17/03/2023

Those of us who have been born after the three years of Jesus' mission on earth have received a special blessing. "Blessed are those who have not seen and still believe". The Apostles who had seen the miracles and who had absorbed Jesus' teaching; had had to overcome the grotesque mystery of the Crucifixion and then faced by the Glory of the Resurrection were given the task of remembering all that they had witnessed and proclaiming the Great News.

The vast majority of Christians who have ever lived and died fall into this category of "blessedness". The Gospels are not a "real time" journalistic account by an embedded "special corespondent" but rather a memoir written some time after the events that they record. Scholastic criticism of authorship and recorded texts is, no matter how interesting and erudite, of more importance to the scholars than it is to believing Christians.

It is probable that someone other than St Peter produced the final version of today's first reading.( There is nothing novel about today's ghost-written" memoirs" of princes and politicians.) St Peter who got himself into all sorts of messes by wanting Jesus to be something that he, Peter, could understand was finally appointed by Jesus to lead the Church into the continuation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit on earth that he himself is in the Blessed Sacrament.

The Holy Spirit is always in the Gospels. They are always true even when at their weirdest. Peter and the others dropped everything, their families, their possessions, their livelihoods to follow Jesus who was not then the Risen Lord. They were truly blessed for they too did not see anything more than a working carpenter and yet as working fishermen themselves, by the grace of God, believed and walked after him.

Dear Lord help me to take your life on earth into my heart that I might try continue to be "in your image and likeness" a soul who wants no more than to accept, return and reflect the Love that is your being. None of the disciples knew you more than did your mother from whom you took your first nourishment and received loving maternal care. May she and all the saints in your Eternal Glory not forget the struggling souls on earth and the penitents accepting their punishments in Purgatory.