07/03/2023

I have recently been skimming through a dictionary of Popes and have been ashamed that what I had been  taught was anti-Catholic exaggerations was in fact the truth about most of the Popes who were really tied up into the world and all its pomp, works and splendour supported by the sins of their flesh.

I try to read the Mass readings for each day as soon as I get up. I am often amazed how apposite they are. I also wonder how they affect the priests and prelates who also read the same words.

 "Call no one father". Why do we call priests "father" and why do they let us? "Father" is only the beginning as there seems no end to the list of clerical titles; canon, monseigner, vicar general and others before we get into the bewildering world of the Episcopacy.

God tells his disciples directly "Call no man on Earth your father, you have only one Father and he is in heaven". Why does "Father Brown" not believe this?

Why do those who provide special masses for the so called LGBT community tell us that the sin of Sodom was breaking the rule of hospitality when it was totally perverse sexuality? Will the many priests who continue to abuse and those who mock the sufferings of Christ by distributing hosts to the unrepentant and to those who define themselves by Pride in their sin, dare to face Jesus. 

How can the priest "do this in memory of me" knowing that the grace of Jesus' life, death and Resurrection can only be received by souls that are free of sin? The "Body of Christ" is only available to the repentant and "Pride" cannot ever be said to be that. All priests should be witnesses to the truth and never fudge the revealed clarity of  Father, Son and holy Spirit.

Dear Lord your truth and love is till an unbroken thread running through the seamless garment that is the Scriptures. That thread is also still to be found in your Church for there is nothing that can break  Mary's love for your children accepted by her on Calvary. The Institution is still too worldly, so am I, but Mary who said "yes" and all the Saints who have come through the Great Persecution that is our lives on Earth live and pray in the eternal moment of Joy that is never changing. May their prayers continue to bring your forgiveness to all our souls on Earth and in Purgatory.

 06/03/2023

Jesus speaks to us all. He tells me that what I write should not be just empty words. The book of Daniel is inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is the Word in the the special world that is God's people, Israel. It is God's self consciousness of the Love that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit making himself known to the being that humbly raises his eyes to God. The writer of Daniel is aware not only of God but also of his own place within Israel and speaks for all his community.

Jesus is the Word. He is God in the same human body as I am. He is totally God. He is the fertilised egg carried in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary for nine months before being born in Bethlehem. Jesus shows us the way that we are to stay in the holiness that is the reason for our being. 

Jesus is first present in the special world of Israel. There he takes on the shame that is ours and the Evergreater submits out of love for us to the "wages of sin".The Resurrection promises to be with us always. The Church of Peter is where we can be sure to find the Lord and his Sacraments and this Church preaches to the whole world.

Jesus' life, death and Resurrection speaks to us all. He was deserted in his final hour by all except John and the three Marys. That desertion has been repeated too many times during the last  two thousand years by the Institution that  he founded among the Apostles, on Peter, but the love and compassion that stood at the foot of the Cross has never weakened and is still available, overflowing, so that even outside of the Institution there is still the Church without which there is no salvation.

Dear Lord, you know that I am alone in my worship. Help me to overcome the self-love that is still a too greater part of my being. Help me to avoid sin. May Mary and John who remained with you at the moment you cried out on Calvary continue their prayers for all sinners both on Earth and in Purgatory.

 05/03/2023

My understanding of my existence and my life here alive today begins with the first reading at today's masses. Abram is the one that God chose to be the father of the souls that would have the Evergreater God revealed to them; to have the covenant explained in its fullness; to know the merciful redemption; and have the freedom to make the choices that will determine our futures after our deaths.

Many centuries later St Paul reaffirmed that God's purpose was for us to live in holiness. Our freedom decrees that we have to make the right choice for holiness because that has been the loving origin of our  Creation by Father Son and Holy Spirit before time began. Jesus scandalised his listeners on more than one occasion but especially by "Before Abraham was, I am".

The nature of being, existence, is known only to God; faint glimpses have been seen and then expounded by great intellects but no human is capable of grasping a concept of God that is complete for he is the Evergreater. Some souls have had great experiences that have come to them in this world. St Paul knew that he had been carried into heaven. St Francis' faith was witnessed by the wounds that appeared on his body.

It seems impossible that after such a revelation of the Glory of the being of God as reported in today's Gospel, St Peter could return to the sinfulness that would deny Jesus not even once but three times. Thus is the foundation stone of our Church. Our first Pope was a very weak man who having chosen to follow stumbled more than once on his path to the glory of martyrdom. 

The first Church founded and filled with eye witnesses of the Resurrection became the institution which has displayed so many disavowals and contradictions throughout the centuries; Jesus' "my kingdom is not of this world"  has only ever been witnessed in its total denial by Papal States of which the Vatican is the last remnant. Even the hypocrisy that has been the rule rather than the exception in Rome has not been able to make the reward of sainthood for most of the Popes. They have been really bad men.

The Church has always been peopled by the sinful. St Peter is surely not the only one of the Apostles who failed to match his preaching with the teaching and example of Christ. However, within the onion layers of our Church, well disguised, perhaps, there is always the promise of Christ "I will be with you until the end of time". supported by Peter's "Lord,where shall we go, you have the message of eternal life?"

Many of us have searched for an alternative answer but the only certainty in this life is provided by the historical events that happened 2000 years ago in Palestine. Not the founding of a Church but the Incarnation life, death and Resurrection of Jesus, true man and true God. 

Dear Lord let me come closer to what you have made me for, let my sinful thoughts be kept out of my consciousness, let me see the good in your Church and not be blinded by the failure she is in many ways.Your guidance comes to her at the times of most need. Please find a way for her to assure us that the Sacraments of your Grace are still made by you working with your priests. May Mary who still has room in her heart for all your children continue  to lead the prayers of all the angels and saints to fight against Satan who is the enemy I cannot love.

 04/03/2023

Jesus tells us today in the Gospel, that reciprocated love is as natural as breathing. Our love for others has to be something better than that. Elsewhere, he also tells us that he is not the "strong task master ", in fear of whom the third servant buried his apportioned capital and returned the same without any loss or gain, for his load is not heavy and his yoke is light. O Jesus, you know the weakness of our humanity, you know it to a much greater degree than I know it myself and you tell us in your love for sinful man, that we must be as perfect in our being as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is God!

He does not tell us to be God or even to be Godlike but to be in ourself, as it were, a new Adam, God's perfect Man. For this Jesus came into the world to suffer and die to atone for the first sin which is with us when we are born but is washed away by Baptism. Oh how I wish that all potential for sin had not been with me during my life. 

 Gods's promise to Moses has only one requirement from his "Chosen People". They must curb their human freedom and live lives according to  His commandments, statutes, and accordances by listening to his voice. The Chosen People time and time again refused to listen to the Word sent through the prophets so in these "Last days" God came to make in our time and world the perfect atonement for the sins of imperfect man.

We have to love our enemies. Even for me in the comfort of my peaceful home it is sometimes difficult to love those who love me. Elsewhere in our world my brothers and sisters, children have to face war, poverty hunger and violent enemies seeking to take their goods and even their bodies. Love my enemies? It's difficult for me to find one but for many in this world their struggles are totally, for me, unimaginable and as for loving the perpetrators of any violence. I am a sinner. Lord have mercy.

Dear Lord, you know that in my sinfulness I have created many difficulties for myself and others during my life. Let my prayers bring some relief to those who are dying at this moment as a result of violence. May your Mercy welcome those victims into paradise as you did the good thief on Calvary and may the love and prayers of Mary and all saints bring respite  through penitence to sinners on Earth and in Purgatory.

 03/03/2023

For thousands of years God has been revealing to us that our lives are to be led in righteousness. He is quite clear that we are free to do as we please but that our freedom has to show that we know that he is our Loving Creator and that we can understand how and why we must control our sinfulness. 

God scoffs at an opinion that attributes to Him a wish to destroy the life he has created. He calls to all  sinners that we have to have to cry out from the depths of our despair and shame. We do not have to remain in sin, our destiny is not in oblivion or in eternal regret but in the joy without end for which he has created us.

The outward observances of the Temple can only be pleasing to God when they are more than skin deep, They have to be the outward sign of inward grace. Jesus again offers the Pharisees as examples of hypocrisy. I can find many similar examples in my own life without looking at the spectacular failures of our own Church.

There cannot be holiness in my life without inner integrity. The "me" that is in the world must first of all have a holiness that puts Father, Son and Holy Spirit before myself; a holiness that puts the needs and persons of others before myself; a holiness that listens to the words of "Our Father" and does them.

The Funeral prayer of the Church, the "De profundis" is today's psalm. It tells us that our God is always ready to forgive but we must make the efforts needed before we hear these words from our graves.

                        "If you Lord should mark our guilt who would survive?"

Dear Lord you know what I have been trying to do at this keyboard this morning. I pray that I can become more acceptable to you but know that you are with me to love and guide me. May the prayers of Mary and all the Saints help all to come into your presence and may the soul of Bill you know him find peace in your love.

 02/03/23

Although the Church, the institution that has emerged throughout the passage of time, seems far distant from that witnessed by the Gospels and the Acts, she has not lost the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The daily Liturgy of the Church in the World is as truly as inspired by Father, Son and Holy Spirit as is that of the Religious Orders. It is hard to believe that the Church supported violence against the Jews at any historical time as the Scriptures, both Old and New are the core of her liturgical practises.

Today it is the extollation of the Faith that was the Heart of the Jewish Nation that begins the liturgy. Esther is portrayed as having the knowledge that God is always with his chosen people even in their exile from the Temple; "I am alone and have no one but you". The psalm takes up this theme and sings of thanks for the faithfulness of our Father.

Jesus, true God and true Man was brought up in the bosom of a righteous Jewish family. He was totally as Jewish as was Esther. He is the final revelation of the will of God whom he now shows us to be three persons but one substance. He is the son of the owner of the vineyard who is killed by the tenants to takeover possession of what has never been theirs although they had the use of it by permission of the Father.

Jesus teaches that God has been, is now and ever shall be ready to listen to his people but that if we want to inherit a place in the vineyard, his Kingdom, then we have to treat other people as we would like them to treat us.This is still a very big "ask" for all of us.

Dear Lord help me to be at peace with myself and all the others that I encounter each day . Let me always be able to to truly know that each one of us on Earth is here to conform to your will and have only love in our hearts for that is the greatest of the gifts you give to us. May Mary and all the Saints of heaven be heard by you as within their Joy there is always room for even more of the faithful who do your will on earth. 

 01/03/2023

St Paul knows without doubt that Jesus has brought to the world the only thing that is necessary for us all to share, the grace of Faith. Paul's Faith is total belief in his oneness with Jesus. His Hope is that he will receive from God the perfection that Jesus has brought into the world. It is his Love that enables him to proclaim the Resurrection and to follow the Cross to his personal Good Friday.

Jesus has warned us that our Faith has not to be only skin-deep. Many of the Pharisees and priests were meticulous about their outward observance of the Law. This is the same hypocrisy that is so easy for me and all of us to hide from ourselves but not from God. Each day I try to open my mind and heart to Father, Son and Holy Spirit but after these minutes I am again the person that is uniquely the one created by God, the I that is the "hidden room" where Jesus tells to be at home with the Evergreater who is his Dad, our father who loves us to the extent of the Cross and all that leads up to it.

St Paul also had a hidden room but he lived in our world and was uniquely chosen to preach Christ. He shouted out his Faith and accepted his personal Cross. He could without any trace of hypocrisy proclaim the message that had been given to him. The message was for us to put Jesus foremost in our lives and to bear witness to him by living our lives  in the light of his Love.

We cannot do this by hiding in our "hard-drives". We have to become a reflection of the light of perfect Faith, Hope and Love that shines out over the whole Universe from Calvary.

Dear Lord, you know how difficult it can be for us to maintain awareness of our primary purpose. Satan knows that your grace is our only defence against sin and is in these high-tech days finding billions of ways to distract mankind into disobedience. You know my weakness; let my freedom make only right choices and thus come to be on Earth as it is in Heaven. May Mary and all the Saints continue to bring unity to the whole Church; joyful in Heaven, struggling on Earth and penitential in Purgatory.