04/05/2025

I don't think of myself as particularly fortunate. I hope that I am not one of the rich for whom it is difficult to enter the kingdom of heaven. I am aware of the teachings of the New Testament but I do know that my total life has not been a witness to the perfection of Love displayed on Calvary.

I have never truly responded to the needs of the poor and often denied the need to accept the strangers who on a daily basis risk their lives to begin a new life in this the country of my birth. The truth is that I do not know these my brothers and sisters for the human beings that if I am going to say "Our Father" with sincerity have to be treated with the care and attention that I lavish on myself.

In today's readings those who had suffered the public humiliation of flogging were joyful that they had suffered as Jesus had foretold that they would. St John describes a vision of the Glory of God and in the Gospel he records the three-fold pastoral commission given to the Church founded on St Peter.

In the first days of the Church in Jerusalem the new believers tried to live communally in the "Poverty" that has always been promised by Religious Orders. St Paul often mentions that his pastoral advice is accompanied by money for the receiving communities. 

I do not think we have ever been truly the Christians that St Peter promised to feed in repentance for his three times denial on the early morning of Good Friday. If we had, there would have not been enough money left to build those magnificent structures that we will shortly be seeing a lot of on TV.