20/03/2024

We are informed by scholars that the book of Daniel was composed hundreds of years after the events it records so realistically. I don't have any idea about how the Apostles and Disciples who spread the Good News of the Resurrection or their predecessors thought about  this addition to the Pentateuch, their Torah revealed to Moses,  but Jesus is at pains to confirm his own words and deeds as "the truth".

The "truth" comes from God. Our universe is not a deception; it is a "truth" that comes from God; All the material elements that make our world and all that is in it is a reality; it is a truth that comes from God. The life of Nebuchadnezzar in this world really happened; it is a truth that comes from God.

We are reading the Gospel of St John this week leading up to Palm Sunday because he of all the contemporaries of Jesus, is a man, who remembers and interprets the sublime teaching of his Rabbi as the "Truth" that "is God". 

Today Jesus is in  dialogue with the "Jews who believed in him" and yet he chides them with "as it is you want to kill me". It is obvious that "those who believe in him" were not consistent in their belief and thus the dialogue becomes a message which we can easily apply to ourselves 2000 years later.

By choosing to accept God as Our Father we  put ourselves into the place were we can learn to  become the "little children" those beloved of Jesus whose arms outstretched on the cross encircle all who reach up to him as he carries each one of us to our eternal home.

Dear Lord, you know that I so easily become like the Pharisees. Help me this day to become consistent in my behaviour and let me add my worship to the eternal Holy Week that is witnessed by Mary and all the Saints. The whole purpose of our lives is to gratefully accept the grace that is gained by the events remembered in the Sacred Liturgy. It is the Historical event, not the  wonderful  services that we have to remember and we can do this united in Spirit to the righteous on Earth, the saints in heaven and the penitents in Purgatory. May I, body and soul, always be open to your grace.