19/10/1923

One of the questions that trying to live our lives as God wants us to brings up the question which St Paul tackles in this morning's first reading. How can God deal justly with the souls born before the final revelation, which has been with us for the last two thousand years, for they include not only the chosen and guided ones but pagans too.?

I could say that we just have to accept it as the will of God for the ways of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not man's. At one of the Diocesan Assemblies that were fashionable in the UK around the turn of the century. I heard one Bishop, now an Archbishop, issue the opinion that even though we were not happy within the Church as she is today, we have to accept her for what she is as what we have is the will of God.

St Paul asks the question "Is God, the God of Jews alone and not of pagans too?" The Church that grew out of the peaching of St Paul and the other Apostles was quite soon compromised by administrative needs. Jesus had rebuffed the mother of James and John when she asked for favoured places to be reserved in his Kingdom for her sons. All the Apostles had quarreled about their status.

The Church had to guard the Sacramental new way of being created on Earth by the Son's Life Death and Resurrection. It was to do this by holiness. Each individual has the responsibility to live by obedience to justice and mercy, to thus bear witness to the Love of God through  human love for each other.

There is only one God. Is it his will that human society worship Mammon and Venus before him? Is it his will that his Church fail in her duty to confect and guard the Sacramental holiness that is the only reason for her being. Can I live the life of Faith outside of the Human Institution that Christ's foundation become very quickly after he ascended into  Eternity , Father Son and Holy Spirit?

Dear Lord, I cannot do any better than this. I try to ponder your ways and live without sin. Help me to remain secure in the knowledge of your Loving Mercy. Help your Church to read and preach your Scriptures and defend all Clerics from the attachment to worldly power that has always been the downfall of the hierarchy. May Mary, who asked for herself nothing other than to be doer of your word, became the bearer of your body both in birth and in death,  lead us all today in praise and in humble supplication for peace on Earth and forgiveness for all sinners both us the living and those waiting in Purgatory.