07/07/2024

Today's Gospel reading has become part of the "extraordinary" revelations made to and through St Paul mentioned in today's letter to the Corinthians. In the first reading Ezekiel is in no doubt about the mission he has to complete during his life in this world. 

IAMIAM has not given up on his people and is sending Ezekiel to call them back to Jerusalem to build a new Temple and make sincere worship of God the centre of their being and their life  here on earth.

Who can know the mind of God? I am under no illusion that my attempts to bring my course through life into line with the revelations made first through men, the prophets, and then through Jesus, are the whole story of life on earth. There is much that I cannot understand especially the reasons for God making so many overtures and new beginnings for Israel.

It seems that our freedom to choose Father, Son and Holy Spirit is the most important part of the human being created by God. My personal being is in God's Image and likeness but infinitely smaller so it is not surprising that I cannot understand how the spiritual message revealed through the prophets was not accepted by the people who had received such care from God.

Jesus' three years of public life spells out for us our Creator God's purpose "in the beginning", the Creative Love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

The Annunciation reveals to us the Trinity through Mary's personal freedom which accepts her role in God's plan. Today's Gospel emphasises our "freedom". Is it possible that we can act in a way that surprises God? Jesus is "amazed" by the reactions to his preaching. He announces himself as the herald of the "jubilee" and that appals his towns folk and most of all dumbfounds those among whom he has grown from infancy to manhood.

Dear Lord, each day my prayer is the cry from the heart of a sinner. I am happy to live this life but continually afraid that daily temptations will lead me to sin again. My reflections on the mass readings are the rock, the Church that keeps in my mind, the communion of souls, the New Holy Family that does not reject you in body mind or soul. Mary and John stood in for us all at the foot of your cross in real-time 2000 years ago and as the family that does not reject you today but freely prays for the Mercy with which you flood our world only for many of us to dam it out from our souls by choosing to favour our corruptible bodies and Mammon over the Word of God. Jesus lived, suffered died and was resurrected  to open our world to the the forgiveness to be welcome as it outpours from the centre of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.