30/09/2021

I have often wondered how the crowds who listened to Jesus were able to hear him especially as his teaching was often outside in the open air. Today I find the answer in the Old Testament. Ezra had had a woodern pulpit erected so that his words were not muffled by the multitude of listeners. The priests who were in the crowd translated and passed the sense ot the Scriptures on to the people who received the "Word of the Lord" with joyful hearts.

Jesus' disciples must have performed the same function but there is nothing about  a pulpit in the New Testament. One visible result of Vatican 2 was the removal of pulpits from our churches. I suppose that the advances in technology had made them redundant. 

What happened to the 72 whom Jesus commissioned  to fufill the role of John the Baptist, preparing the way of the Lord.? What is the "peace" that in the event of it returning to them they were to abandon the town to the punishment of Sodom? 

Abandoning me to my deserved punishment is exactly what our God does not do.  The Mercy of the Lord is always with us. The Incarnation, life and death of God  the Son has brought the Kindom of God to this world. The Trinity has revealed the Persons of God. The will of the Father is ever present in that Body that is the Church. The Son has Risen from the dead. The Joy of the Holy Spirit fills our hearts with the Peace that is always available.

I have some awareness of God. I can hear the Word. I am yet a sinner in my deeds.

Dear Lord let me not add my bit to the sinful world that you have redeemed. Let me accept with open arms the Love that comes from you and continue from this moment throughout my life with more moments of true worship unclouded by sin.

 29/09/2021

The words of Jesus confirm the words of the Old Testament prophets that there is communication between God and his Creation. He confirms that there is a constant coming and going of Angels between his Father's great house of many rooms and the here and now. The descriptions of this mansion have to be undertaken using human words and so images of visions are created. 

Angels are created beings without our physicality. They have carried messages from time to time and are known by these tasks. "Hail Mary" is the one that shatters Creation. God is with us from that day forth. The Evergreater has taken his place within our humanity. The Incarrnation has brought God to our world. 

The Son teaches and suffers to enable us to be free of the chains of sin. The Holy Spirit constantly feeds our thoughts and guides our consciences. The Father Son and Holy Spirit are totally present in the Sacraments.

Why is it that I know this but still fall into sin?

Dear Lord you know me in your eternity plesase loosen the chains that bind me to my sinful life and let the prayers of your Angels Saints and Holy Mother bear fruit in my sinful soul here in time on earth.

 28'09/2021

The belief in the revelations of Gqd by himself will spread throughout the world and ten will cling to a Jew to learn from him the way to come to the Lord. If we are to take that litterally we have to increase the ten to millions as the number of us who have clung to  Jesus is beyond counting. 

Something is not quite right about this prophesy as the Jews themselves have turned from God. The ultimate rejecton of God took place iin Jerusalem. This event is known to God from all eternity. We know it now as history but we must accept it as being of God even though the enormity of it  is  beyond our comprehension.

The diisciples wanted to call immedeiate punishment on the village that refused to accept them and their master and the rebuke of Jesus is for us all who using human judgement want to see the guilty punished. The Creation is in the hands of God and my life is God's. He has given me freedom to choose but it is sure that he wants me to choose what is right.

My time that passes second by second is not the eternity of God. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are beyond time but that eternity touches our time when the Sacraments are worthily celebrated and received.

I will also touch it at my death. May God be with me.

Dear Lord you know what I am. You know everything including my place in eternity. Let me truly search out your will and do it. Look after all whom I know and turn their minds to right knowledge and good deeds. Hail Mary. Pray for us.

 27/09/2021

The Jews have again been called back to Jerusalem.  Were the injustices perpertrated on the Arabs who were still  living there necessary or were they a result of man's greed and pride? I don't think that that question can be answered without challenging our belief in God; and it is belief in God that is missing from the new Israel occupying the sacred places of the Old Testament.

The disciples walking the first steps of the New Testament behind Jesus were not immune to pride or greed and today we hear of them sqabbling about what they had yet to understand. I too do not understand the political situation in the birthplace of Jesus; the place where God took on our humanity and wallked in our shoes to torture and death, pain unimmaginable on the cross.

The Jewish people are still favoured by God but are they separate from the People of God that is the Church? God allows us all to live in freedom; we are made in his image and likeness and we have to refute evil. We are guided in our choices by his revelations and our moral code is still that revealed to Moses and the Hebrews of the wanderings. We are the People of God but I am still failing to put all my Faith in God and am looking for a human understanding of the workings of God's providence. 

Dear Lord let me feel the Love for sinful humanity that took your Son to the cross, let me feel it so that I can avoid pride and greed and truly be a person of the people of God secure in Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

 26/09/2021

From the first reading it seems that the Spirit of the Lord was something physical that could be seen to be shared. The recipients began to prophesy which I take it to mean to bear witness audibly to the presence of God. But outside the Tent of Meeting there were others who too were able to "prophesy" and Moses' companion from of old was mortified that this did not happen through Moses. 

James, who writes like an Old Testament prophet, testifies that those who are rich now without righteousness will come to know that their physical goods are nothing and in this he follows the treaching of Jesus who offers a radical alternative to sin.

Jesus tells us that anyone who is doing good by trying to live by the Name of Jesus is to be encouraged. Jesus is not a possession of anyone just as the Glory of the Lord was not exclusively Moses'. Encourage the Good but beware the Bad. Our teachers and pastors need to think deeply before indulging their own egos in nonsense; the little people of the Lord need to have true and responsible guidance.

Dear Lord let me be open to you the Holy Spirit that  the Father and Son can see my heart gladdened by the precepts of the One God that you are. 

 24/09/2021

How is it that even though I really want to pray and turn myself to the Lord, I wake up each morning to face a struggle to avoid falling into a reverie dominated by thoughts of sex enjoyed and sex missed. I am not on this earth to be a creature without a future. I am here to do the will of God. I know that now but half-an- hour ago I had to force myself to remember that I am not alone for God is always with me to guide me into what it is he has willed for me. 

Reading the passage about God's will for Jerusalem and putting it vaguely into the context of the care for Israel shown by God in the Old Testament I felt the need for the same care for myself and for all those sheep seemingly abandoned by our pastors. My first concern is for myself and ever since my childhood I have ever wanted to have the responsibility for myself be taken away from me so that I could avoid the guilt that comes from sin.

The disciples didn't know instantly the Jesus that we read about in the New Testament but they must have had the support of the Holy Spirit to abandon everything and follow him. As Jews they could place him in an Old Testament context but couldn't consider him to be the Second Person for God was One Indivisible. All knowledge of God comes via the death and resurrection of this same Jesus they listened to and walked behind.

Did they too have to renew themselves each morning as do I?

Dear Lord help me to be strengthened by sincere reflection and desire to avoid being pleased by words that come from me; all that is good in me is from trust in the  Love that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 24/09/2021

God is ever greater. "G" "o""d". In English these three letters make up the word which represents the source of all being of all that "is". I cannot try to go further than gasp and become wordless before the vastness of that. I cannot develop the  "idea" but I can "love" the persons. I don't need to pursue my or anyone else's concept of God but I can try to return the love of God who has revealed himself as three persons.

In the desert wanderings and in the Holy Land God speaks to his favoured people in the person of the Father. His glory is in the form of Gold and Silver shining within the grandeur of his Temple. At the same time his Spirit is preparing a hidden prayerful narrative to welcome the Incarnation. The testament takes place in time but for God there is no time. I can recognise God's Word but I live in time which is why he creates a story that I follow from glimpses of  the Word and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Mary is the culmination of the Covenant; she bears the "Humanity" that will be used to beget the Son. From before the Creation of the World she was known to God and through no merit of her own she carried and gave birth to Jesus. 

Mary is not God but she is the perfection of Humanity and the true source of the righteousness that is still Jesus' Church here on earth. Hail Mary.

Dear Lord let me continue to feel your peace throughout this day and let my thoughts and words avoid the sin that ever insinuates itself into my heart.