07/02/2023

St John's Gospel begins with the first fact about ourselves that I heard, as a boy and youth at the end of mass, sometimes thought about as a man and today am face to face again in this morning's first reading. What is it in me that I can know as God's Image and Likeness?

"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God". God is Father Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus is the Incarnation of the "Word" and was thus with God in the beginning and it is "his image and likeness" in which mankind was created. How can I understand the ways of the Evergreater creator of our Universe? And yet he has created me a little less than a God.

Jesus was with God before the creation of the Universe and "I am created ", have the being of which I am always aware as a fragile image of my Creator who poured out his love in the immensity of this Universe and maybe in eternal repeats of his Being of which we have no knowledge.

Jesus is still with us as real in the Sacrament as he was to the senses of the Apostles after the Resurrection. His own honouring of his Father and mother became the total sacrifice of himself on Calvary. We can use his grace to follow the example of his way of perfection but, we do not do that by wrangling our way out of doing his will in all things.. 

Man is man. Woman is woman. "Male and Female"he created them". Parents are to be loved and cared for especially in their dotage. There is nothing that can be thought, said or done by "Image and Likeness" that breaks the demarcation lines set in stone for Moses and by the life, death and Resurrection of he who is creator of all.

Dear Lord, you know that the pharisees were also in need of a shepherd and I know that you condemn them for their pettifogging "holier than thou" but when challenged "to cast the first stone" they shamefacedly sidled off-stage. My soul is mine for the saving and for you there is nothing that is impossible, let me make my soul curban an offering to you that this time I will complete. May Mary's prayers be heard for those suffering in the region that was a first centre of "thy will on Earth" and may she and all the saints continue to implore thy grace for all sinners both here and in purgatory.