29/08/2023

St Paul covered hundreds of miles to spread the Good News of the Resurrection and hundreds more were covered when the letters were circulated among recipients. He tells us all that he is doing God's work and that there is nothing he is seeking for himself. There is no way of understanding his life except to see him as a messenger filled with the Holy Spirit, Father and Son. He himself tells us that we too can/should be filled with Christ.

About twenty five years before St Paul wrote to the Thessalonians the events recorded in today's Gospel took place in Herod's palace. Some scholars of recent times have tried to explain Jesus as a "revolutionary". This was also a common view of their Messiah Rabbi by many of the disciples. This is simply not correct for Jesus' Kingdom is still "not of this world". 

Jesus' reaction to the death of John was to go into the wilderness away from the crowds who would certainly have focussed on him to protest Herod's injustice. Jesus knew that "his time had not yet come". It seems to me that for the thirty three years and nine months that the Jesus was on Earth he had chosen to empty himself and acted on earth only as "True man". He was still truly God as Father Son and Holy Spirit. 

His was the perfect sinless being of humanity that Adam had broken and acted as such throughout his life. St Paul had seen the Glorious being of the Resurrection and had through that inspiration become  able to  continue to spread the story of  Christ's Love, which he had learned from the Apostles, throughout the Empire that had crucified, as it was written, the "King of the Jews".

Dear Lord you know how I become confused by too many thoughts. Help me catch hold of the thread that can connect me to your will and thus live a life without sin or fear. May Mary and all the saints continue by their prayers to open mine and all the other hearts of sinners in this world that we may be able to accept the free gift of God's mercy.