13/02/2026

During the first years after the Resurrection those Jews who had known Jesus, witnessed miracles of healing and been captivated by his person and his teaching had increasingly had to face up to the fact that they his own people had participated in the crucifixion of Jesus.

Apostles had had to face up to the fact that they had abandoned him after his arrest in the garden. St Peter had got to accept that he had actually denied any knowledge of the Son of God. St Paul could never forget that he had participated in the first persecution of the infant Church.

In those first years they must have been vessels filled  with the Holy Spirit for the only thing that they did was pray and preach and wait for the return. 

They were, however, very concerned about how to welcome "the whole world" to whom they had been ordered to proclaim the Good News. The religion of the Old Testament was very much about exclusivity. It was racist and the Jews who stoned Stephen in Jerusalem really did feel that they were doing God's will. That is why Saul could stand by while Stephen was brutally killed.  

Jesus forgave his executioners as did Stephen. But both deaths occurred at the hands of their brothers.

The Faith that was growing during the time the Gospels, Acts and Letters were being written had to reconcile itself to the disappointment that Jesus had not returned and also had to explain to Jews and Gentiles how they could live as free beings within a creation that had been visited and lived in by True God and True Man who had offered and allowed himself to become a sacrificial victim to atone for sin and yet they knew, even after the Resurrection, themselves still to be sinful.

God knows that I am trying each day to respond after two millennia to the same situation that the Apostles faced after the Ascension of the Lord. 

• They had unequivocal proof that there was life after death. 
• They were learning that IAMIAM was in fact IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and yet still IAMIAM.
• That human life had to be a joyful response to the Good News of the Incarnation/Reset of Creation proclaimed by Jesus.
• That the source of sin was to be found in our own disobedient hearts. 
• That to love and serve God means to truly put the needs of other people before our own and that we in our worldly lives have to be witnesses to the Mercy Jesus poured out as his Precious Blood on Calvary.

Two thousand years later we still know that Jesus has not returned but we are not left in this world to be alone as he has never been absent from the Spiritual Church of Love, the New Holy Family,  Jesus, Mary and John and all of us who can stand with them at the foot of his cross to hear;

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