04/11/2021

Today we are assured that Jesus is the Lord of the whole of humanity. He is our guide our teacher our example and our friend. He does not exclude any of us from the salvation he brings. The salvation he brings releases sinners from the chains of sinfulness. There is great joy within God that sinners seek the the Grace made available to all of us. We sinners have to breath freely when we realise that the disaster awaiting our sinfulness does not have to happen now that the Mercy of the Lord is with us. The Kingdom of God is present with us today.

St Paul emphasises the teaching of Jesus revealed in today's Gospel. The rejoicing over the lost sheep is part of Christian culture as is the lady looking for her drachma. Paul tells us that we are not to disdain any other human being. We know ourselves and the care we have for ourselves also must be given to the other.

"Care" for myself means that I have to recognise my own sins to be able to  share in their forgiveness. I look to myself and accept that I have to constantly guard against sin. Is not that same care to be applied to my brother? I am not judging when I see or hear or have it thrust into my face that in the present world there is a huge number of people who seek to challenge God in his very Existence.

My efforts here are a poor attempt to oppose the world and to remain in the Grace that many of our pastors seem to have rejected. The priest should warn the sinner about the insult he is to the Crucifixion when he does not follow the teaching of the Church on the reception of the Sacraments. The sinner has to recognise his own sinfulness for we will all have to be scrutinised by Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the Lord is Lord of the living and the dead.

Dear Lord enlighten me to a clear knowledge of myself and let me avoid all sinfulness and condemn it in myself. Let me not be blinded by the failings of our world and of our Church but to always spotlight my own sins before seeing the sins of others.

 03/10/2021

We are all aware of our own selves and respect our own being. We know and love ourselves and know that we are persons. We consider ourselves first in all that we do and say. Well I do! Self first is the beginnng of all sin. In the earliest recognitions of God it is this self-love that is guarded against.St Paul tells us this when he echoes Jesus in preaching that all the commandments of the Law are summed up in "Love thy neighbour as thyself."

This morning's hard, even brutal, saying of Jesus is beloved of Moslem proselytisers who quote to defame Christianity. I don't think that we should try to explain it away as it does tell us the extent we should aim our devorion to God. We know ouselves and next we have to know God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Knowing God is truly beyond our human consciousness but to do so is the goal of the Self that I know  in my own being. First I know the Love which surrounds me as a baby and return that love to my mother and family but very quickly I have to learn that I must control this "Self" if I am to live with others who are faced with the same awareness and difficulty of control that I am.

Life is God's first gift to us and his grace supports us in the doing of his Will. The Sacraments are the visible signs of his faith in us .The celebration of the Eucharist is entrusted to first the Twelve and then to millions of priests. It must be celebrated "worthily in faith" for it to be the sacrice that has won for us the grace to be accepted by the Being of God to know him, Father, Son and Holy Spirit as he really is.

Dear Lord, let your recorded words open up the hearts of all priests and faithful to the immensity of your Saving Grace. May all egotism and vice be eliminated by the infinite grace brought into being by the  first Eucharist on Calvary.

 02/11/2021

Today we begin wirh a huge choice of readings.Yesterday I felt confused but today we begin with the reassurance from Wisdom that we will remain in God's Love even after death. That our being will continue with the eternal Being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The psalm is one which was known  to all of us in my childhood and its comforting words became a part of most funeral services, Protestant and Catholic alike. 

We have witnessed a huge collapse in Christianity. We have been part of it. We cannot cast blame for this and must accept that we have failed the Lord. Each day I pray but do I proclaim the salvation won in agony on the cross? In the first days after Calvary there was in Jerusalem a great witnessing prompted by the resurrection. The Holy Spirit stirred up many  of the people to proclaim that Jesus who had been killed was still alive; that the Kingdom of God was with them. How is it that that beginning has now crumbled to what we are today?

I don't think that God has forsaken us on the cross of unbelief and I do believe that at the return Jesus will find faith on earth but not in the place I have always expected it to be.

Dear Lord, today your earthly congregation remembers all the souls that have departed this life. May we also remember that it is by our cooperation that your will is completed. Yet again I ask to become a witness of your foregiveness of sins and may my departed family who are all known to you receive the peace that only you can give.

 01/11/2021

The first sentence from St Paul has me really confused. I have still not fathomed its depth and complicalities. He seems to say that we have Mercy shown to us because other men are still sinners. Those who are still sinners are sinners because of the Mercy shown to us. At the moment that is what I think he says and I better leave it at that for the moment and later on I will return to it.

Jesus continues with one of his radical themes. The ones that have nothing will be the ones who are given most. Even in this world we must invite those who have lost everything into our homes to share of our plenty. Jesus tells us that we must accept the economic migrants as well as those dispossed by political upheavals. Jesus has never taught that there is such a category as "deserving poor". In black and white, help those who face poverty is what he tells us to do. In today's world there is no shortage of refugees, victims of drought etc. for us to put these words into practise unjudgementally. Our judgements may be correct but we are the ones who must repond to the needs of the poor. good or bad.

God has imprisoned us in disobedience only to be witnesses of his "Being", that is Love and Mercy; the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Dear Lord help me to find understanding of the message of your young pharisee Saul so that the teaching of our St. Paul may bring you into my soul. Let my actions not make a liar of my thoughts and words.

 31/10/2021

St John's visions recorded in the Apocalypse is a continuation of Old Testament witness revealed to the prophets. They are great spiritual experiences that must have been clear to the visionaries themselves but truly difficult to explain to others. Within our time the end of time cannot be conceived by our brains. We are told about it. God is beyond our minds to grasp and so those granted mystical experiences fasten their their minds on images that reveal the greatness of their experience but do not really communicate; knowledge of God comes only from God to the soul that is ready.

John in his letter is sure that we can be sure that the Love of Father Son and Holy Spirit is with us all and that we will see God for we will be like God. That is the wonder that has been given to us for we have been created and adopted by Love.

Does our Lord mean that we have to live our lives in poverty? The riches of this modern world mean that the poor who are always with us live in more bodily comfort than the richest of Roman Emperors. "Rich", "poor" are always subjective. The Beatitudes have inspired so much of the world's social policies even in the obviously non Christian parts of the World but was our Lord founding a Human Political System?  

The Kingdom of God is not anything political but should be found in every individual Soul. The Beatitudes are for me to ponder and practise. Kings, Presidents Emperors and Popes have the same mission as do I. Know Love Serve now to be ready for the wonders God has prepared for us.

Dear Lord, today we remember the Souls of the departed that have been taken up into your Love. May their intercessions led by Mary support our efforts to live the life  outlined in your "Beatitudes".

 30/10/2021

St Paul is concerned that we all remember the Jews. Remember that they are still beloved of God in the special way revealed in the Old Testament. The emnity shown to Jesus by his own people was a necessity for the mission of the Incarnation to be completed by a real death. Jesus' death was a complete annihilation. One accompanied by the unimaginable suffering. Suffering that was accepted in God's total freedom which is eternally aware of the "before" and "after" of our time.

Jesus is our "Lord and our God" and we too set up walls of sin against his message by our own human will which also has a freedom limited only by the  non-divine capabilities of our humanity. I sit at this machine which is the work of human hands and know that my intention is to start the day with prayer. What a wonder is the machine which encircles the whole world with Man. But what a greater creation is the Earth and all that is in it!

Pride and egoism are the roots of all sin and will reap their reward. Humility that refutes arrogance is God's Will for us; we must constantly battle to accept this for there are places at the wedding banquet that have been prepared for us Jew and battling Christians alike.

Dear Lord help me to not just say the right words but to find their true meaning in the way that I live my life always in the loving presence of Father Son and Holy Spirit.

 29/10/2021

St Paul is writing to the congregation of converts that is in Rome. He is intense. He knows that his correspondents are mostly Jews and he feels a great unease as he meditates and ponderss upon his own message. He has seen the Risen Lord and has heard the message tasking him with responsibity and mission. The height and the depth of Paul's faith in Jesus cannot be matched and he feels a great sorrow for educated as a Pharisee his knowledge of the historyof the Chosen People is a huge foundation on which to erect the comparitively recent events in Palestine.

The Risen Lord is now the Church and Paul realises that he and all believers are the Body of Christ and that it is as partof this body that we are saved. He is so desperate that his fellow Jews accept this that he offers his own damnation in exchange for the salvation of his people. This is truly a terrible image. 

Could I accept Hell for myself? St Paul is certainly in excess here. No one reaches heaven by his own efforts. He himself teaches that it is by a free gift that we receive salvation. Faith can become Good Works; but bargaining one's soul for the sake of another is not on. The excess of St Paul here makes for good rhetoric but our Master does not need the destruction of any soul. He accepted the horrific destruction of his own body. As a human he must of been out of his mind at the pain of it but as God he knew that his sacrifice was an acceptable offering to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Truly God is beyond all my imagination but I hope that my small efforts to know him can grow into loving service if I can keep control of my sinful nature.

Dear Lord send me help to do your will and continue to care for those of mine who ar particulry in need of help. Let all of your people feel the love you have for your chosen ones.