13/05/2025

There is an intensity about the mass readings of Eastertide. The "Acts" are as they are named full of action and St John is after many years spent with Our Lady and reflection on his own experience truly the "Theologian".

In today's first reading Jerusalem is still the center of the world for most of "us" are still Jews who are still coming to terms with IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.  Even though we have lived with Jesus, it was difficult for us to accept IAMIAM as IAMFATHERSON. We  only completed the Trinity of Persons at Pentecost when we first received the Holy Spirit and from then on have had to grow our own Faith by accepting his guidance.

Today the Church in Zion is experiencing the first attacks made on her by co-religionists. The unintended consequence is that Resurrection Faith is preached  for the first time outside of the Holy Land and the Apostles and their followers begin to accept that they are truly part of the "something greater" than Moses and all the prophets "here" when Jesus walked the Earth.

Today the Institutional Church also remembers the Apparition made by Our Lady at Fatima in Portugal. St John and she became mother and child listening to the dying words of Jesus and so we can be sure that John's Gospel is informed by the Church of Love that was thus established on Calvary; "Woman behold your son, Son behold your mother".

Mary was the first person to whom the Trinity was revealed not as an abstract idea but as a living reality which she nurtured with sinless, worshipful devotion. 

It is no wonder that "her son", John, is able to remember Jesus' words about us, "His sheep". 

"My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no-one is able to snatch them out of the "Father's hand. The Father and I are one."