14/04/2026

The perfect heavenly and temporal unity of the Apostolic Church that St Luke recalls in today's first reading has seemingly never been maintained.

The individuals who formed the original community were sure that they would welcome the return of Jesus in their lifetimes. Many of them had seen the Risen Lord and that experience had been enough to enable them to overcome the things of this world to the extent that they shared all their worldly goods.

They believed because they had seen and were united by  mutual support and the Holy Spirit.

The life of Jesus, Our Lord, however, had been a constant missionary struggle. His family, except for his mother, thought that he was mad. His best friends frequently missed the point of his teaching. The religious authorities of his day treated him as an ungodly opponent. He had "nowhere to lay his head".

Eight hundred generations after the resurrection, we are still able to share in the spiritual Christian unity that began in the Upper Room and continued in the Portico of Solomon and are especially blessed  for our faith in the written testimony that has been preserved for more than 2000 years.

We thank God that because the expected Parousia did not come about,  the Evangelists took on the responsibility of preserving their own and others' real-time experience of knowing, actually knowing, the Incarnate Lord, in the writings that are the New Testament.

Today I am writing this responses to the mass readings but in an unignorable worldly context that is dominated by a public battle of words between Pope and President. 

The Pope knows that he is not a politician and that Jesus declared before Pilate, the representative of the President of his day, "My kingdom is not of this world". Both he and all of us have been taught to "Turn the other cheek", "Pray for those who hate us" and "Love our neighbour as ourselves". He does not need to win a war of words with a blasphemer except by bearing witness to these fundamental tenets that make us what we should be but have very rarely exhibited by our behaviour in this world.