jesus' command to "go out to the whole world and spread the Good News". The Apostles did not sit at home pondering and recording. 

They did of course ponder. How could they do otherwise having lived with the Son of God and witnessed the greatest event in history? They had listened to the "Word" and had been called to become the double-edged sword of the first century, the laser-beam of our more technically advanced twenty-first, to teach the whole world how to separate our souls from the attractions of physical being so that hearing the Word that is Jesus we might do the will of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The idea of priesthood is under a lot of pressure these days. I don't know of any instances of priestly failure recorded in the Acts of the Apostles but of course, in the Gospels we already have the squabbling behind Jesus' back of the very human disciples seeking rank and favour, of mothers seeking to influence the careers of their sons, misunderstanding, "Get thee behind me Satan" and downright denial by Peter. Judas was present in the upper room and received the command "Do this in memory of me" he had partaken of the first Eucharist and been chosen in the same way as the others.

There are many sincere readers of the Scriptures who deny that Jesus had the intention of forming a priesthood and a Church to safeguard his Eucharistic Body. They are sincere but wrong. We have to face the real problem of corrupt clergy by the transparency of the broken naked body of  God suffering in and for our humanity on the cross and by remembering that "It is not the healthy that need a doctor". "Where two or three are gathered in my Name, there am I in their midst."

Dear Lord all your creation is known to you. I am a grievous sinner who knows that your forgiveness is part of the way the truth and the life and knowing this say the right words but am unsure in my heart that I am knowing, loving and serving with  every breath of my being. Your Mother Mary is the only perfect human in whose being there is no trace of sin. May she with all the saints pray that we all may come to the holiness that is honest "the fear of the Lord".