19/02/2026

I have always comforted myself for my lack of understanding how to achieve worldly success by Jesus' words in this morning's Gospel. 

I am not alone in this and that is why those of us who try to live according to God's will are despised as "losers" by many of our  successful contemporaries. I have sometimes thought that being "despised" by the successful in this world is a mark of God's favour "Blessed are you when men revile you".

With Jesus, however, "there is always something greater here". The warning "what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own life?" is not to be used, as I have done as a defence for my incompetent weakness and failures, but as our personal challenge to overcome all the material temptations of this life, chief of which is our sense of self, our egos. 

The whole of Jesus' teaching is that every human life has to  accept that Our Father has not created us in the image and likeness of other men, our this worldly fathers, but as completely free souls, image and likeness which has the sole purpose of overcoming whatever circumstances, our personal crosses, into which we are born to prepare ourselves for His assessment of how we have known, loved, and served.

Sometimes holiness seems to be beyond my reach but I am sure that Jesus Son of God and son of Mary has shown us the way and not only instituted the Church founded on Peter to be the Guardian of his Body and Blood but also created as he died on his cross, his New Holy Family that is the purely  spiritual Church of Love and totally beyond human corruption.

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