29/06/2023

The people who gathered together to pray, proclaim the resurrection and await the promised return of their friend and teacher whom they now knew to be the Son of God, lived in a situation on earth experienced by nobody before or since those days.

They had witnessed the preaching of Jesus during his public ministry. They had been in awe at the proof of his power over material being. Water had been changed to wine, the blind really did see, the lame did walk and they themselves were the poor to whom the Good  News had been preached. They knew that Lazarus who had begun to rot in the tomb had been brought back to live on and to pray again with them.

Most of all they had seen, touched listened to and eaten with the Crucified Jesus who although retaining in his flesh the holes made by nails and lance was the now gloriously revealed New Life, living Son of God, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit who now filled their beings with grace and the understanding of what had been dimly recognised  during their lifetimes.

The Institutional Church celebrates today the words of Jesus to St. Peter and the Missionary work of St Paul. Neither Simon nor Saul had shown themselves to be potentially great Saints before the Resurrected Lord had spoken to them. 

St Peter who had confirmed his human weakness in the garden, at the trial and on Calvary,  had seen something in the empty tomb and had this confirmed by the later appearances of Christ in the Upper Room and in Galilee. St Paul had originally cast himself,  in his fierce monotheism, as an "Enemy of Christ". God was having none of that and brought him both to his knees and his senses on the road to Damascus.

Thus we have weak human vessels filled with the Holy Spirit, acting in the roles previously reserved for the beauteous Angels as the Messengers of God.

If we can live with these remembrances of the Apostles, recorded by Evangelists, always in our minds we can truly relax in the certainty of the Love that Jesus promises to all mankind until the end of time.

Dear Lord, let my Faith grow strong to resist sinfulness and Let my hope overcome my weakness in the face of sin and let human Love as personified by your Mother become the heart of my soul. Save all thy people, dear Lord and turn us all away from the self-love that corrupts in your Church the "ordained" and non ordained alike.