31/12/2025

Seventh Day within Christmas Octave.

Today's Mass Readings summarise what has been revealed about how we have to continue to live out our lives in the full knowledge of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT that had matured in the "John" who had both shared in the "time of this world" engraced by the INCARNATION as historical events and pondered their Eternal significance for all subsequent generations as he continued to live out his own long life.

The mystery of the Glory of God that is how John begins his memoir and interpretation of the "Life of Christ" has always held me captivated ever since I first heard it as "The Last Gospel" at the Liturgies I attended as a child.

God knows that the old man that I have become is still irretrievably engaged, not always happily so, when trying to "know, love and serve". It's easy for me to beat my breast and say "Forgive me Lord for I am a sinner" but in the depths of my being I am one with the first believers whom John writes to in the first reading and feel lost and possibly abandoned  in that Jesus has not returned and that even after Incarnate, life, death and Resurrection mankind has never become the coopted into the Family of God on Earth that is promised by;

"But to all who did receive him, who did believe in his name, he gave the right to become Children of God, who were born not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man , but of God".

The difficulty that we humans have always faced is that we are totally free to follow our own ways during our lifetimes. It is impossible  to imagine how many are the ways of man we unravel as we choose how to spend each moment of the time we experience as our lives.

If, however, we do "receive him" and hold on to that thread in the skein of reality that is also Truth and Life we will understand that we are "anointed by the Holy One" and we can "all have knowledge". The Created Universe is as it was created to be, my own being is to "know, love and serve" and "Woman behold your son. Son behold your mother" is the promise that Anti-Christ, Satan will not prevail and that each of us already is enfolded by the Loving Grace that we only have to choose to accept as it is freely offered to the whole world from the Cross on Calvary.

 30/12/2025

The Sixth Day of the Christmas Octave is how today is dated in the Liturgical Calendar followed by the Catholic Church.

The Eternal Event of the Incarnation is recorded as a historical event in time measured, in the Palestine, of  "those days", by at least two different Calendars. There were also many other calendars in use throughout the world which were unknown to either the Jews or Gentiles who witnessed the Life, Death and Resurrection of Our Saviour and subsequently recorded what they had witnessed.

Nothing in the History of Roman and Orthodox Christian disputes reveals the initial failure of the "Thou art Peter"  Institutions to honour Jesus' declaration at his trial "My Kingdom is not of this world" more than the arguments over the dates in worldly time, that has always been itself inaccurately measured by human calendars, of "Immanuel" our "Timeless GODWITHUS".

Do not love the world or the things of this world. 

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world

-the desires of the flesh, the desires of eyes and the pride of life-

Is not from the Father but is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires.

But whoever does the will of the Father abides for ever.

Dear Lord help me to truly know my sins and be truly sorry that I have offended thee. Help me to overcome all the temptations that the many innocent wonders of this world have to captivate my heart and thus keep me from living true to your will. Save me from the emptiness of the abyss of non-being which periodically threatens to sweep over and devour my soul. Help me to know your LOVE and abide in your New Holy Family with Mary and all the saints and let your grace overcome all the obstacles that keep my family and all the other peoples of the world from also striving to be true to YOU. Amen.

 28/12/2025

The Holy Family

Over the centuries that she has been an institution the Church founded by Jesus to be His presence amongst all subsequent generations until the end of time  has had as her focal point the first Mass, the "do this in remembrance of me" ; the Last Supper. 

In the "Upper Room were present the faithful Apostles, the traitor, and the "True Man and True God" who created in the seconds of real-time it took for him to say "This is my body" the completely new form of being to which he would bear witness by Cross and Resurrection. The Eucharistic Sacrament is the continuing Real Presence and is thus our Spiritual Food.

Eighty generations after that event I am a sinner grappling with all the mish-mash of historical truths, half-understood ideas, momentarily-grasped insights but fundamentally believing human being that makes me what I am today. 

Our Father knows that it is only because of "Woman behold your son. Son behold your mother" the invitation into the Church of Love, which requires only an open believing heart and does not need us to ignore an Institution's  present and past sinful entanglements with the things of this world if we are to share in the Mystical Real Presence promised by "This is my Body" that I am able to know that it is true that He will be with us always even to the end of time.

Jesus lived totally anonymously as a Jew for thirty years of his life. Joseph guarded the sinless holiness of Jesus and his mother. This is the Holy Family that the Church celebrates today. 

On his cross in the utter pain of his public death he creates directly by his words the spiritual relationship between himself, his sinless mother Mary and his beloved disciple John that we can all choose to become part of for it is this New Holy Family within which "even though heaven and earth pass away "MY WORD" will stand."

 27/12/2025

God knows that I have already tried to begin this day in awareness that I have to choose to know, love and obey. He does not force himself into my being but welcomes me back from sleep into His Love that never sleeps but promises to maintain all that "is" in existence until the end of time.

Now, some time after waking-up, I am still making that "Act of will" to avoid sin by now opening my heart to the guidance of the Scriptures chosen to be part of today's liturgical re-enactment both in time and in eternity of the completion of Incarnate WORD'S life on earth.

In the first reading John addresses us as "Beloved" for he really knows that that is what he himself is. He is the "Beloved Disciple" who knows that that is the complete meaning of "and your neighbour as yourself" which is not a "Second Commandment" but rather the completed Act of Obedience to " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind and strength". 

We are all "Beloved". The babe in the manger hearing the breathing of ox, ass and sheep, feeling their touch and smelling their dung, scratched by straw and hungry for his mother's milk, this total human weakness that is every baby has chosen to become thus out of ETERNAL LOVE that knows each individual human being that has, is and will ever be created. His Love is available to bring us all to salvation.

I know that human words can never express the immensity that is God. 

Incarnation, Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection are four words that have generated billions of others but they are much more than words for they are the temporal acts of ETERNAL LOVE of  which  John is a witness to TRUTH when he addresses us as "Beloved" for that is what each of is to "Our Father, Abba" as he "forgives us our trespasses" in the pain of Calvary. Amen

 26/12/2025

"In those days" was for us,  yesterday,  the recollection of that very brief moment in the time of this world when the Eternal Word of Our Father began the manifestation that is our forever guide and rule for living out our own lives on Earth. 

Jesus warns us that he did not come to bring peace on Earth, but for many of us the celebration of "Christmas Day" is always a brief reminder of what might have been if he had.

"In those days" for today takes us back to the first events experienced by the founders of the Church built on Peter in the True Enlightenment created and bequeathed by Jesus during the time leading to His concluding Death and Resurrection.

Millions of us have since "those days" "pondered in our hearts" the words of these events and striven to enfold our being within them to ensure the personal purity of holiness that is the only way of life that completes the will of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

We all can only truly live by every word that comes from the mouth of God. We can only find the WORD in the many words and deeds of Scripture. 

The martyrdom of John the Baptist is the heroic human concluding event of the Old Testament. The martyrdom of Stephen is the first heroic human response to Jesus' life, death and Resurrection but the Church that was already growing "in those days" although watered by the "blood of martyrs" was soon to lose sight of Jesus' words declared to Pilate "My kingdom is not of this world".

Dear Lord, Please remember your promise and return soon. We have not done as well as we should have done after being engraced by your Life, Death and Resurrection. Please return to save us yet again from ourselves. 

 25/12/2025

God knows that the words of this morning's liturgy although composed by man have the beauty and power that is the pure, loving truth with which IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT knows his own being thus loving us also into being and forgiving us for all our sins.

He knows that every "iam" is totally miniscule but has created each of his human beings to be "IMAGEANDLIKENESS", as another person to respond in created time to his WORD which is recorded in the Old Testament and today is celebrated as the beginning of the New and Final Revelation that enables us to do his will on Earth, in our time, as it is done in His timeless, Eternity.

The writer of today's second reading has had some time in which to "ponder within his heart" the events that his generation has witnessed and knows that Moses and the prophets had received and proclaimed the WORD but he and his generation had been engraced by the living presence of the same WORD, Incarnate Son and that many of them had witnessed  real-time events that have been the historical reality of "True man and True God" on Earth.

When John came to write his personal memories that are still with him at the the conclusion of his long life he has to begin at the source of Reality and then recalls the real-time teaching of the WORD leading up to the Saving Event on Calvary.

Mary was the only other one present at both the temporal beginning and end of Jesus' life. John had accepted Jesus' commission and had taken her into his home but he does not elaborate on this. We 2,000 years later, do, however, have more than enough information about the sinful failures of the Institutional Church based on Peter but also know that Jesus promises to be with us even to the end of time we thus have to reconcile the perceived failures of history with the reality promised by the WORD.

Everyday that I raise my heart and mind to God I am aware of Calvary and of the words spoken by Jesus to Mary and John and accept these as the foundation of the  Church of Love that is the presence of Christ that can be found  even in the midst of the worldly entanglements that have confused rather than enlightened so many of the faithful who have been scandalised by  the Institutional Church.

More than ever, however, today is the day when we should remember  persons loved by God rather than try to interpret events created by human failure. The very nature of a baby is to inspire tenderness. Mary is such a young girl to bear  responsibility for a new life and Joseph is kindness and humility personified. The stable is filled with the sight, sound and smells of creation and we with the shepherds can only bow our heads and worship in awed silence for "unto us a CHILD is born" Amen

 24/12/2025

Wednesday Advent Week 4 Christmas Eve

Today we complete the preparations that we make to welcome into this world the Incarnate Son of God.

There are millions of us throughout the world who are today engaged in a frenzy of human activity. Some of us will also raise our minds and hearts to God but it seems that for most of us "Jesus" is only a name from the past.

At the time of the Incarnation, 9 months prior to today, 2025 years ago, Mary asked "How can this be?" and I too have repeated that question many times during my lifetime as I witness the remorseless rise of Mammon and decline of Christ which has characterised my time on Earth.

God knows that this losing sight of His purpose in creation is not something that I observe only in others for I too sometimes have a struggle to complete the words of the Lord's Prayer, his "roadmap" to Holiness.

Very few people knew what was happening that night in Bethlehem and yet it was the beginning of the most important 33 years of human history.

IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT revealed his will to Mary through the message of an angel and to us through his birth, life, death and resurrection. Since those days he has never left us alone, but it is we who have to welcome him into our hearts and actively seek out and embrace his will for us.

Why would we refuse the Loving Fatherhood of God, a place in the New Holy Family as an adopted sibling of the Son of the Most High? 

Jesus dying words to Mary and John "Woman behold your son. Son behold your mother" complete his mission of salvation in this world the beginning of which we celebrate on this 

"Silent and Holy Night"

Dear Lord, help me to know love and serve as a created being by avoiding anything that is incompatible with your loving perfection and thus becoming the person you created me to be. Amen

 23/12/2025

Tuesday Advent Week 4

I am again unable to sleep. I am not, however, upset by what is becoming a familiar pattern of daily life for me although I would rather get through my nights in sleep.

God knows that I try to make use of this wakefulness by turning  my consciousness to thoughts of how to make myself ready for the moment when I will cross the threshold that leads out of this world.

I would like to be able to face the inevitability of that moment with the fortitude that comes about from true faith in the Mercy that is the Love which IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT not only is but with which he creates and supports all of us who acknowledge him by doing his will during our lifetimes.

I always pray that my thoughts and prayers are not just empty or even ego-centric boastful words. Sometimes, however, they do please me and it is for protection against this sense of personal worth that God knows I do cry out as I raise my heart and mind to him.

"In those days" when the Gospels were being lived in real-time all communication between human beings was by direct contact with each other. In today's Gospel  all of the Hill Country of Judah was stirred up by and talking about the birth of John the Baptist. Human beings were sharing their feelings with other human beings.

If we are to live in the way IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT wants us to prepare ourselves for Eternity we have to complete our Love of God by following the Way, Truth and Life of Jesus to love our neighbour as ourself. We must actively seek out ways we can care and share, for and with, all other humans and not only our close relatives.

The Incarnate Word whose birth we are awaiting is not only the perfect sacrificial atonement for all sin, he is also the totally perfect human love and it is the following of his tender example of this that completes the salvation that is the Incarnation. 

"My yoke is gentle, my burden is light."

 22/12/2025

Monday Advent Week 4

I have always become totally uncalm when faced with anticipation of a future event. Today my whole being is without anchor and quivering its way through the time that remains to the great event that I am now focussed on.

When I had to travel overseas to work I would try to cope with this nervousness by what became the addictive misuse of alcohol and was only saved from this self-destruction by the mercy of God working through the kindness of strangers.

In these later days of my life, I have become aware that my essential being is still the same child who couldn't sleep as he anticipated the gifts that he hoped to find waiting on his bed when he woke up on Christmas morning.

For that child, however, Christmas was not just "gifts" it was the intangible atmosphere that occurred at no other time of the year and which even the onslaughts of the most ardent puritan, secular, humanist, feminist, now "woke" but at all times "ego-centric" enemies of God can not curtail.

The learned and the clever can easily demolish any of these my reflections into "sentimental claptrap" but I know that although I lack both wisdom and eloquence I am still the child created by "Our Father" and still able to find and respond with joy to the forgiveness that is God's "Christmas Present" to all mankind.

The crucified Jesus of Nazareth, is the Son of God and Son of Mary, who in his dying breath uttered the words that create the Church of Love, the New Holy Family which is our place of safety in this world until time ends and IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, becomes ALLINALL.

"Woman behold your son. Son behold your mother." Amen

 21/12/2025

Sunday Advent Week 4 2025

Our Father is complete in his being. He lacks nothing. He is total changeless perfection. Eternity.

We are created to be both sharers in and pointers to the Eternal Unseen Reality who tells each of us that we are a unique person an "iam" just as he is IAM.

Two thousand years ago in Palestine a teenaged bride and an older husband had to face up to what was on the surface, in human eyes an impossibility. 

"How can this be?"

God is completely true to himself. He has created the humanity that misused its freedom and out of the same creative love he begets the Eternal WORD as True Man out of the flesh of the Virgin Mary to become himself the only possibly great enough Sacrificial Victim to atone for Original Sin.

"Nothing is impossible to God".

Mary and Joseph do not talk about this "Message of an Angel" but accept the Word and play out their eternal roles in the human-time of  the subsequent years when "Jesus walked".

Mary, who had pondered in her heart all that she had had revealed to her, must have remembered as she trudged behind her son out of the city and up the slope of Calvary the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem that she had made with Joseph 33 years previously.

For her sinless being God had always been "ALL IN ALL" but she is completely human and as such she must have cared for Joseph the Good Man just as she is caring for all of us in the Church of Love.

" Woman behold your Son, Son behold your mother."

 20/12/2025

Saturday Week 3 Advent

King Ahaz' "I will not put the Lord my God to the test" sounds as if it is a faith-filled confirmation that has accepted whatever we experience in life without questioning for if it happens it must be the will of the "IAMIAM" who is all-controlling and has thus today become the "IAMALLAH" of the false prophets Jesus warned us about.

Jesus is not a response to the prayers of the Chosen People. He is not "sign". He is the freely given Eternal Merciful Response of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT to the spurning of his LOVE that began in the Garden, incarnated from the womb of the Virgin Mary in Nazareth in real-time about eighty generations ago.

Adam and Eve, humanity, are not GOD but they and we share an image and likeness of God's unbounded freedom that can choose how to act during the experience of life in the material reality which is not only time but should also be awareness of  revealed Eternal Reality.

Humanity, even when chosen (Jews) and fully informed (Christians) has never been faithful and we have always become deluded and overcome by the wonders of our bodily beauty, intelligence, Divine Image and Likeness and brought evil into the World by choosing to be guided in the ways of life by ourselves and not by the WORD who has always been with us and can be known by each one of us when we sincerely open our beings with the unequivocal "Be it done to me according to thy word" of the "Teenager" of Nazareth who at that moment becomes both "Theotokos" and Mother of the Church of Love, the New Holy Family, Jesus, Mary and John.

Dear Lord, how can it be that, after so many generations of humanity and the perfect sacrifice of Calvary we are still as lost in the "wonder of our own being", as were Adam and Eve? Help me to become the being I was created to be by joining my prayers with those of the whole world as we seek your mercy in forgiveness of our sins and those of the Holy Souls. Amen

19/12/2025

Friday Week 3 Advent

It is possible for me and every other soul on earth to live without sin. Sometimes this has nearly happened but it seems that God's will for a sinless creation has never materialized in the human reality of time on earth.

My experience of living my own life has largely been one of trying to face up to the consequences of what I know to have been my own, my personal sins. I know that they are my own because although I knew that they were being done in opposition to the will of Our Father I still did them and then panicked overcome by the fear of retribution.

This concept of a fear-driven relationship with an all-knowing, all-powerful "God" is what those who today reject God and his revelations even to the extent of today claiming to be able to choose to become either man or woman is the basic lie on which the "Father of lies" has always built his case against God. It was thus in the Garden and has ever been so.

During the thousands of years when God confined his revelations only to the Jews in the Old Testament there were many "Heroes" who displayed during their lifetimes seemingly super-human qualities that expressed their total commitment to IAMIAM, the LORD whose will they accepted as their own.

Samson is today's example. And appropriately so for it is in long suffering Gaza that he dies in agony.

There were also Prophets whose faith had been acknowledged by the insights with which they proclaimed the Eternal WORD.

Today John the Baptist is identified with Elijah.

In the person of John the Baptist the functions of hero and prophet are combined and concluded. With his martyrdom the Old Testament has officially ended for he has seen the ONE whose shoe he is not fit to undo and at the Baptism of Jesus it is made quite clear that with Jesus  there is "Something greater here".

The "learned and the clever" have always been able to contemptuously tell me that my "fear-driven" childhood prayers for forgiveness of sin are simplistic and not worthy of the humanity that can display the intelligence of a Plato or an Einstein and especially their own.

Our Faith, however, is in Jesus the Resurrection who taught us to acknowledge supreme reality with the child-like love expressed in the Aramaic, "Abba" and by knowing that during our lives we all can have a place in the secure reality of the New Holy Family he created as, humanly heroic as was Samson, he completed the WORD with the Sacrificial Death on the Cross that gives meaning to Life on Earth. 

18/12/2025

Today, exactly one week, before the Church celebrates the beginning in worldly time of the life, death, resurrection of  Eternal Reality whose NAME is INCARNATION she prepares for  the Sacramental Reality that is the Liturgical Consecration when bread and wine become the Real Presence of Our Saviour, by again asking with Mary;

 "How can this be?" 

The answer is still found only in Scripture.

St Paul was not the only "Scribe or Pharisee"  whom the Resurrection had blasted into a complete reset of the intellectual and spiritual foundations which secured his beliefs and sense of reality. These were the ones who although forced into belief in Jesus by the witness of their own worldly experience were also able to find  scriptural evidence that Jesus was  in "Accordance with the Scriptures", the Promised One, The Holy One of Israel, The Messiah.

Today we read revelation made through Jeremiah and have to contrast this with our knowledge of how the Zionist return to Palestine has never been "In accordance with the Scriptures" even those of the Old Testament". It is the persecuted and  crucified Saviour who is the only "Lord of Righteousness".

The Psalmist is overcome by  his awareness of the presence of IAMIAM and and loses himself in this joy. 

Blest be the Lord, the God of Israel

who alone works wonders,

ever blest his glorious name.

Let is glory fill the earth, Amen, Amen

In St Matthew, however, we read the plain facts of how St Joseph reacted to the Annunciation. Believing in God and doing his will is always a simple matter of "yeah or nay" but  its consequences are immeasurable and visible in every one of our deeds.

We too have to hear  the WORD that is in Scripture. We have to take HIM into our hearts and listen to HIM constantly for HIS is the only true narrative that can guarantee we are living towards the human holiness that can respond to the Immensity of Reality with "Be it done unto me according to Your Will."

May Mary, the Mother whom you gave to the whole world, from the unimaginable agony of the cross on Calvary continue to care for all her children and may her prayers bring your forgiveness to all sinners on earth and in Purgatory for you chose her before time began to be the source of the humanity with which you saved us from our own sins. Amen

 17/12/2025

Wednesday Week 3 Advent

In the first months after the Ascension of Our Lord, when the nucleus of what was to become The Church met to pray together in the Portico of Solomon and lived a communal life, the only texts that they used were those preserved by the Scribes.

Many of those who met together had seen the resurrected Jesus but did not really know how to process this evidence of their own eyes as they lived on in this world which basically remained unchanged after the Resurrection, following the same rhythms of life that it had always done.

As a modern Christian I can believe with the Creed "True Man and True God" but it is in "True God"  that I first believe, it is "True God" who chooses to become man. For most of the first Church even after his death and Resurrection, however, Jesus was a man chosen by IAMIAM to restore the human descendants of Jacob, Israel to their rightful place this world.

Matthew's Gospel is composed of his own personal memories and the reminiscences of his contemporaries and has to first establish Jesus' human credentials for him to be considered to be the Messiah even though Jesus' death and Resurrection, possibly confirmed by the destruction of the temple, had completely reset his understanding of scripture. Thus it begins with the genealogy.

At the moment I am really praying that I can come to know Jesus, the friend remembered by the Apostles, and how their memories of the words and deeds of that man are the final  revelations of the will of our creator to guide us through our time on earth.  

It seems easier to believe in "True God" but it had to be the "True Man" who was tortured to death and rose again from the dead. A true man who was begotten not made and whose birth we are now preparing to celebrate. 

Dear Lord, Help me to live out my days still searching for holiness and sharing in the confidence and love you had for not only "Our Father in heaven" but also the human love you had for Joseph and Mary in The Holy Family, the model for the Church of Love our New Holy Family of You, Mary, John and all of us who are open to your divine and human love. Amen

 16/12/2025

Tuesday Week 3 Advent

Yesterday my reflections were very much dominated by the tragic events that were unfolding in Australia but which are certainly yet another of the failures of mankind to be faithful to the WORD.

In yesterday's Psalm we prayed "Lord teach us your ways" and in the Gospel the Scribes and Pharisees were confronted by Jesus with a question that they correctly understood to be a challenge to their integrity and so they avoided it by refusing to answer.

Jesus' "Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things" is not an empty riposte in reply to a moot point. It is a confirmation to each of them and to each individual who has ever lived since then that there is always only one answer to our human dilemmas.

The events on  Bondi Beach and all other such "Evils" that have happened, are happening and maybe will happen are known by our all-knowing God to be the cumulative results of all human failures either to do his will or to respond to the challenges he makes as we come face to face with the WORD which is the teaching present in both Testaments that comprise Scripture.

The vastness of the power of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT is matched only by the vastness of his justice, mercy and love. In his self-revelation, however, he treats each tiny one of us as an equal and offers us the freedom to make our own positive or negative response to the Love out of which we have our being.

He also knows that even being aware of our own existence can be an overwhelming task for such tininess in His Spiritual and Material Universe and has thus never left us alone. Jesus tells us that we can address the vastness of God as "Dad".

In this morning's first reading Zephanaiah's  insight into the purpose of IAMIAM is that He 

"Will leave in your midst  a people humble and lowly,

They shall seek refuge in the name of the Lord,

Those who are left in Israel;

they shall do no injustice and speak no lies,

nor shall there be found within their mouth a deceitful tongue.

For they shall graze and lie down

and none shall make them afraid."

The INCARNATION is the fulfillment of this vision and Jesus' teaching in word and deed enables the whole world to become "Israel", "The People of God", for even the greatest of sinners is free to make the right choice to seek forgiveness and avoid sin.

Two thousand years ago in the animal shelter in the hill country of Judea, at David's City there occurred the event for which we are now preparing,  the reality of which has been largely lost within its own "Celebration" . For that short moment everything in Zephaniah's vision materialised; it was indeed a "Silent and Holy Night".

Thirty-three years after the joy of this night, that perfect child, had grown to become the adult victim that becomes both the Sacrament of Salvation and the founder of the Church of Love, the New Holy Family where the vision of Zephanaiah lives with Jesus, Mary and John and where when we choose it as our home "none shall make us afraid". Amen.

 15/12/2025

The Lord our God has revealed himself and his will for mankind continuously to the Jews and Christians ever since he walked with Adam in the Garden.

He is the creator of all that is real, the source of the invisible "being" the awareness of which confirms the reality of the "I" which we all know ourselves to be.

God first of all told the Jews that although he is unseen and vast beyond their ability to comprehend he is a person and is named IAMIAM and that they were especially chosen by him to have the opportunity to become his people who would be the light of  creation and show to all other rational beings how to live in the holiness that is his being.

The historical events of the centuries recorded in the Old Testament are the history of Jewish failure to justify the hope, love and trust that God has placed in them.

Our never changing God still has only love for His Chosen Ones and in his wisdom gave them, and thus us, another chance to do his will and live righteously, loving both him and their brother humans.

The historical events that began in real-time nine months ago, two thousand years ago in Nazareth INCARNATION, BIRTH, LIFE, DEATH and RESURRECTION are the complete revelations made again through and to the Chosen Ones.

IAMIAM told not only the JEWS but also the whole world  by his words and deeds in first century Palestine, recorded in the New Testament, that His NAME is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and that we have only one purpose in life; to obey his now completed revelations.

There is no greater witness to the failure of the Jews to return God's Love than the Crucifixion. One of the many witnesses to the gross failures of the Institutional Christian Church in the centuries of its existence is its treatment of the Jews.

Neither Jews nor Christians have ever lived in this world as the worshipping communities God's revelation made possible for them. We are, however, all free individual beings and not confined by the man-made corruptions of Temple, Synagogue or Church.

Jesus is not only God but a human son of a human mother. He knows Mary and Joseph for the individuals that they and their family of which he is a part, are. He similarly knows all his disciples and cares for them just as we know and care for our friends and families. He also leaves us in no doubt that Our Father knows "every hair on our heads". We are all first individuals in the sight of God.

When Jesus declares before Pilate that "My kingdom is not of this world" he warns us that he is not to be confined in worldly institutions developed by mankind; it is a grave mistake for the Church to ever have taught "extra Ecclessiam nulla salus", for with his dying breath he creates the mystical but very human relationship which assures us that he will always be present with Jews and Christians of all races, "go out to the whole world and teach all men", at the Heart of His New Holy Family, "Woman behold your son, son behold your mother".

When we choose to live according to the revealed will of God we become part of this "Church of Love" and thus become not of this world even though we are surrounded and threatened at every second of our lives by the rampant materialism that grows out of  the selfishness fostered by devil, the world and the flesh.

All acts of evil that are disfiguring the world at this moment are being done by or at the behest of individuals who act against the will of "Our Father". I can witness them at the click of this mouse.

Lord help me to resist all that separates me from your Love. Amen

 14/12/2025

Sunday Week 3 Advent

Only God can know how I am struggling at the keyboard this morning. I have read Isaiah and as usual am inspired by his acknowledgement of God's Glory but also somewhat resentful of God's seeming neglect of millions of others by his choosing only the one people to favour with direct revelation

I don't think that I have been neglected by God because I am not a Jew. Or do I have  to collapse in awe before the superiority of the human talents displayed in the arrogant self-confidence of Zionism and the wonder of the outstanding Jewish presence in all the affairs of this world?

God knows that I do not have it in me to hate anyone. My petty anger has always been short lived and resulted in embarrassment and self recrimination rather than lasting resentment of the other. He knows that I am not an "Anti-Semite" but He also knows  how weak I am and how I am such a fragile vessel to contain his Saving Grace.

Nevertheless, even in the depths of my tininess, I have been instructed by the TRUTH taught in word and deed by the living person INCARNATESON, Jesus of Nazareth and so am emboldened to  ask my "DAD" "Why were there then, the Gentiles, and are now so many souls in the world who have not accepted the benefit of your Love or even known that it has been revealed to them"?

Jesus bleeds out Loving Mercy for all mankind on Calvary. There we are all adopted into his "New Holy Family" but all this happened in time and it took  centuries for  many of us to even hear the name of Jesus. 

That is why today I pray with Jesus, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do", for all who and ever have been out of ignorance tied exclusively to "the things of this world" and for the rest of us, who have ignored the revelations concluded in the bitter pain of Calvary, I also pray for the Mercy that is thus totally beyond all human understanding. 

How could I refuse such Love. God forgive me. Amen

 13/12/2025

Saturday Week 2 Advent 

Everything that is happening now is also unique for "time" does not repeat itself. We all know this but I also know that I have never truly lived in each moment of my life for I have always responded to myself  before responding to the Infinity of Love which is the awareness of each one of us that is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

Our Scriptures also happened at never to be repeated moments of time. In today's Gospel, Peter James and John have been shaken in the very depths of their beings for they have just seen on the mountain with their bodily eyes the Glory that is beyond imagination and heard words that confirm that they are living and at that moment walking with the INCARNATE WORD under the same sun that shines, then as now, equally on the whole world.

So, at this moment, I, as were those disciples, am trying to respond to a historical event that is more important for each human being than even our own births. Peter, James and John were chosen to experience ultimate reality but there is a way in which we the subsequent generations know more than they did.

They did not know at that moment the meaning of "The Son of Man will suffer at their hands". John was to hear "It is finished" but James and Peter even though they had witnessed the "Transfiguration" were missing from the final agony. 

For us not only the whole of God's revelation is available to guide our passage through time but we also are witnesses to our own personal failings and the historical failings that were/are the inevitable result of refusing to live following  the way, truth and life that is to be revealed in the Real-time of 2000 years ago by the birth of SON for which we prepare in this season of Advent.

For the last few minutes I have been living consciously in the presence of Our Father and trying to know, love and serve as is the purpose of my birth, HIS sharing of our mammalian humanity by Incarnation in the womb of Mary hat is the most important thing that I can recognise about God and pray that I can today do His will and avoid sin for indeed "My Saviour Liveth" Amen

 12/12/2025

Friday Week 2 Advent

I have over the last few years tried to respond on a daily basis to the life and teaching of Jesus that is recalled in the Mass Readings that are published on the Internet by the Universalis Website.

This morning Jesus is speaking then, 2000 years ago. I am listening now because I  know that I am as alive in His sight as were those people who then walked with him throughout Galilee and Judea. I am of the same generation who witnessed the completion of God's revelation which is TRUTH, yesterday, today and forever.

I do not have anything like the huge  knowledge of Scripture or its languages acquired by so many theologians and scholars but some words, images have become part of my daily awareness of being in the presence of "Our Father", IAMFTHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, God. My prayer.

I entitled this my record of reflective prayer "Alone but Known" because I had become estranged from my local church and felt unable to return. I am still sure that the present and historical failures of the Church founded on Peter are not the will of God and desperately seeking how to be "free from the company of scorners" and to "delight in the Law of the Lord", I embraced the idea of a Johannine Spiritual Church of Love that I first encountered in struggling with the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar. 

The "New Holy Family" is my Spiritual Home within which I am sure there is the Jesus who promises to be with us until the end of time for it is as equally founded by the words of Jesus as is the Church of Peter. 

Jesus words "Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my Church". "Woman behold your  Son. Son behold your mother" have become ideas that are always present when I start my day by trying to understand the WORD.

Today Jesus addresses his contemporaries as "This generation". It has recently been coming into my mind that the sinful failures of mankind that are considered by "This World" to be "progress" happen because we have never truly become the People of God by making him the centre of our lives, by truly knowing loving and serving. We are still failing to become the Jesus Generation. It is not only the Institutional Church that has failed to live up to the purpose of its creator.

Each one of us has only one important task in this world and that is to be open to the presence of the Lord for we have been created to be image and likeness and are the guardians of our own being which was created out of the JOYINBEINGIAMFTHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, the love that the Father has lavished upon us.

Every generation is but the collection of its individuals and for the World to improve each one of us has to make an effort to be true to the WORD in this world which is our one opportunity to obey the Father always remembering 

For the LORD knows the way of the righteous,

But the way of the wicked will perish.

 11/12/2025

Thursday Advent Week 2

In this morning's Gospel it sounds as if Jesus is speaking long after the martyrdom of John the Baptist but  for many of his listeners "in those days" John was the trigger that had prompted them to accept that with Jesus of Nazareth "there is something greater here" and therefore follow him. It is thus only a short time after Jesus had received the news of John's death.

I am present in this world two thousand years later, listening to the same words, and can work out a meaning for the "violence which assaults the kingdom of heaven" but "the violent take it by force" is as still as enigmatic as it must have been for those who were standing there; those who not only had active physical and spiritual ears to hear but were also similarly seeing Jesus as he spoke.

The revelations of both Old and New Testament are the eternal WORD always present in the minds and souls of those who open themselves to the  Resurrection, Our Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. 

This morning's Old Testament image of the "threshing-sled" chewing up the mountains has over the centuries become a reality in that mankind has taken  control of all the physical material of this world. In so doing, however, many of us  have lost touch with the kingdom, IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. 

Human activity that is not informed by "rejoicing in the Lord, glorifying the Holy One of Israel" becomes the violence that destroys and can never renew the face of the earth nor prepare us for Jesus' promised return.

The Crucifixion of Incarnate God happened in real-time two-thousand years ago. It happened exactly as it is recorded in the New Testament. Those who chose to do it did not regret it in their subsequent years and many of  their descendants still display in their deeds that they think they can still "take the kingdom by force" but everything achieved in the material of this world is doomed by it very nature to become dust.

Dear Lord, help me to come to rest in your New Holy Family. Help me to understand your ways. Help me to "extol you, my God and King and bless your name for ever and ever". Maranatha Lord, Come Lord Jesus, come.

 10/12/2025

Wednesday Advent Week 

Today's reading from Isaiah continues to celebrate IAMIAM as the Creator of being ('isness') which is manifest for each of us now not only in the tangible temporality of the visible Universe as it has always been in "This world" but also for us, now in the year 2025, informed by the exponential increase of human Scientific knowledge, in the fleeting invisibility of particles of the energy which are the totality of matter.

Today we Christians are all challenged to face up to the historical sinful failures that have been made by each generation during the two thousand years that have passed since the Resurrection. Each one of us has to strive to know God  who reveals in the Scriptures how we are to respond to the Love of his Being which creates our reality out of the Joy of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

Two thousand years ago, there was something that was so terribly wrong with this world which had wasted and was still wasting the Love of God that the Incarnation had to happen to enable our human being to return to its true nature and not only know, but also love God.

The historical events of the New Testament comprise the completed teaching, revelation with  which  Our Father guides each individual soul in this world. During his real-time on Earth Jesus completed many miracles to prove to those Jews living then that he was "something greater here" he also instituted a new order of priesthood to replace the temple scribes and pharisees, together with a  completely new order of Sacramental being, the Eucharist.

I know that I am not alone in the horror  which the collapse of Christianity has brought about in my own and in every other post Resurrection generation.

I believe that in focusing my faith on "Woman behold your Son. Son behold your mother", "The Church of Love", "The New Holy Family", I am facing up to the sacrilegious desecrations within the Institutional Church that as much as the direct disobedience of Adam and Eve, the spittle of his Jewish accusers and my sins continue to reject the Love of our Lord and Saviour who continues to welcome each one of us with;

Come to me all who labour and are heavily ladened and I will give you rest. 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly of heart, 

and you will find rest for your souls.

 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

 09/12/2025

Today I am again awake because I cannot sleep. 

Yesterday, after my morning prayer, I had felt some calming of my usual state of disquietude so I have returned to the keyboard in the hope that I can experience again the peace that comes when I am truly able to become the lost sheep that is found, the lamb held in the arms of the Lord.

Each day that I pray I know that although I am always the one "raising my mind and heart to God" for me to really "pray" I have to know that I am answering the call that is continuously the support of my being.

God is my creator and I have to never become engrossed in my own words or train of thought. I am the sheep and have to follow exactly where the "Good Shepherd" leads me.

I have not been gifted with a poet's tongue but I am always attracted by the music of the Old Testament. Today Isaiah sings ecstatically and thus glorifies the WORD. The words of the Psalmist too draws us into the very heart of his certainty of faith, again WORD, which we can thus share.

With Jesus "There is always something greater here" and so his plain narrative always means what it says for TRUTH has no need of human embellishments. He is present in Palestine living his human life and teaching his disciples and all subsequent generations, including me because "It is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish".

I don't think that there is anything enigmatic about this statement. We are all throughout our lifetimes called by IAMFATHERSONHOLYPSIRIT. How we proceed from that call is our choice but we are not alone.

Even though the Church founded on St Peter did not ever truly listen to "My kingdom is not of this world", the unseen Church of Love, the New Holy Family is the Natural Spiritual Reality that is still with us and will so be until the end of time.

Dear Lord, you know that I thank you for saving me from the depths of my sinful being but that at the moment I still only want to sleep. My body is a real mess and I truly ask that I will be able to soon lose the use of it. Help all of us who are now swamped with knowledge and the media awareness  that has become beyond all human understanding to the extent that it diverts the world away from the revelation that is the saving grace that comes only from you. Help me to empty my mind of the things of this world and let the prayers of Mary and all the saints bring the grace of your forgiveness to all of us, including The Holy Souls and me and mine. Maranatha, Lord. Come Lord Jesus come.

 08/12/2025

The Immaculate Conception

Everyday that I wake up I have to confront the reality of my being and of everything that it has become during my lifetime.

Although it seems that I am not the same person today as I was on the day I was born for my awareness of being is now the accumulation of 84 years experience of the ever-changing temporality of this world and of my engagement with it contained  within the "I" that thinks, knows and is this "awareness". God reveals to each of us that human being is a unique soul, my "I" that is created at the moment of our conception by the Eternal Being/Love that is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

What I am today is the result of how I have chosen to live in this world where I have had the guidance of revelation to enable me to avoid the sin that defaced the "being" of the first souls and has consequently become part of our human being until the end of time.

Today the Psalmist sings a "New Song" for he knows that in Eternity Our Father's Love has prepared for the only way that mankind can atone for our own sin is by the Incarnation of  Word, Son in historical time to become the Saving Victim that was with God in the Beginning.

We all experience our lives in time although some claim for themselves "Intimations of Immortality". Jesus too is True Man and lived his own real time-line 2000 years ago in Palestine. But with Jesus there is always "something greater here" and  with Mary too there is also "something greater here". 

She is as far from being God as I am but she is the totally sinless human perfection that has been defaced by Adam and Eve, created to be Mother of God Incarnate, Theotokos, and it is for  this "Immaculate Conception" that we all have to thank "Our Father" for she is also "Woman" given to us in the dying words of Jesus as "Mother" of "The New Holy Family", "Mystical Body of Christ", "Church of Love" and why it is always right to sing with joy:

Regina, mater misericordiae:

Vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.

Ad te clamamus, exsules, filii Hevae.

Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes

in hac lacrimarum valle.

Eia ergo, Advocata nostra,

illos tuos misericordes oculos

ad nos converte.

Et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,

nobis, post hoc exsilium ostende.

O clemens: O pia: O dulcis

Virgo Maria. 

 07/12/2025

Second Sunday of Avent

St Paul is the first "Christian" who faces up to the divide that separates himself and the rest of the "brood of vipers" from the Gentiles whom Jesus unites in the historical events of the Incarnation.

Matthew quotes the words of John the Baptizer who, in no uncertain terms, challenges the hypocrisy of the Temple/ Synagogue religion of his day even before Jesus becomes its Saving Victim.

During our lifetimes we too have to challenge  the assumptions that constitute our providential economic and moral environments. St Paul was first blasted into Faith and then confirmed it by his acceptance of grace to avoid sin but he remains a Jew which means that he is one of those first chosen by God's direct guidance to know, love and serve in this world. 

The Resurrection, however, has taught him that "IAMIAM" is not to be possessed and limited by birthright but now self-revealed as IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT Jesus brings the possibility of salvation to each individual soul regardless of the circumstances of birth.

It is impossible for any of us to know why it was that God appeared in time when and where he did.

Five hundred years ago Blaise Pascal was able to find in the continuing Jewishness of the Jews of his generation a proof that confirmed his belief in IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and we too have to continue to listen to St Paul and the other Jews including Jesus who proclaimed the final revelation that is the Resurrection.

The Scriptures were written for our instruction. Jesus submitted to the Law of Moses and accepted the tortures  perpetrated by his own people so that the Gentiles can know that the Scriptures are the TRUTH that comes from our ever-truthful God.

The Jewishness of the Jews of our generation is exhibited in the State of Israel and has largely lost the "Godliness" of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and has never accepted that of Jesus. The wonder of their being without God is a truly frightening and inhuman thing but no more so than kingdom of this world from which the Church founded on St Peter has still made no serious effort to disentangled itself.

In the Garden, God taught his beloved Adam and Eve that they were free to return to him the Love with which they were created. It is that first refusal that God allows each individual to make for himself that brings sin into the world.

It is my own choice to sit here getting, colder and colder trying to respond to the WORD this Second Sunday of Advent 2025 for I too am a free being and only ever become sinful because I choose to ignore the teaching of Scripture and the Love of the New Holy Family which brings the Grace of the Crucifixion into my heart.

May the Lord help me to know love and serve ! Amen

 06/12/2025

I know that I am but one of billions of human beings who have been and are aware of the reality of their own being but incapable of holding onto the insight that is the awareness of the BEING of "Our "Father".

My mind has developed from my experience of living in time and the teaching of the scriptures a coherent narrative to which I try to bear witness in these my responses to WORD contained in the liturgy of the worshipping community founded on St. Peter.

We all are free beings who to various degrees have been trapped in the circumstances of the reality of time and place into which we have been born. The first and last limit common to all of is  that of our bodies. None of us can escape this reality. The dying and the new-born are equally helpless in that neither can refuse to accept what is happening to them.

My soul experiences the bodily life that is " of this world" together with the self-awareness that is "image and likeness" of  "Our Father" who is unseen, self-revealing eternal life, IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

In the first reading Isaiah is sure that it is God who "inflicts the blow" which  breaks his people. 

The Incarnation, however, reveals that we cannot imagine how great is the Creating Love that chose to create mankind in his own image and likeness for the petty disobedience of Adam and Eve breaks human perfection and requires Calvary, the limitless pain of God for it to become capable of rectification.

As we grow and decline towards our final ends we all can choose how to live in whatever circumstances in which we find ourselves but there is always guidance to show us the light of ETERNAL TRUTH. 

It was individual human beings  who cooperated to construct and make use of the ovens of all the Death Camps that disfigured "Christian" Europe during the first four years of my life, just as the "Manifest Destiny" of the "Land of the Free" was achieved by the human "ethnic cleansing" of a whole "New World".

The Incarnation, Jesus, teaches us that it is not Our Father who inflicts suffering on mankind but as he stretches out his arms he accepts the incredible pain of the nails which each one of us hammers into him with  Infinite Mercy that prays for the forgiveness of the Father to be given to us for we can never truly know what harm is done by sin for even when we are aware of God for "there is always something greater here".

 05/12/2025

Friday Week 1 Advent

"Our Father who art in heaven" knows that I have spent much of my lifetime in sinfulness.

In the passage from Isaiah read at this morning's mass, the prophet responds to the WORD, as he receives it in the real-time of his day. The WORD is Eternal Truth that has always intimately known with love each individual soul whose interactions with HIM and with each other become the ever changing "this world" in which Jesus assures us that we cannot find the reality of the eternal kingdom.

Isaiah proclaims that the sufferings of mankind  are inflicted by evil doers who are themselves blind and deaf to the WORD will come to an end when we their children "sanctify my name; sanctify the Holy One of Jacob and stand in awe of the Holy One of God."

In this morning's Gospel the Incarnate Word performs signs to satisfy the Jews who in those days are still the sole recipients of divine revelation, the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and who are then  part of the concluding worldly events with which IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT completes his revelation to all subsequent generations of humanity.

Each one of us is responsible for living our individual lives in obedience to the "Ten Commandments". Adam and Eve introduced Evil into the Garden and ever since then IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, Our Father, has told us that we have to choose for the entirety of our lives to return his LOVE by free obedience to his will.

Every evil, individual or cumulative act that is happening at this moment is the result of human choice. We are defying God in our sinfulness even though we know that the wages of sin are the second death by which we condemn ourselves to unimaginable torments.

The Crucifixion of Jesus is the Mercy of God Incarnate. The Nativity for which we are now preparing happened in real-time 2000 years ago, was necessary for the vastness of the human sin of Adam could only become capable of atonement by the "impossible pain" of God suffered in the real-time of human history.

Jesus, himself, prayed the Psalms not only with his disciples but also with Scribes and Pharisees whom he met on many occasions in the Temple and Synagogue. Today I am praying with the psalmist knowing that my sins can be forgiven and that I can "dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life" for Jesus himself promised that the Church he founded on Peter was also the Eternal Love of the New Holy Family, Himself, Mary and John, the replica of the Holy Family he completed by his birth in the stable at Bethlehem.

 04/12/2025

Thursday Week 1 Advent

As I begin my day with thoughts of prayer, I am a totally blank screen both before my eyes and behind the bone of the skull that encloses the brain within which these thoughts have their beginning.

Thinking about prayer, however, is not prayer. 

I believe that making the conscious effort to respond to WORD as revealed in the Scriptures is the utmost  human beings can do to prepare themselves for the final revelation that our deaths bring to each one of us.

Isaiah knows that all prayer has its origin in WORD who is Christ the Lord in whom "we have to trust for ever". Christ is himself the rock that is the foundation we all have to "put on", in the words of St Paul,  to become the Church where the New Holy Family can flourish in every generation after "Woman behold your son, son behold your mother" announces the birth of  the Church of Love.

Today Jesus warns his disciples, and each one of us who is now living, that recognising him for what he is, "Lord of All," is only the beginning of the way to the kingdom. 

He also warns me directly that even though I am pleased with these words that are still coming out of my finger tips and think that I am praying, if I do not do as he does, proving it by my love of neighbour, and love of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT then I am surely the foolish man for whom the sand of his own being can never become a replacement for the Rock of God.

Dear Lord help me to truly respond to the Love with which you reach out to the whole world. Help me to know that the spittle of the bystanders and their jeers, the nails driven through your hands, the spear thrust into your side are still a reality in your eternity and that you still undergo them as a result of my sins the weight of which you know that I have never truly understood. As we prepare with Mary for your Nativity help us to know, love and serve as did she in the Holy Family and still does in the Church of Love, the New Holy Family that you became man in order to create. Amen

 03/12/2025

Wednesday First week of Advent

One of the reasons that I took my personal decision not to have a funeral ceremony at the end of my life was my experience of attending many at which even the words of "The Lord's Prayer" were unknown to most of the congregation.

It was not always so for there was a time at the beginning of my life when the words of today's psalm " The Lord is my Shepherd" were as familiar as the national anthem to the people of the UK.

The Christianity of the first half of the twentieth century in England was, however, a faith that had been fractured for centuries and was dominated by our personal/familial allegiance to the "Faith of our Fathers" which we all knew to be the "One true Faith" and we had been for centuries ready to fight to prove it.

T.S. Elliot was certainly not applying his " Not with a bang but whimper" to the Christianity he was to personally embrace two years after responding to the emptiness of life without the support of God in his "The Hollow Men", but one hundred years later it is as true for the demise of God in our lives as the words with which Jesus predicted his creation of the Church "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church".

Today I know that I am not present within a physical community dedicated to living according to the will of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. I am the only  human being present at this keyboard and thus "alone" but by striving to be true to her created image and likeness, my soul in reaching out to Our Father joins the New Holy Family, the Church of Love the truly "natural" home for my being that is Godlike Spirit.

In the Gospel today Jesus provides his chosen people with yet another sign. Nothing is impossible to God. When we are with God there is always "something greater here" for instructing his disciples and feeding their followers on the mountain is total, eternity, power, beauty, truth, and love incarnate in the son of Mary.

God's self-abasement in the stable may whimper, in the garden his humanity pleads and remains steadfast but on the cross he suffers, bleeds and dies to bring  to conclusion the loving revelation of His will to give us the capacity to become part of His Love.

 

 2/12/2025

Tuesday Week 2 Advent

Yesterday the Gospel Reading taken from St Matthew emphasised that the authority of Jesus was first recognised by a Gentile, a Roman pagan who made an analogy with his own military rank.

It is true, however, that the WORD, is first revealed to the Jews of the Old Testament . 

In today's reading from the New Testament, Luke, Jesus rejoices, he is the Holy Spirit, thanking the Father for revealing IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT as God to be accepted without quibble by the  innocence of the "Abba" with which he raises his human mind and soul to God,

The Fathers of  Resurrection Faith proclaimed by the Apostles had soon found in the Old Testament the premonitions that the Prophets had had about how IAMIAM would bring "Adam" back to the perfection he had lost in the Garden.

Today we are treated to the exuberant lyrical anticipatory joy of Isaiah that is  supported by the psalm. 

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb.

and the leopard lie down with the young goat

and the calf and the lion and fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them.

These are beautiful images of peace but we know that they are not images of reality for the "little child", whose birth we are now awaiting, will lead us by first accepting the unimaginable pain of our sins and making it crystal clear that he is the way, truth and life that we are to embrace if we are going to truly know, love and serve.

We must join with him in willingly carrying our cross on our way, never seeking to avoid the stark reality, the truth of death, and thus create a unique life that is a reflection of the Love that has created us to become able to share with all beings  the limitless expanse of Love that also burst out of human hearts that are true.

 01/12/2025

Monday Week 1 of Advent

Yesterday my total conviction, at long last, that all prayer, awareness and thinking about God should, if it is to accept the guidance of SON, Jesus of Nazareth, become the child-like loving trust that he displayed in his "Daddy".

I have often struggled with how to "love" God with my human heart. For decades of my life I have listened to Paul "Faith, Hope but above all Charity" but there has never been that jump, the skip of joy in my heart, that is characteristic of my human love when I try to raise my mind and heart to "Our Father".

The stark command "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart and mind" has never been absent from my awareness of being but has never inspired the certainty that is the  warmth of the affection that is my response when meeting family, friends and especially dogs.

IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT creates out of LOVE. Each creature, molecule, atom, particle of matter is a product of his LOVE. It is the boundless Joy which is his whole being.

I think that the whole point of his Incarnation is for us to be able to accept that we can do no more with our lives than respond to his Joy in Being, i.e. our lives, His Creation with the same Joy that is his Love living in our hearts. 

We must not go after things that are too great. St Francis knew that our "sentimental" love of the babe in the crib was a reflection of the vastness beyond all understanding of  IAMFTHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and that our love of inferior creatures, animals,  was indirect love of their creator.

As I join the Church in preparation for the Nativity of Our Lord I hope that I can become  satisfied that there is nothing "mere" about the sentimentality of my love and joy at Christmastide, and  that it is the same LOVE with which we love our earthly fathers, families and friends that God, the source of all Good, requires us to return to him for that is the limit of our human nature we can do no more than be true to our humanity.

My own dad often used to say "The more I think of human nature the more I love my dog" I don't know whom he was quoting but I do know what he meant.