05/04/2023

Each day I feel that I search out the readings of the day with a "disciple's" ear. The "tongue" that writes  these reflections/prayers is my own but prayerfully aware of the Holy Spirit. 

One of the textual problems that the Gospels bring to all generations since the first is the discrepancies between the nature of the Last Supper in St John and in the others. Is it the Jewish Passover meal that Jesus' tells the disciples to prepare for or is it a preparation for the New Passover that is to be sealed in his own blood to be shed on Calvary? 

God  knows everything. He knows that I am resisting the thought that always questions how it is possible after Good Friday for Satan to still have such evil power in my life and in the life of the world and even in the life of the Church.

God is unknowable so I cannot understand what is His will for Evil. As a human I would prefer it if Father, Son and Holy Spirit would annihilate Evil now.

I believe that the "Last Day" is not the day of my death. Jesus was put lifeless into the tomb. His "last day" devastated the Disciples but he was to be the "First-Fruits of the New Life". "The Last Day" is the day when God is ready to be "All in All" . We humans have been created to be the chosen witnesses and our souls and resurrected bodies will be part of the great choir of Angels and Saints led by Mary welcoming the Second Coming.

There is nothing cheap about the grace that is won for us by the Sinless One. He gives it to us willingly if we open our beings to receive it. I would like to be free from awareness of evil in myself, the world and the Church. Jesus as usual shows us the way. In the Garden, he prays to be relieved of the torture he has chosen to accept for the the forgiveness of my sins but "Thy will be done" is the acceptance of God we all have to follow.

Dear Lord, strengthen the frailty that is my soul. I would like to be without weakness and truly live without pride and selfishness the life for which I always forget to thank you. May Mary and all the Saints continue to worship you and plead for the grace that we on Earth and in Purgatory have so great a need. Let us never forget our Saviour guiltless yet full of our self-generated  sins pleading to be released from this torment prostrate in the Olive grove.

 

 04/04/2023

The promise of the Lord revealed by Isaiah is fulfilled in Jesus. The Great Nation, however, is not of this world. It is not yet a material Kingdom it is the  Spiritual Body of Christ which links the souls of all believers in the unity of of the Word. The Word is God. Jesus is God and Man and we are God's creation in his own image and likeness.

In poor Judas we see our corruption. He has been pilfering from the common funds of Jesus and his Apostles. As we all can be, he has been habitually sinful for some time although he has successfully covered it up. The Father does not force righteousness on any of us. Jesus, too,knows that Judas is less than honest but allows him to exercise his freedom for the love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit has to be willingly returned to be effective.

"Satan" enters into Judas at the moment he is offered bread by Jesus to partake of the meal. Could this mean that he sealed his fate at this moment. It takes only a moment to sin but its effects can be life-shattering not only for the sinner but  also for many. We all have to be free from Mortal sin to share the Sacrificial Meal that is the Eucharist, if not, Satan can enter into us and grasps tight hold of this chance we give him in our freedom.The Father of Lies never refuses an opportunity and what was a moment can easily become a wasted life that refuses Love and chooses Death.

Judas is not the only sinner at table in the Upper Room. The rock on which Jesus is to build his church is also there and he refuses to bear witness to God, not once but three times during the action of that Thursday and Friday night. That first Church is our hope and our Faith. Jesus and his mother Mary were the only sinless ones. The rest are just like us a mixed bunch of humanity whose only strength comes from the seemingly weakness of the Cross and the Glory of the Resurrection.

The gates of the Kingdom are always open to us but God will accept only free choice for we are made in his image and likeness and have been given total freedom within the norms that are the Ten Commandments. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Dear Lord, may I learn how to pray in the peace that comes from you. I cannot do anything without your support. May I grow in Love to be able to know the grace that comes to all whose consciences are kept free from self love and thus have cleared the way to receive your free gift of Faith, Hope and Charity. May your people receive the grace that comes to us via the prayers of Mary and All the Saints and may the Institution that is your Mystical Body on earth live up to her mission and dig up and discard the stumbling stones she litters on our way to you on Calvary and so to the Promised Land.

 03/04/2023

I am always embarrassed by the image of Mary, sister of Lazarus and Martha, using her hair as a towel. There is a physical intimacy about the scene that I cannot avoid each time I read it. I always have to shake that thought out of my mind and concentrate on how St John reveals the hypocrisy of Judas who bewails the waste of money. The poor will always be with us and also the hypocrites. I know that for sure as I know that I have never lived up to the promises to avoid sin that I continue to make and break.

The Apostles and early disciples of whom the family at Bethany are among the few that are named  were well versed in the Prophets.They were not of the Temple elite. They had however spent three years in the company of Jesus and prayed with  and been taught by him. Their Bible was the scrolls of the Old Testament and when in the time after the Resurrection they were inspired by the Holy Spirit to make a coherent account of what they had witnessed they could find in the Prophets and Psalms the texts that pointed to the three years of Jesus' public mission.

The Old Testament readings for Holy Week are all part of what would have been read by the first congregations in the Upper Room and Portico of Solomon.They and the recollections of the Evangelists bring the presence of Father, Son and Holy Spirit into the hearts of all who are ready to listen and welcome him.

Dear Lord you know that I am a tiny atom of humanity. You know that being human can be joyful and also bitter hopelessness. Your way is our only way so let me shout out with you in human compassion and weakness for I too know that "Thy will be done" is the complete knowing, loving and serving that I am capable of thanks to the"being for us"of your life on earth. May the worship of  Mary and all the Saints who are now secure in their place with you continue to bring guidance to all human souls still living in bodily reality  and Mercy to those in the agony of regret that is Purgatory.

 02/04/2023

Our Gospels are records of Historical events. Now that I have stopped reading the Gospel for today it is  still in my mind but not verbatim or complete. So it was for the eye-witnesses of the events themselves.

After the Resurrection the cluster of Apostles and Disciples together with the Marys and other women who remained in Jerusalem began to understand what had happened and talked, I imagine incessantly, about the events they had witnessed since they we were first called by Jesus. There was no need to make a record for these were the witnesses and they had crystal clear memories.

I have said before that the Evangelists were not journalists embedded within the disciples. Each one of them wrote their Gospels many years after the events. They recorded what had become the less than now crystal clear, group recollection of the passion, death and Resurrection of their Rabbi, Jesus, the Son of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and as Jews they were inspired to show how the events were "according to the Scriptures", which they continued to pray everyday.

St John has pondered within his heart and been also inspired to offer his thoughts about how God was with their Rabbi, not only with but was in truth both man and God, Jesus. The masses of my youth always ended with what the Church sees as the beginning of all faith for before all time began. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."

Tradition tells us that Mary received the filial care of John after the resurrection and the tragic destruction of Jerusalem . John's inspiration was the Holy Spirit but his example for living and prayer was not only our Saviour but also the Most Holy Mother of God who was taken out of his care directly into the Eternal Love of Heaven.

Dear Lord help me continue to live in Hope for holiness, in sincerity of Faith in total acceptance of the Love poured out in forgiveness for our sins on Calvary. May our Church listen to the Word and have hearts open to receive the grace that is the eternal Hosanna of Mary, Angels and Saints of Heaven and may the peace of God overwhelm the evil that is flourishing in hearts of violent men everywhere on Earth.

 01/04/2023

The Old Testament is the record of the revelations made by God to the first humans after Adam. Adam and Eve had misused the freedom that is essential to our humanity and chosen the deception that was supposed to make them gods and thus added by their own choice original sin to God's initial concept of a person, a being who would be capable of knowing loving and serving in freedom without the programming that all of God's other creatures require to be what they are.

God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit has always in his mercy corrected his peoples' failures. Ezekiel was one of the very special Jews who had been able to retain his devotion to the Lord and had thus been granted revelations/warnings to share with the Chosen People. Each of us who hears this mornings readings at mass are still familiar with God. He is not for us a word uttered in exclamation or worse still  initials proclaiming surprise in a text-message.

I am always aware when reading St John's Gospel of what the word "Jew" signifies in my awareness of the history of  humanity. Scholars of today tell us that he is referring to the "religious authorities"and not to all of the "chosen people"who are also Jews as is Mary and all of the Apostles. We are told that God "does not have favourites" but the "Chosen People" have again reoccupied the Holy Land and are clearing it of Gentiles as did their forefathers three millennia ago.

Dear Lord you looked on your creation and you saw that it was good. You know the sins that continue even though you have been,in the begotten not made Jesus, the perfect sacrifice of atonement made for us. Your Church that is visible is sorely lacking and I am often weak in faith. May Mary and  the Saints implore your Grace so that all the Church may return to the joy of the Resurrection and may I avoid sin for this day. Maranatha.

 31/03/2023

Jeremiah, who reveals the word of God, is still completely human and does not turn the other cheek to his tormentors. Jesus, who is both God and man, gently explains to those wishing to stone him that they are mistaken  and that there is no blasphemy in him. 

They are accusing him in what they feel is good faith based on the first commandant. Jesus is speaking to them in the Temple for he, Son of God, has been preaching, doing good and fighting Satan throughout Palestine for three years precisely because the Chosen People have corrupted the Law. Now is the favourable time for God is with us and the Law is complete.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit have revealed to us that God is not of this world. He is nowhere in the vastness of the Universe and at same time everywhere for his Greatness is ever Greater; his Being is in everything except sin.The billions of words of Scripture and Commentary do not contain God. The Love of God has been incarnate on Earth 2000 years ago and is only in the Life, Death and Resurrection of Mary's Son, Jesus and in the Sacrament he bequeathed to us.

Yesterday I finished reading Pope Benedict's retelling of the Gospels. I felt his faith and sincerity of belief burning from the words as pure and straight as a laser. He must, however, have known, even as he wrote, that the Institutional Church, in which he had had such a prominent part, has been as guilty of sins as great as those of the evil regime he had served, some 80 years previously, as a boy gunner in the Hitler Youth.

Dear Lord, help thou my sincerity, let me atone for the sins of my youth for all sins are equal in that they are offences against the Love of God. May Mary's and the prayers of all the Saints bring holiness to your Church that we, your little one, can feel total confidence in the Sacrament that her priests confect with you.

 30/03/2023

God is Being. He is "I AM". He is Father. He is Son. He is Holy Spirit. Father is Father Son and Holy Spirit.. Son is Father Son and Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is Father Son and Holy Spirit. God is the Trinity of Persons in Infinity of Love.

God's Being is Spiritual and it is Love. .Jesus speaks openly as Son in the Temple. Some of The Chosen People hear and want to kill him there and then. Jesus is in the World to offer himself to God as the Sacrificial Lamb of God. He comes to take away the sins of the world but the infinite grace of Incarnation, Death and Resurrection does not imprint itself on our Freedom.

The Love that is God has to be returned by our free choice. Death that Adam brought into the World has been defeated but our world is still full of the wickedness that hated the man in the Temple to the extent that he was scourged, mocked and crucified.

The Resurrection is the first sign " the first fruits" of the Spring of  New Life, the New Creation that will be the Second Coming. In the many mansions of the Father's heaven our souls can be in the bosom of Abraham or experience the mercy-filled punishment that is our due for ignoring the revelations of the Father, the sufferings of the Incarnate Son and the always available grace of the Holy Spirit.

Dear Lord I believe that your love has opened a way to heaven for all humanity. You know how much this weighs down on my soul for I see and experience  a world characterised by Pride Lust and Greed. Your life, teaching death and resurrection  brought to us the Joy and righteousness of the Acts but all too soon we have lost or deliberately ignored the Good News. May Mary's prayers and those of all the saints  open all the souls on earth to the grace that hates sin and to the Holy Souls brings Mercy.