22/11/2024

No wonder that I am loth to claim to understand John's vision. What can be the significance of an Angel that stands on land and sea? Is it  the Word of God that tastes sweet but turns sour when it is understood? 

Jesus, however, drives out the businessmen from his Temple for that is to be dedicated to prayer. Thank God for the humanity of Son. How could I have lived in the times before the Incarnation?

How did the generations which carried on the missions of the Apostles ensure that the Word of God remains a joy "good news" for all time? Those first Christians and Martyrs lived in a time of economic prosperity in the Roman Peace and the Institutional Church as she developed, gradually came to resemble the Temple that Jesus had to purge literally in today's Gospel and with final reality on his Cross.

She could have easily, been compared to that Angel standing on land and sea. Her "promised" land has to be Jesus the incarnate never changing Eternal Revelation of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and sea the ever fluctuating, never stationary ebbing and flowing of time.

The destruction of the Temple should warn us and all Church leaders that Jesus really did mean "my Kingdom is not of this world". The only people that he ever condemned individually were the equivalent of the clerical hierarchy of today. Has not the Christian Church been part of the fabric of  worldly civilisation for far too long?

The Jews who welcomed Jesus were those who had accepted the word of God and kept the Commandments in their hearts without any ostentatious piety. They accepted and passed on the word of God. They have had their reward.

Those of us who have to care for our souls in my generation can understand from the lessons of history that "The Church" has always been too much a part of this world but that when all is ended the Word that will  remain in her can still be found in Jesus' words to Mary and John from the cross.

There really is a Spiritual Church of Love which is the possession of no race, nation or religion but is made freely available to all who look for it. The unknowable vastness that is God's knows each one of his creation and feeds us with the Hope that is Faith in his Love. There is nothing sour here. Deo gratias. Amen.