25/07/2023

Today's Psalm communicates the joy that we have all felt especially in our youth when with a clear conscience  we go about our daily tasks. It is not too hot or too cold, the sun is shinning brightly and we cycle off to school, or to work just happy to be alive..

St Paul speaks of a more lasting joy that he has and that we too can share by accepting that our lives are the gift of God , that we are weak vessels but that our prayers are all heard and that we build up a community of faithful souls that will be with the Risen Lord.

Only Jesus has been the perfect man and only his mother the perfect woman. It is only too easy to see the earnestness of the mother of James and John as she approaches Jesus with her two sons. Those two must have been embarrassed by the forwardness of their mother who was treating them as they would always be in her eyes, her children. For her part, she was not letting, "that Peter" or his brother get in front of her sons in the race for power in that new Kingdom that Jesus was to establish.

For us today that incident from 2,000 years ago is easily understood as a wrong expectation on the part of all the disciples. Just as the mother of James and John did, they anticipated that the "Kingdom" of  his teaching was to be a worldly one, as the "Messiah" was to an earthly ruler. 

We hear everything that Jesus says and does in the Gospels in the light of the Resurrection. The Gospels themselves were also finalised in this same light. But at the time the mother of James and John sought an advantage for her sons no-one except Jesus himself knew where the wandering Rabbi was to take them.

Dear Lord, only you are and were on earth the perfect man. Apostles soon became bishops and had to administrate an earthly organisation rather than continue to lead us on the spiritual path that leads to the Eternal Life of Heaven. The only historical time we can look back to as an example of a Perfect Church is when you walked with us. I pray that with the help of your Mother praying through the Holy Spirit I can become closer to you and fulfill my place in this creation of  "Our Father". Amen