20/06/2023

The greatest of God's gifts to us is Life, being a part of his creation and with the consciousness of it too. The greatness of life is that it is our opportunity to know, love and serve God by resisting the world, the flesh and the devil. Today the World in the person of Bill Gates is interfering with my mind. I cannot get into my Windows account and I am peeved. Yes, in a very childish way.!

Google and all the Social Media have turned themselves into the "non-mystical body" that is as it were a worldly anti-church offering real-time communication to all the living  as does Christ's Mystical Body, his Church on earth, offer Spiritual Communion with both the living and the dead. The worldly networks that can connect every individual in the world can do in the twinkling of an eye what St Paul did with such difficulty. Google has even turned itself into a Universal Calendar complete with its own "canonised" secular saints and "Feast Days".

Today's Mass Reading from St Paul is an appeal for funds to those suffering from a famine in Jerusalem. The Church has always taken "love thy neighbour as thyself" to heart. It was to care for "widows and orphans" that the first deacons were appointed in Jerusalem. St Stephen is recorded has having forgiven his killers in the words of Jesus "Father forgive them they know not what they do".

Jesus tells us that in addition to loving "our neighbour as ourselves"  we also have to love our enemies. Our lives are lived in the Providence of God, the sun shines and the rain falls on the honest and the dishonest alike but our response to providence is entirely up to us. God as created us as free beings to respond to his self-revelation, his commandments and his providence as we so wish and thus choose for ourselves death or eternal life. 

Dear Lord, let me implore your mercy for me and all my loved ones . Let me learn what it means to love my enemies not only as an idea made of words but as a genuine prayer for the welfare of all from the depths of my being. You except none of us from your salvation let my ability to love become as yours. May Mary who has always known how to love without reserve continue to pray for all who love and hate me. Let me avoid sin this day.