24/04/2025

We have to look to the first preaching of the Apostles to conform our faith to what they had learned during the time that they had accompanied Jesus on his mission to redirect the steps of the first "Friends of God" back onto the way, the truth and life.

Jesus message is in its core  simple "The kingdom of God is near to us". His own people, however, did not accept that he was speaking about himself. Neither did his followers, however, until the Resurrection became the clear light of Truth and the purpose of the Temple and the Covenants could be at last understood.

In those days the Apostles were first interpreting their own experience. They were of Abraham's nation, they were the "Chosen People". Their religious feelings had not only been nurtured by Jesus but their Faith was entirely the same as that of "The men of Israel" whom Peter addressed in the Acts read at mass this morning.

Many, many generations have followed on from "those days" in the lives of the Apostles. In our lifetimes they are always "These days" as they were for  Peter, everything he had learned from the Lord was fresh in his mind and he continued to be shocked as he learnt the full extent of the Jesus' reformation of the "Law of Moses".

Each new generation of mankind has to face the new situation into which each of us is born. We must not, however, trust the norms we receive as birthright. "Everybody does it " does not excuse any form of sin. While we are alive we have to live within the moral framework that is recorded in the  Bible. We have to accept Jesus and the Apostles as our contemporaries and live as they did lives of thankful freedom directed always towards Our Father for whom there is no other time than "Now".