19/11/2024

I suppose that we all have replicated in our own lives the difficulties that St John reprimands in the Churches he has founded in Sardis and Laodicea. At first, we receive the Good News with an enthusiastic joyfulness and  devote our time and thoughts to becoming the People of God.

We, however, are living our mortal lives in time and as it passes we change and our awareness that we have been created by the love that "passeth all understanding" weakens into the wishy-washiness that John's vision is counteracting.

Those who have responded to the  calling that inspired the Apostles to drop everything and walk off behind the stranger must view in horror the backsliding from even the look-warm faith that has emptied their churches.

The meaning of "God with us", Emmanuel, is preached in St Paul's letters which encourage us to live our lives with the Faith of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. "Faith" is not shutting our eyes to the sin that is openly avowed and flaunted in these times, even by Bishops. 

In the past, secularly powerful warrior bishops and Crusade-Preaching Popes were obviously not following the will of God. Nothing can excuse the burnings of leaders and the slaughter of followers of those who pointed out the discrepancy between the Gross Mismatch between the wealth of the Church and the poverty of her founder.

During the first centuries  the Church founded on St. Peter was not only persecuted from without but also from within her ministers were beset by how to understand with their minds, live and preach with their words and lives the Resurrection and "every word that comes from the mouth of God" for that is the meaning of Jesus, God with us and the source of Eternal Hope, 

"Today salvation has come to this house because this man too, is a Son of Abraham, the Son of Man has come to seek out and save what was lost.

Dear Lord, help me to become fearlessly devoted to your teaching even though it is my nature to be weak and fearful. Let me benefit from reading the examples of martyrs and interpretations of your word. Give your strength to those who are able to give public voice to the devastation that has become the wreck of organized religion in this world. There are very few public figures left who are uncontaminated by "the learned and the clever" who are achieving the destruction of our Faith begun by those who nailed you to the cross 2000 years ago. May my prayers be joined with those of  Mary, all Angels and Saints that I avoid sin this day and that my sins and those of all sinners on Earth and in Purgatory receive the Mercy that is undeserved but is as always the free gift of your Love to us. Amen