22/08/2024

The formal Liturgy of the Church, its celebration of salvation, is the bones around which I try to find the living body of Christ. It is only Jesus who can become the living heart of flesh that replaces my sinful heart of stone. The peace that can be found in our beings comes only from God but we have to prepare for it. 

We have freedom of choice. That is why the human world although created by FatherSonHolySpirit is not the  "holy place" that God intends it to be. Every human soul that has ever lived, is living or will be born into living, has as its birthright the choice to know, love and serve or to decline the invitation.

Jesus, true man, lived just as we do in an era whose "background noise" civilization, human history, philosophy, was blocking out the awareness of their reason for living from the "chosen people". To reawaken the faith of his listeners he often spoke in parables, a style of communication recognised by the culture of his time and place, which we too can understand.

The Fathers of the Church after the Apostles studied the words of the Old Testament and searched for the symbolic meaning of the stories told by Jesus. Sometimes they find a difficulty. Today's is that only one person is cast out of the "Church" that is their interpretation of the "Wedding Feast" of the parable. 

The lack of wedding garment has been interpreted variously as "lack of Holy Spirit", "disobedience of the "Commandments", even failure "to put on Jesus Christ". We  all learn from the wisdom of the past but live in the present and Jesus today speaks to each one of us, telling that we are each responsible for the state of our own souls and that we cannot "hope away" the alternative reality to eternal happiness.

Dear Lord You know that your Apostles, Evangelists, Church Fathers, Schoolmen and Theologians have left us with billions of words that sometime confuse but can always help each one of us who applies himself to them. Study can become a substitute for prayer and a source of pride. Mary, Queen of Heaven lived only in the gratitude that she had been chosen and seems not to have added anything personal to the remembrances of you in our Gospels. Her life, without sin, is what you offer to us all and it is through her perfection that the Incarnate You chose to become the Sacramental Grace you continue to pour out onto a largely ungrateful world. May her prayers and those of all the Saints continue to bring forgiveness to us their sinful brethren here on Earth and those who are gratefully undergoing punishment in Purgatory.