28/10/2024

I have very often woken up without a thought of God and spent the whole of my day living in this world as it unfolds to my consciousness. It is very easy for me to continue to do that throughout each day. It has not always been so for most of us in the past and in the present for the poor and those involved in war.

Each of those who have led and are living saintly lives have many different gifts. We are all unique beings with one thing in common. Not one of us have arrived in time and space without growing in the wombs of our mothers exactly as do all mammals and we all have the same internal and unseen element that is the image and likeness of the Supreme Creator of all we see and Father of the Only Begotten Jesus.

The collapse of Faith in God is all too evident in my family, town and country. I have to ask why God chose to take the final step of his guidance by revelation at the historical point he did as the chosen people had retained their faith in IAMIAM to the extent that they would punish the "blasphemer" as they did do.

The Apostles, chosen in today's Gospel reading, have been followed by thousands of Bishops through whom, only with their, though frequently absent, cooperation, the grace  created for us by the final Sacrifice on Calvary. was to be channeled into the Church.

Where was the grace of God in the abyss of the worldly Papacy of the 10th century, the Albigensian Crusade, and countless individual killings of good men and women who would not conform to the Church that has never listened to the public announcement made by Jesus at his trial before Pilate?

St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians begins the interpretation of Jesus' life that is part of the start of the theology (commentary on revelation) of Christianity which is undoubtedly the Church for us "who have not seen and yet come to believe".

Jesus condemned hypocrisy wherever he saw it. He rejected the teaching of the scribes and the pharisees. The destruction of the Temple can be seen as a sign of IAMIAM's dissatisfaction with his chosen people but Jesus warns most particularly about how we should not read the will of God into historical events that are entirely of man's doing in his freedom in this world. 

Were those whose blood Pilate mixed with the sacrifices or were killed by the collapse of the tower at Siloam any more guilty than the millions of us who have lived and died since those days?

There are many of us for whom it is a pleasure to be alive. Others wake up to the sounds of war and of death showering down on them and their loved ones. There are others who instigate this horror for their fellows by pressing buttons or pulling triggers. There are others who cheer these belligerents on and yet others who decide whom shall be killed today. In factories far away from the events workers are calculating how much overtime that these conflicts are bringing to them and as for myself, I comment but do nothing. 

It is not only in temples and hierarchies that hypocrisy is to be found.

Dear Lord,  You know the state of your creation and yet we  continue to live today largely as we did yesterday. We prepare our daily bread but ignore our sins until we come to a crisis that we respond to by "Lord, Lord" without the integrity of a St Francis that stands naked before you in complete humility. I have to accept that you know the great sins committed by your Church in blasphemous use of your name as you know mine, yet she is still with us, as am I. I pray that it is the grace that flows from your side  and your words to Mary and John that maintain me in my striving to be what you created me to be. May the prayers of Mary, Saints and Angels continue to plead for us and may my own prayers join theirs and become the mercy that is needed by all sinners on Earth and in Purgatory and by the Church that has yet to attain the state of being that St Paul knew she should have "The Body of Christ on Earth".