02/09/2024

Jesus' neighbours were impressed by his living personality and understanding of the scroll he read to them, but incensed by the truth that he is the Word of God. Jesus' band of friends was broken by the Crucifixion but restored on the third day.

Human friendships all have their ups and downs After the Resurrection and descent of the Holy Spirit Jesus' friends began their missions first in the Portico of Solomon and then outside of Jerusalem. 

The Temple was appalled by this but there are hints in the Gospels that the Priests had been prepared  for they did take measures, the stone and the guard, to stop the corpse of Jesus being taken out of the tomb by his disciples as part of a deception to fulfill his prediction for the "Third Day".

I am still trying to understand why it is that IAMIAM revealed to his chosen people the revolution that is the Incarnation at that particular moment in History. God knows the results of all the infinite number of possibilities that can be fulfilled by the free being that he has given to humanity but that moment of Incarnation becomes for us all the source of the unique choice we have to make to be able to join FatherSonHolySpirit in eternal life.

I do know that no-one can know the mind of God but as with many of those first converts in Jerusalem I am looking for the second coming and trying to assess "the signs of the times". Our Lord dismissed the religion preached by both Sadducees and Pharisees as empty show. I have to ask myself if we are any better than that today and think that the same negative answer can be applied to all the generations preceding mine.

I can only judge myself by trying to understand what part "FatherSonHolySpirit" plays in my life and so ultimately I can say, with St Paul, that God's Truth for mankind is guaranteed only by the "Crucified" for he is the "Resurrection" revealed to Saul, the enemy persecutor on the road to Damascus.

Dear Lord, your servant St Paul was given the grace to survive the intensity of the vision that first blinded him. May I recognise and cherish the moments when I am truly focused on you and your teaching and living according to your will for "Lord, Lord" does not impress you at all but it is only by accepting and cooperating with integrity your grace that we can become persons whose choices in this life are completely integrated with the perfection of your will. That is the reason for your creation of us. May we be guided by your Scriptures, by the inspired examples and teaching of your Saints but most of all by the love of your mother who never experienced sin for herself and as Theotokos still channels the merciful grace of God through her prayers and those of the Angels and saints to us sinners both living and dead.