Today's support from St Paul prompted me to think as I read it that there is no need for change if I can continue to put my faith in God. I can suffer ( I am afraid of this) and receive consolation. I can live and I can die. Tomorrow is only another day. If today is genuinely devoted to God so tomorrow can be no greater. My first thought has to be God and Jesus' blessings are what I need to aim at. I need to keep myself out of my mind and learn to automatically choose the right. I do not need to be a winner the other is also a child of God. Have I ever truly mourned for my dead? What have I ever gone without for the good of others? My life has always had my personal satisfaction as its goal. I don't think I have ever been in a position to show mercy but forgiveness to another is another matter. I know that if all the scabs of sin are cleared away there is in me a purity that is from God. Let me scrape away the dross so that this can see God. How can I make peace within the corruption that the Church has become? Each day I face this question and sometimes respond to foul bloggers; but, what is this?

Dear Lord you know what I am please direct me on the Way and let me be receptive to your Holy Spirit. 

 Our dependence on Almighty God is this feast of Corpus Christi. Jesus the Son has been sacrificed to the Father and been accepted in the Eternal Love that is the Holy Spirit and we the people of God can only stand back in awe at this Truth which is our Life our only being without which there is nothing which means I cannot even imagine such a state. Our lives are created with  the same Love which is the Trinity and our rightly lived lives will not end with the death of our bodies but continue not in time but in the Being that is God. This Sacrament which is not only the memorial of Christ but is also the reason that God clothed himself in flesh, God cannot suffer in his Being, to make the perfect sacrifice, is the ever greater thing on this earth. 

Dear Lord, this Body of Christ is the reason for our Church our Clergy and ourselves, let us always keep this in our minds and truly repent for the sins which we still cling to. May your Mother and ours help us by her prayers. Keep us from unholy communions and let my soul become as you created it to be.

 The Angel Raphael reveals himself as a messenger of God and emphasises how in this world some conduct is righteous but not so with God. We should shout out our love for God. We need to broadcast His praises. We need to tell all about his Glory. We need to live according to the Gospels. In these days we have become voiceless. I remember when there was always a Catholic voice raised in public. During the war when Hitler's deputy was interned after flying to Scotland a Catholic priest organised  a rally in Leicester to demand that he be exchanged for 100,000 inmates of German concentration camps. In these days the only public appearance of our Clergy has been to apologize for vile conduct and coverup. We are loth to shout our support for God's Church when its leadership is less than praiseworthy. 

Do I think that I am shouting out my joyful belief in God by clicking this keyboard?

Dear Lord your first revelation was to a people in these times your Son and Holy Spirit speak to the individuals who make up the People of God. Let each one of us know that you can support us  when we speak unpalatable truths. 

 All our joys come from the Lord. This is how we too must praise God. This is too how we must thank God. This is too how we must trust God. The relationship that Tobit and his family have with God is the message that is given to us today to be part of our worship in church and outside it for that matter. All the good things that we experience come from God. 

The sufferings that we sometimes face make this hard to be remembered. Tobit's joy in his returned sight and in his new daughter-in-law wipe out the times of sightless  suffering. God has scourged him. Jesus too is to be scourged with the torturer's flail. He too suffers to the utmost and seems to lose trust in his Father. Many of the sufferings of mankind are hard to reconcile with our understanding of a  Loving God. Many people are faced with so much suffering that their hearts and minds cannot be raised out of constraints of pain that bind them. Being the Son does not remove the human suffering of Jesus the man. The source of this pain is my sin.

Dear Lord you know that I really do want to be able to praise you with the fervour of your people of old. You know that I cannot keep from sinning in my thoughts and words. Let me not be so immersed in myself that I forget to pray for all the people suffering from the results of Man's injustice. Lord save thy people.

 The saga of Tobit continues and what is emphasised is the foremost place given to the praise of God. Tobias approaches his bride in the spirit of Genesis. All is for the love of God and he prays that he may live together with Sara into a peaceful old age. The man will support the woman as she will him and he prays that God will keep them from hardships; He will pity them.

A scribe asks Jesus the question about the commandments and Jesus tell us that the most important thing in our lives is to know and love God and that we must treat all people in the way we would want to be treated; the Golden Rule. It seems that Jesus was always in confrontation with the Leaders of Temple Worship; they indeed worked to weaken Jesus' preaching  and ultimately contrived to have Him crucified by the Romans. There are those who use this apparent animosity between Jesus and the organised religion of his day to condemn all our clergy; Jesus, in fact practises the Golden Rule and sometimes, as today even  praises a scribe or Pharisee .

Dear Lord help me to follow the teachings of Jesus in all that I do and think. Today I will labour please give success to the work of my hands and if that cannot be let me accept the failure without resentment, knowing that only good things come from you.

 The story of  Tobit this morning begins with the lamentation that is pure praise for God and recognition that if we look towards God we become miniscule in his sight. God is complete Justice so Tobit sees his plight as completely justified; he and his nation, the people of the Covenants have sinned countless times. The story continues, very much like a modern soap, and God's providence, the writer, has begun to move the plot. The female lead is also afflicted in an unfathomable way and is scorned by all. She considers all her options but decides to beg the Lord for death. The prayers of both are answered and the Mercy of God is sent as Raphael the Archangel.

In the Gospel there is another plot to catch Jesus out. Of course it fails but in its failure Jesus assures us that there is most definitely a life after death. A life that was revealed to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; God is the God of the living and man may die but continues in the Life of the Resurrection. After death all the modern nonsense and preoccupation about sex and gender will be nothing. We will be like the Angels, not in that we will have no bodily existence but in that as we are with God there will be no reproduction of our species.

Dear Lord, I thank you that I am able to fill my time with work and yet know that this happiness as a tiny cog in your creation too will pass; grant me time in which to confess my sins and let me be sincere in my amendment.

 The Tobit story which is today's first reading is hard for us to relate to as  although it was written only 300 years before the birth of Christ, it is set in a age remote from the one that was the setting for the New Testament, the time of the Exile. The story illustrates the ways of God which are not man's ways. Tobit is, as was Job, a God- fearing man who was stricken with a random misfortune that was surely going to test his faith. What a panic he fell into when he was sure that the kid had not been acquired licitly. We feel the desperation of the blind man who only wanted to do what was right but was hampered by his handicap. His wife sees the kid as a reward for all the times he had done good to his neighbour in days before the random act of fate which had blinded him. His faith was in God and in the covenants made with Abraham and Moses. 

The New Testament Jesus is put to the test by men and he definitively separates politics and religion. The problem that we face today is that politics does not accept this and imposes non-Christian norms onto the people of God. Some of our Church leaders seem to have lost their primary purpose and are more than ready to concede their Faith which comes from God to the twin Caesars of popularity and power. Why are the nonsenses about sex and gender not condemned for what they are, evil stupidity.

Dear Lord, may we regard the faith displayed in the Old Testament as pointers to the true faith brought to us by the Holy Spirit from You and the Resurrection.  May I find your mercy and pardon for all my sins which are such an offence to Your Saving Grace.