07/11/2022

St Paul's letters are the main source for our knowledge of the first decades of the Church founded on St Peter by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All of the New Testament confirms the need for obedient holiness for each of us and that need will be supported by those who have witnessed the Resurrection. Even though the first preaching by eyewitnesses, was done in the expectation of the imminent return, the people who formed the Church soon had to have some sort of organisation. We have some details in the Acts of Peter and James in Jerusalem and Antioch and there are immediate hints of hierarchical authority in doctrine and structure.

Paul wants those in leadership to demonstrate their dedication to God's revelation of the purpose of our lives both by their knowledge and their behaviour. Many of us today still believe that that teaching in the Father's creation has the life of Christ as its model and the Holy Spirit as its loving support.

The Gospel at today's mass is a grave warning by Jesus to us all. His is the only path to the eternal life promised to us and secured by his Sacrifice of himself in bitter pain. I am amazed that the Apostolic Church can continue in pomp and privileged splendour when it reads the words of Christ. 

Can any one of our ordained ministers on reading aloud to their congregations, today's Letter to Titus not bow his head in shame. Where in our Church can we find sound doctrine or public refutation of evil? Where are the men "hospitable, and a friend to all that is good sensible moral and devout and self-controlled".

Millstones are still in plentiful supply and are not just reserved for those who harm children. In the Church there are millions of us little ones that are harmed by "arrogant and hot-tempered" clergy who ignoring God's teaching have succumbed to the World.

Dear Lord keep me from arrogance. You know how weak I am. Let my prayers for openness to your Love be for your Church too. There is a desperate need for hypocrisy to be exposed as you did in the Temple, please overturn the money managers who turn your Church into a den of thieves. Let us all in the care of our mother Mary be untouched by the failings of others and live in constant hope of being able for ourselves to avoid sin and pray for graces to be given to all in this world that we might be with God in the next.

 06/11/2022

My service offered to Father, Son and Holy Spirit is all based on God's revelation recorded in scriptures. I know that I am. I am conscious of my being and know that there are other beings and of these there is One Evergreater who can never be understood by my mind nor expressed by my words. Throughout the time humans have been on Earth, God has revealed himself first to one people and then to all mankind and this revelation is being read in churches all over the world this Sunday, the Lord's Day

God has to be worshipped because He is. We can worship him only in our individual being even though we join together as congregations to do so. Why are the Maccabees being slaughtered in the first of today's readings? They know that Faith, obedience to God is the most important thing anybody can do with his life. They have learnt through scriptures that God has created us to be holy in this life to prepare us for a new consciousness in a state beyond death. What is death in comparison to Eternity?

Not all the compilers of God's revelation have understood that there would be a different form of life for each of us after death. The Sadducees challenged Jesus and were rebuked for not accepting that after our deaths our souls will live on in another "world" as spiritual beings without bodies which are left behind in this world as the dust out of which they are made.

We can only be a worshiping community when we are all united in the creed that we profess for this is the Word promised to be with us until the end of time. I am afraid that too many of us are led into temptation by clergy who accept social mores and are not even able to do their duty by denouncing the sexual sins that are one of the bains of human life as it is lived now. Where are the Maccabees of our presentday Church?

Dear Lord, you know me completely and by your grace I am able to offer my poor service to you. Let not my dissatisfaction with the unholiness to be found in the institution that you founded cause me to forget the obedience and love shown at the foot of your cross by Mary and John and learn from your Mother total obedience to your will and know the Love which begat your Incarnation, Jesus, Son and man. May the prayers of all the Saints bring succour of the Holy Spirit to the Holy Souls and to their suffering brothers and sisters here on Earth. As always, I pray for the sick and suffering of all the world especially for those in my family and for those whom I know.

 05/11/2022

Our Lord makes quite clear that money can be used with love but it must not become our master, our captivator in life. How many of our pastors today can truthfully repeat the words of St. Paul " I have known poverty and know how to be rich too". In this world of my generation many of us cannot remember the desperation of not knowing where the next meal is coming from but many of still do. The problem of peoples' hunger was solved immediately by Jesus' miracles of loaves and fishes. We are not told about the recipients next day meals.

Money is tainted but it is still a necessity for all lives. St Paul's gift from the Thessalonians is more important to him as an expression of their love for him than it is for its own sake. Money is tainted in the same way as the apple forbidden to Adam. Mankind has to use the things of this world in acknowledgement of the Love that is the source of our being and Mankind's first covenant, promise to God. "God saw that all his creation was Good". 

The tainted being of our humanity has been reborn in the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection which is the manifest opportunity to remove the taint of sin so that we might be a sacrifice of service pleasing to God. St Paul knows that God will care for him for he knows that in his own heart there is only one desire that is overwhelmingly important to him, to proclaim, love and serve the One who we have been shown is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Dear Lord to be overcome by the things of this world is very easy for any of us. Success, Fame, Wealth are the only targets that are shouted out to us by the Mass Media. Please send the Holy Spirit to inspire the successors of St Peter and Paul, thy prelates, to completely divest themselves of all property and become wanderers showing to the world only the way truth and life mapped out for us. May Mary continue to share the maternal love she has for you and bring comfort to all the sick and dying of this world and within my own family.

 04/11/2022

St. Paul is reduced to tears by the thought of those who having first come to believe have lost their faith in a very short time. He makes it clear that the main problem is the sins of our flesh, greed and lust. It is no different today. I know how hard it is to control my appetites. With the help of God, I have been able to avoid booze for some time but sex and food can still draw me away from what I was certain was a firm purpose of amendment.

The steward is not commended for his dishonesty but Jesus is telling us that we can be really sensible about the things of this world. We can watch our stocks and buy and sell at the opportune times. We buy insurance policies to protect our pensions and to avoid becoming a difficulty for our children. We avoid conflicts which we know that we won't win. We are indeed worldly-wise. Who are the children of light? Are they those who become victims of the worldly wise? I think that Jesus is telling us that the Children of Light have different priorities, but they do not pursue these priorities with the consistency that the worldly -wise pursue the dross of this world.

Dear Lord please make me always aware that your grace is freely available and that there is no sensible reason at all for me to succumb to the emptiness of sin. May Mary continue in her care of the weak and the dying and support those who although forgetting their Christianity live lives although without God do not dedicate themselves to the prevalent evils that are the hallmark of our times.

 

 03/11/2022

What does St Paul mean by the Law. Jesus too condemns this Law. It is certainly not the 10 Commandments. Neither of them attack the Temple or animal sacrifice directly although there are scriptures that do so. The Law has been the evidence of the people's adherence to the covenant. In the first place circumcision then dietary laws, tithing, dress code all the finiky bits that are still observed by the Orthodox.

The Law is condemned as an outward show that is vanity when it has lost the Heartfelt Spirit, the Love of God and its companion love of neighbour. Jesus is the Son of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and he has been called/sent by the Father to renew the Love that is lavished on us. He does this by confronting his first people with himself the perfection of the Law and, condemning the Law as it has come to be but he himself is the fulfilment of how the Law should be. He lets them kill him for what they call blasphemy so that the Glory that is Father Son and Holy Spirit might be manifest to all of us for all time.

Since the time of Cain, some of the people of the world have always tried to evade God. There are many in our Church who act as if their own persons have created the Church in which they have found themselves and what does not suit must be weeded out. Cancelling God in one's life cannot to be proved to be the irrationality that it is until one's death. The revelation of God's Love is the History of the Jewish people and its completion Jesus, the Resurrection; if this be not true, what a waste of time living is!

 02/11/2022

Although I seem to have experienced a lot in my life, there are many who have experienced a lot more pain, happiness, excitement, pleasure, all that makes up our lives, than I have. Today is our day when the Church remembers the countless millions who have been judged and not found wanting; those who, having trusted in the words of our revealed God lived their lives aware of his Glory and happy in his merciful grace. 

God knows that each one of us has a soul that is the eternal being he has created and that being is a creation in his image and likeness. he knows my being far more than I know myself. He sees that being and knows "that it is good". It is my responsibility to care for my soul in human life which is our embodied souls created free to choose at each moment either to know, love and serve Father, Son, Holy Spirit or to allow ourselves to be captivated by the evils which Adam chose to let loose into creation. 

Jesus the Mercy of God lived as we all do. He was tempted but never succumbed. His pain on earth, as God freely giving up Divine Being to take on the true body of a man is totally beyond thought and as the Evergreater this pain has to be greater than the total pain of man on earth for it is this pain that brings the Mercy of God to all sinners such as me.

Dear God, you know the prideful shame that my sin brings to me, but I still do not comprehend what a horror it is in your sight. Let me come to learn the offence to your care of me that I freely choose and with this knowledge learn how to avoid the ingratitude that is one of the facets of my sinful behaviour. Mary you never had to deal with a naughty boy as Jesus was sinless, but we, the children you accepted at the foot of the cross, are forever in need of the Mercy that child won for us by the eternal sacrifice he made for us on the cross, continue to plead for that Mercy to be released so that even on this earth we may be relieved of sin as was the son of the widow released from death.

 01/11/2022

John's vision of heaven is like viewing a TV screen. The vast extent of heaven is viewed in its entirety and translated into words which form the screen which we convert to be a picture in our minds. I cannot reproduce the picture as described, the vision, in my own mind. It is the same with Daniel and before him Ezechiel; their images of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit do nothing to strengthen my belief. Words also fail when Theologians try to explain God's revelation in the language of Philosophy or of the Theology they have created.

The psalm, however, is pure poetry, an inspired prayer that is the reception of God into our hearts. It is joy that the recognition of the Love that comes to us from God brings to us who are open to accept it. There is no image to try to hang onto; it is joy from joy, love from love, recognition of true God from True God. We can all of us live in this state that makes us sing out by keeping hold of the knowledge of God's Love and thus avoiding sin.

Jesus confirms that we are all called to be happy in his Father's Love. He defines our targets in life for us. No matter what miseries we are experiencing in this world we are to accept lowliness and sorrows for they will be righted. We have to yearn and fight for the truth of God. We have to avoid all sin, avoid all conflict to remain pure in our very being and be forgiving to our enemies. We have to stay firm against all forms of evil and thus we can be truly Christians who will join our brothers and sisters in heaven to be in the company of All Saints the throng of every race and nation who perpetually face God in adoration and praise.

Dear Lord, help me keep all of your teaching and Love in my heart this day and let me purify my soul by deep sorrow for all the sins that are a rejection of your Will and Love. May Mary and all the Saints continue to plead for the mercy of God to overwhelm the sinfulness of the world and bring comfort to the sick and dying.