21/11/2022

I have to know God. I have to listen to the Scriptures. I have to understand exactly what I am doing with my life. Knowing God is an impossibility. I think "Evergreater", but how can I capture an idea of such magnitude within the limits of my brain. My thoughts are useless, but God in his love for his creation makes known his intention for mankind in the scriptures. I am one of billions who are souls created by God and known totally by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I have always been in my own mind bigger than my reality although I strive after humility, I know that my sinful weaknesses offend my pride before I know them as sins that offend our God.

Mary is the only created being born without sin, an untarnished image and likeness. Her position in God's plan for humanity is always under attack. Human thinking about God, Theology, has written millions of words for and against the Church's teaching but the words from the Cross to John are still part of the words that will still stand to the end of time.

Our Lady has never sinned and so has only returned God's love by total obedience and service. She is a soul created by God out of nothing to become the body that bears the natural body that is the Word Incarnate. "How can this be?" " Let it be done according to thy word". 

Dear Lord, help me to be as straight in my response to your love of me as is Mary who carried you from conception to birth. You are God and I have to know love and obey. The way of my life is rocky, up and down and twisted but your love is as straight as an arrow. Let my response grow to be like Mary's. May Mary who requested your first miracle on Earth make the same irresistible request that your Church cleanse herself of all that besmirches the virginal purity of your intention and become the guardian of us thy people who are all known to you.

 20/11/2022

These few moments that I spend trying to be at peace with God are the best moments of my day. I am guided in this by the Church which was founded on Peter. I use the readings of the mass for each day and so I am still with the structure but frightened by the hypocrisy. I am not saying anything in pride and know that I am also full of the hypocrisy that writes this thinking of God but knowing that later today I will immerse myself in the waste of time that is TV.

Jesus has wiped away our sins but we still have the inclination to listen to or accept the temptations that surround us. Martin Luther came to believe that this concupiscence is as sinful as the sin for which it eases the way. St Paul had warned us about this in the first century and I can relate immediately to Jesus' casting out of a devil who went and brought back a cluster of demons to fill the empty space that was that man's soul.

The earliest days of the Church were beset by this problem of how to deal with sin repeated after we have received the forgiveness of Jesus. Reading about Church Councils to condemn faulty teaching in the last days of the Roman and Byzantine political empires, I am surprised how often in the East there was an appeal to Caesar to settle a theological problem. The opposite is true in the West where the Pope began to wield doctrinal supremacy enforced by his own Statehood. 

Cats don't have much chance in hell and we don't have much chance of being in a Church that is ready to strip away all its trappings and become the poor who are blessed by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I believe that this is the only way we can remain true to the carpenter from Nazareth who is still the Evergreater, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Dear Lord, you have been the Head of our Church since your words to St Peter. You are totally aware that we the people have become rich in the world in a way Mary and Joseph, the Apostles could not have imagined Help us to find in the Church the poverty practised by St Francis and in the teaching of some condemned as heretics. There is one Father, one Son and one Love that is the Holy Spirit moving us to worship together with Mary and the Saints in Heaven. Holy Mary Mother of God pray for the Holy Souls and for us thy children living in the danger to our souls that is the wealth that surrounds us all.

 19/11/2022

The reading from Revelations and today's Gospel stand in stark contrast to each other. The image that John describes is too weird to attract me. It is a surreal world-scape with recognisable references to our reality. We all know what olive trees are. We can easily imagine a lamp stand. The figures breathing out fire to destroy their enemies is another matter. It can be worked out that they are doing God's work and their destruction by the beast is welcomed by the peoples of the World who are in enmity with God. 

Jesus in the Gospel brings us back to our world. A world where the learned and clever place their faith in their own egos and tell God that he is wrong. Confronted with Jesus they don't stand a chance and they improvise explosive devices that blow up in their own faces. That happened two thousand years ago when Father Son and Holy Spirit was present with us breathing the same air, having the same basic needs and being subject to the same temptations.

The learned and clever are still with us today and their egos not the revelations of Father, Son and Holy Spirit form the consciences of millions of us. They shout into the face of God that he is wrong about his creation and that there are more than two genders in his humanity. They are so confident in human science which they use to control birth even to the extent of destroying life in the womb, that they, blinded by science, are already preparing to clone and extend human life.

The response to the beasts of this world, the ones who fill our cyberspace with hatred for our God must come from each one of us as our leaders, also consumed by their own egos, have lost the respect even of their congregations let alone of Society at large. God will listen to the cries of we the little ones who approach him in love and wonder and when Jesus returns there will still be some faith on Earth.

Dear Lord, you know the needs of we thy people living today just as you did when living among us in Palestine. Let me this day know your will and strengthened by the Holy Spirit follow Jesus, our way, truth and life. May the love shown by Mary and the other few at the foot of the cross be the only example that we should follow in this life for they had Jesus as their only role model.

 18/11/2022

Jesus' drives the merchants out of the Temple. It is not a task that could be completed easily by one man. The Temple was, as were all temples, not only the place to worship but also the place to keep your wealth safe from thieves. Business transactions between Rome and Yemen could be financed with reference to treasure in the Temple. In this respect it was more like the Bank of England than St Paul's Cathedral.

Jesus is with us to show us the way his Father and ours wants us to live in Love. In the incarnation the Father, creator of the whole Cosmos, has reduced himself to experience life in the body exactly as we do, except for personal sin. The Son is one with the Father so there is only Good in him, but he is also one with us and experiences the same emotions as do we all. He is angry in the Temple not because this buying and selling is something new to him or to the Temple, but because the worldly Mamon has overtaken the awareness of God in his covenant with his people Israel, that this place should be.

Many are the incidents recorded in the Gospels that open our eyes to our own selves and to the Institution that is Jesus, Father Son and Holy Spirit still with us. It is so easy to see the analogy between Temple Wealth and Vatican Portfolio. Bishops who have been called by God to lead his people along the right path to do his will today are more concerned with protecting their own career paths than speaking the Truth that comes from Heaven.

The wealth of the Roman Catholic Church is not the Patrimony of Peter but the gladness that comes from doing the will of God by helping us to shout "Amen" to the grace that flows over the whole world. The sins of our pastors have to be acknowledged and revealed by the Church before they are ferreted out by those who revel in our sinfulness. Pope, bishops, priests have to show to the whole world that God emptied himself to experience in our flesh the horror that we choose to create by saying "no" to his will for us. God does not fudge, with him "Yes" is "Yes" and "No" is "No".

Dear Lord you know my sinfulness and my efforts at repentance. Grant that I do not add to the rejection of your Love that is the evil of sin. Open my being that I may accept the Love that is the only reason for me being here and hear the prayers of the Saints and your Mother, who never knew sin, that I live this day sinlessly in Love. May the Holy Souls who are repenting totally for the sins of their worldly egos come to share in the Mercy of your Cross and may there be some comfort for those still suffering in this World especially those innocent little ones who are all known to you.

 17/11/2022

Today I have used the readings chosen by the Church for the feast of St. Hugh of Lincoln whose Cathedral is not only still with us, a daily source of wonder at the dedication of its founder and the skill of its builders who built using only human and animal energy, but also, still used for Christian worship.

Ezekiel is called by God to be his representative to his people, Israel. As is true with all humans, the Israelites, even though in captivity, had got immersed in the delights of this world and were forgetting that they were all chosen by God to live in righteousness on this earth. There is no Temple outside of Jerusalem, but scripture had been preserved and God still looked with favour on his first chosen.

Ezekiel was to serve the Lord by taking care that the individuals who together became "my people, Israel" lived their lives aware of and in the sight of the Father, the only person revealed before Christ. The people knew the teachings of the scriptures and Ezekiel was chosen to break their growing indifference and offer hope of a return and of a new Temple. 

He had to tell the hard truths of God whom we now know as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I have been taught that our Church, founded on Peter by the Son and filled with Holy Spirit who is the fire of all three persons, is Jesus still with us, the way, the truth the life of our souls. It has been founded by Jesus to be the shepherd of all humanity and its clergy are to do nothing but speak the truth and denounce evil.

Ezekiel had a vision and a goal. God's Temple on earth would be rebuilt. Our Church has to become the Good News that we each can be a Temple of God undamaged by the scandal that is wrought by the silence that rings out from the hollow chambers that are our leadership, in the nearly empty buildings of the Faith that is now so hard to find.

Dear Lord your city Jerusalem was always filled with thousands of people whom you know in your eternity. Your saints are with you in that state of joy that is your goal for each one of us. Our Holy Mother Mary is the one of us who comes close to understanding your Love that comes to us with life, may she and all the Saints continue to hold us and the Holy Souls in the spotlight of your grace that we may defeat temptation and learn the love that holds no fear.

 16/11/2022

In St John's vision of the Heaven, that is God's eternal presence, he must be seen much more than he sees for there are eyes everywhere even on angels' wings. I know that nothing can hide from God. He knows everything about me and human time has no limits for the ever-greater who is aware of the infinite choices that can be made in the freedom created for each of us. 

Jesus speaks his message in parables. This is a time that I have to say that I am confused as to what is the true meaning of this story as the rewards and punishment make sense about the things of, and are confined to this world.  The action is in our world. It takes place in a society that is ruled by a "rich man". The characters in the drama are given different levels of responsibility. The returning king judges each servant according to the way they have responded to their responsibilities. This is measured in worldly values. Thus, the disloyal are punished. The successful are given rewards that are commensurate with their performance. The worst performer, who actually made no effort, loses the little that he had. 

"I tell you, to everyone who has will be given more; but from the man who has not, even the little that he has will be taken away".

Jesus calls to all men "pick up your cross and follow me". An understanding of this parable could interpret the "Gift" as Faith deposited with us at birth or as the "cross" of our circumstances. If this were so, how would our will be free if it were already guided by the "talents" given to us? Where we begin this life is God's gift to us but how we grow that gift is our responsibility. Jesus' words are seldom more enigmatical than today's Gospel. However, we can be sure that living without taking care of what we are able to is not an option.

Dear Lord, may I come to a total acceptance of the action of your Will in our World. I cannot help but feel empathy for the fear by which the man who did nothing was ruled. I glimpse you as the ever-greater, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Mercy and Love are your attributes but today you speak of a Justice that I find very tough to understand and accept. May Mary and all the Saints pray the grace to know your will is given to all mankind that we may all be able to know love and serve as is your will for all of us. May the Loving Grace of Mary's "fiat" bring comfort to us all, the Holy Souls and to those who are still suffering here on Earth.

 5/11/2022

John's Revelation was written towards the end of his life lived during the first exciting years of the Resurrection. John himself had spent three years in the company of Jesus with his fellow disciples. He was the only one of those who stayed with the mourning women at the foot of the cross and there in his loving obedience accepted Mary into his household. He had spoken and even eaten with the risen Lord and been present in the upper room to receive the Holy Spirit. His Gospel displays a devotion, knowledge, understanding of Father, Son and Holy Spirit that still informs our Church and our individual place in God's creation. It must have been with a heavy heart that he accepted his commission to chastise those whose Faith Hope and Love had slipped away so quickly after hearing the Good News.

We sometimes think that our Church today (14/11/2022) is lacking fervour and this explains the crumbling numbers of believing worshippers. Humanity has grown not only in numbers but also in capability. Most people in this country are prisoners of Mamon and busy their lives in this material existence that is so attractive. Pleasures of the flesh have been extended by medical technology and our souls are treated as a product of our brains which can be controlled by chemicals. "My body, my womb" is the slogan of a common attack on God that murders the beginning of human life and those who live only to pleasure themselves in any way possible demand from our Church a blessing on their sin.

Jesus was in the mind of John a living memory and in his fledgling Church he was its very being. This is still the truth today. Our memory as a living, worshipping people of God is in the scriptures recorded and collected by the members of the more than "human" institution that is our Church. Our Church is more than human for the flesh of our bodies was taken on by the eternal Word to make the only eternal sacrifice fitting to the ever-greater Glory of our God who reveals himself as the Trinty of Person one in Being.    

Dear Lord I pray that I can avoid the traps of the world, the flesh and the Devil especially those that continually come into my mind and bloat my self-love. May Mary who probably spent more earthly time with John than she did with you pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death that we may all make the act of will that brings us to Faith in the Love that is your being and to share in which we have to only open our hearts for it is a free gift won for us by the unimaginable sufferings of the cross.