19/06/2025

I experience not a few "odd moments", moments when something maybe trivial and usually inexplicable draws my attention, as I try to respond to the daily mass readings and thus become part of the generation that knew Jesus as "true man" and "true God". 

St Paul proclaims the resurrection but feels "a bit daft about it" as he is worried that he has not done a good enough job to ensure that the "Truth that comes from God" will stand up to the opposition that it is already facing.

He cannot understand how it is that the Corinthians do not have the  love for God and accept his preaching in the same way that he does. He asks them to have patience for he may lack eloquence but his knowledge is faultless. 

He can attribute his embarrassing personal nit-picking to his wish to be seen to be doing everything for the Lord and knows that his scruples about "not charging" for the "Word of God" are just that, a scruple which becomes for me an "odd moment of incomplete understanding" as I try to follow the totally honest examination of his own conscience that accompanies St. Paul's preaching.

For centuries "The Lord's Prayer" has been a tangible part of the cultural/religious fabric of Western Civilization. It  has come automatically into the minds of individuals at moments of stress and fear and been part of all public liturgies. Anybody reading these words knows that that may have been true at some times in the past but it is certainly not true today.

Jesus knows that we can never come close to "understanding" the infinity of the Supreme Being but we all have to recognise that he reaches out to each of us as does a human father to his children. We cannot understand but we can all trust and respond to him as children and the first part of "raising our hearts minds to God " is always to acknowledge him as "FATHER" of IAMFATHERSONHOLYPIRIT.

Today, as always, I am striving for sincerity and holiness but even as Jesus teaches us how to pray I am distracted by an "Odd moment". How would the first disciples have known how "Pagans babbled"? I have no idea what went on in Pagan "prayer".

Dear Lord, you know that throughout each day I try to never forget that you are with me always and that I can become truly holy as you are holy by obeying you by my personal choice in this material universe just as do the intangible beings that are in your created world of the spirit. Help us to feed all our brothers and sisters with both food for the body and for our souls and let us learn that we are only forgiven when we truly forgive those who try to harm us. Help us to know and avoid anything that causes us to add to the deeds of your enemies who bring even more evil into your creation and let my sins, those of the whole world and the Holy Souls, continue to be forgiven by your inexhaustible mercy. Amen.