27/12/2023

I should never ignore the "hard sayings" of Jesus. He is still revealing only what is true. John leaning back on Jesus' breast is also hard for me to visualise. I am not at ease with the idea of physical contact with another male except one of my immediate family.

St. John knows himself as the disciple "Jesus loved" and this implication of favouritism is not easy for me to reconcile with "God does not have favourites". St John is one of our trusted witnesses to the three years that the incarnate Father, Son and Holy Spirit showed himself in the person of Jesus and taught us by word and deed how we are to live our lives within his Providence. 

In today's Gospel, John recalls the morning some fifty years earlier when he had been shocked by the news brought to Peter by Mary Magdala and had dashed off with St Peter behind him to see for himself.

Much has been made of his holding back to let St Peter enter first into the empty tomb. Jesus had reprimanded John's mother when she sought to influence Jesus into favouring her sons. Jesus' answer then seems to restrict our human freedom as places in the Kingdom of Heaven had been "allotted". 

In the reality of created time the interactions of all human choices have billions of possible outcomes for each human and God knows the events that become the reality of History for he knows  each one of us as we use  our self-controlled human freedom to make choices. God has never willed it that evil should flourish in this world but it does gain more power each time I choose to ignore God's Will.

Dear Lord, I am known completely by you. Help me to follow your Will in all my thoughts words and deeds and thus bring my soul to the Judgement Seat that is not of this world. The only Perfect One since Adam and Eve did not inherit their first sin and thus Mary was able to make the perfect act of faith in you. May my family come to know that there can be no lasting satisfaction with the things of this world and may the prayers of Mary and John and all the heavenly host find a way through the resistance of sin to bring your merciful holiness and forgiveness into the souls of all this world.