24/05/2024

St James teaches that we should avoid disputes with our brothers. We should be as straight in our relationships with others as is Jesus, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with us. Oaths become necessary only when we accept the human standards of an untruthful world. 

Jesus looks at each one of us in compassion and love and tells us to keep out of the world, the world of flesh and Mammon, and to open the way for us he submitted to the power of the world but not before condemning it in his declaration before Pilate "My Kingdom is not of this world".

In the events of the centuries that have passed since that moment of Jesus' trial, the history of mankind, we have seen the spiritual descendants of the Apostles who were first commanded to lead us on the Way, the Truth and the Life without provisions for their journey become the "Bishops" who for centuries have lived as do all the princes of this world.

Many of us since the very first centuries have raised this question of poverty in our prayers. Some have challenged the power of the Institution and broken free from the Church of Institutions to seek to follow Jesus into the desert to be alone with the Father. Others have found that in their reformation they have created only another institution to displace the one which they perceived to be sinful. 

Jesus' Kingdom can be shared by us in this world only by knowing without reservation that the vastness of the universe, the tiniest of particles and all that exists therein will all pass away  but his love and compassion will stand. We are a spiritual creation of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and it is to our God that we will have to answer when our bodies become lifeless shells.

This is the only "trial" that has the power to condemn and cannot be influenced by anything other than the Truth.

Dear Lord, let my soul be ever-open to your Holy Spirit and let me treat all people with respect as do you. Your Love encompasses the whole Universe and you become incarnate to free all sinners, past, present and future from the emptiness of their sins. You trust us to know that sin ruins our very being and to help us overcome its strange power you have offered the vastness of your Love to be accessed by any one of us at any time, even at the very instant of death. Help me to repay your trust by witnessing the faithfulness of Mary and John. Let me stand with them though separated by two millennia and bleed in my heart for the corpse but accept the forgiveness with Joy. May all sinful mankind, on earth and in Purgatory stand with us in a Mystical Church and become truly remorseful for our sins and the sins of all the world. Amen!