22/04/2023

Our God knows all of us. He knows us as individuals and as "nations", the physical race into which we all are born. Our souls, however are "persons" and known and loved by our names. In our belief, we are all Jews for God's revelation was made to the descendants of Abraham and perfected in Jesus the Incarnation, Life, Death and Resurrection in Palestine. Our souls are the eternal element of our being and belong to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Jesus had told his friend Martha at Bethany that Mary had chosen the "better part" by sitting at his feet listening to him. The "Commonwealth" that was the first Church grew spontaneously without a "business plan". The rapidity of this growth had lead to problems. There were two separate groups in the Church, which were defined not by blood but by language.

The Apostles knew that the Lord had given them a mission to proclaim the Resurrection and the Parousia that was to come. For them this was the "better part"and so the business of sharing out food and goods was an intrusion, a distraction from their prayers and preaching.

Jesus had founded the "Church"but had left its earthly structure up to his Apostles. I always remember how he had stopped the mother of James and John when she had canvassed on behalf of her sons. He had, however,  made it clear how his grace was to be distributed on earth. Baptism was to be in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit and his preparation for his execution at the Last Supper was to be his ever present memorial, the Holy Eucharist, our thanksgiving for the forgiveness he had won for us on the cross.

The Sacraments are the obvious "better part" for they concern our souls and the way to Eternal Life and they are the eternal God-given heart of our Church. It is the structure of the man-made institution and  its administration that has always been the source of the problems that have always been with us even in the "us and them" disputes of those first months in Jerusalem.

Dear Lord, may all Bishops and Priests be always aware that it is  their own souls and the souls of the people they have been entrusted with that is their responsibility. May Mary and all the Saints pray that all clergy seek holiness and thus inspire rather than disappoint their charges. May we sinners on Earth be open to your forgiveness and may the Holy Souls in Purgatory be purged by your Mercy.

 21/04/2023

St Paul's own Rabbi offers the Sanhedrin some very rational advice. The same rationality is repeated by Pascal some 1700 years later. Pascal defended the rationality of belief in Christianity in the form of what is known as "Pascal's wager". It is logical to live the life of a believing Christian even if you cannot truly believe for if there is Judgement after death you have avoided sin and so will be saved but if there is nothing you won't know anything about it as you too will have disappeared into that void of nothingness.

There may be human wisdom in both Gamliel's advice "to wait and see" and Pascal's wager but there is no true belief in Anselm's "ever greater" God. We do not know whether Gamliel was true to his words and accepted that the growing Church really did come from God, but we do know that his "school" was active in persecution. Saul guarded the outer clothing of those who bludgeoned St Stephen to death.

The miracles of Jesus and continued by the Apostles are the "signs" that the people needed to convince them that their Messiah had come. The Jews of the first century were a tightly knit community of believers who knew in their very beings that they were God's own people. It must have been very hard for them to accept that God could have offered redemption to the unrighteous and unclean Gentiles.

It wasn't easy for the Gentiles to believe either. The intellectual sophisticates of Asia Minor and Athens had to have their minds convinced that the perfect purity of the "good" that their philosophers had sought had been a  broken and bleeding criminal's corpse on a cross in Palestine. 

The Holy Spirit did prevail and Paul's proclamation of the Risen Lord became the Church where the wisdom of the Greeks was retained even in the remotest corners of Europe. We all have personal miracles where we know that Father, Son and Holy Spirit have entered our lives and God gives each of us the adequate amount of wisdom to choose Life rather than Death. We need to use our free will wisely and without cynicism prepare with love for the judgement to come. 

Dear Lord, may I continue to find support for my acceptance of your will for me by turning to you in prayerful contemplation. May your Angels guard me from all evil and let my prayers be witnessed by my life. May the prayers of Mary and all the saints of heaven be the support of our Worldly Church and the inspiration for all of us to turn to joyful holiness.

 20/04/2023

I am the "poor man who called and the Lord heard him". We are all born "poor", helpless, totally dependant on our mothers. We all grow to be children and remain "poor" even if we are born in a palace. Worldly riches, however, can and do conceal the poverty of the human soul within the body of a pampered child who soon grows to become dependant on and in love with  the riches that prevent the camel from passing through the eye of the needle.

We in the West have become so rich that we have insulated ourselves from God by a culture that sees our success in scientifically controlling not only base matter but even our life itself, as the one and only reality. Life still comes to an end, however, but we  continue trying to deny the weakness of our our now revealed "poverty" by "celebrating the life" of the dead one whose remains after cremation fit into a container that can be carried in one hand.

I thank God that I began my life in the love of a family which, although not perfect, sincerely tried to practise the faith the Truth of which the Apostles defended before the Sanhedrin. I have always been "poor" for I have often wasted the grace that comes from God. I have often stripped myself of this grace and become truly "destitute "in sin. True wealth is to be found only in the Love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit that is freely available so that "Anyone who believes in the Son has eternal Life". 

The Incarnation, Death and Resurrection has given us all the Holy Spirit "without reserve" and thus we "the poor" can die into riches way, way beyond our imagining. The choice is ours.

Dear Lord you know me. I know that empty words are no prayer. Let me in sincere poverty implore your forgiveness and love to be showered on all who are known to me. May Mary and all the saints plead for your grace to be accepted by all of us still enthralled by Devil, World and Flesh and may the souls of the departed become aware that their pains are Justice tempered with Mercy for it is only through the suffering of Jesus that our sins can be forgiven.

 19/04/2023

Living in the "light" for me takes place every morning that I read the Mass Readings of the day and open my being to the Word that they are. I am ready for anybody to read my prayer each morning but nobody ever does. Am I truly living in the light?

The first thing that I see when I start my computer is the world as news. Nothing lasts and the utter tripe that fills my screen each day is total futility. I truly cannot understand how anybody would want to live their lives on the passing level that each morning's glance at the screen reveals to me.

"My kingdom is not of this world"is not a political statement it tells us that our lives are something much greater than the world filled by the intelligence of mankind with wonders that could not have been imagined by the Apostles at the time they were questioned by the Sanhedrin. They knew a much greater wonder. They proclaimed the Resurrection into the faces of Christ's executioners not out of revenge but out of the Love that they had received from the Holy Spirit.

The " World" captures and captivates our attention because all the difficulties and problems we face can fill the time we live and divert our minds from God. Even the totally obvious futility of playing with balls has the capacity to glue our minds to the moment and absorb our passions into something like the timelessness of eternity.

Our human lives are in this world but it is for what we are to become that we are living. The total being that is the ever greater Father Son and Holy Spirit has ensured that all of us can live now in the Light of his Love and thus defeat the snares and deceptions that assail us all in this world. We have to continue to choose Life to be able to die successfully.

Dear Lord help me to do your will. Let my life become a witness to your Love. We know the utter mess I had been making of my life when you pulled me out into the Light. Let me join my gratitude to the prayers of  Mary and all the Saints and together let us all pray that your Mercy falls like the shower of roses revealed to St Theresa during the pain of her life in Normandy.

 18/04/2023

The readings for this morning reveal how the teachings of Jesus and the blinding Glory of the Resurrection had had their immediate impact.The Church in the first reading is the result in this world and life of "the love of neighbour as your self." It is the beginning among the people who had known Jesus, of the Church founded on the Rock and it grew but in doing so also lost the pristine innocence of its first weeks in Jerusalem.

St John's Gospel is the divinely inspired memoir of Jesus recollected by John in his old age. It is not a "true narrative" but the interpretation of remembered highlights of the Life inspired by Love. I think that as St John had been given the responsibility of looking after Mary within his own "household" his recollections were also supported by those of Mary. The billions of words of "Theology" available today all start from the Gospels and especially that of St John. He is the "Theologian".

Those first two decades of the Church are the ideal for all Christian life. Problems were at first overcome by prayer but even when they know Christ, people are still human, full of self and ready to protect their own. Deacons were appointed to ensure impartiality in the division of material needs and then overseers ( Bishops) became a necessity and thus human corruption first seen in the canvassing of Jesus by the mother of James and John, began in the infant hierarchy.Within three centuries the Papacy had taken on the worldly trappings of the Empire and acted as if it had forgotten "My kingdom is not of this world".

The worldly wickedness inside the Petrine Church is still with us as much as it has ever been. However, Father, Son and Holy Spirit through the words of Jesus has promised "to be with us until the end of time." Our Baptism has freed us to accept the "heavenly words" of the Holy Spirit so that even amongst the past and present evil men, who have neither fear of God nor respect for man but still rule the Institutional Church, we can find "the small quiet voice"that brings to us the Love of God that the prayers of St John and Mary keep flourishing in the hearts that are open to receive it. There has always been a Church of the Spirit and it can still be found.

Dear Lord, open the hearts of all your people to receive the merciful grace and comfort that is beyond all understanding and let us be able to without doubts join in the Liturgy that is the remembrance of you and renewed Sacrifice of your Body and Blood. May Mary and all the saints in the perfect worship of Heaven pray for forgiveness for all sinners here on Earth and for souls awaiting pardon in Purgatory.

 17/04/2023

Each day when I read the Mass Readings I know that I am trying to confirm Faith and Hope in the revelations of himself made, through the Church, by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I am also trying to control my self-love that always comes between me and my love for God and for my neighbour .

There are some people for whom my heart goes out. They are usually little ones or my family. It is especially easy to have warm feelings for God's creatures but it seems to me that my love for God has got to be something greater than my affection for the little dog that I will be looking after tomorrow.

I am the being made by God and I can not be more than that. I have to accept that when I am doing my best it cannot be greater than the limits of my ability. I am always supported by the Holy Spirit and although I can feel no shaking either externally, as did the disciples, nor internally as did the Saints in Heaven, I have been reborn. My Baptism is always with me and that spiritual rebirth will be with me to the end of time.

Dear Lord help me to stop looking at myself and just accept that your Mercy guards my being reborn in Baptism and safeguards me now and for evermore from the snares of world, flesh and devil. May Mary the, Immaculate Theotokos, guide me in living for God and for others by abandoning myself entirely, as she did, to will of God.

 16/04/2023

There are no written records that survive from the period of the events recorded in the New Testament. The earliest fragments of the texts of the Acts are dated some fifty years after the Resurrection. By that time "The breaking of bread" had taken on the liturgical significance first mentioned by St Paul 30 years before that. 

The first Christians, who had not then acquired that name, lived with Apostles and others who had seen the Risen Lord and although they were unable to find the words to analyse their supernatural experience; they knew what they had seen and spoke with confidence to persuade others.

Jesus was not a wraith, a ghostly Spirit. The living Lord was flesh and blood. He breathed air and ate food and yet his body was not contained by the physical universe of which he was still part. We can ask Thomas what it was like to put his hand inside the flesh of his Rabbi and he has no reply except to worship. "My Lord and my God !"

Thomas was blessed for his total commitment as were all those who met in the Portico of Solomon. The "Breaking of Bread" has become the first liturgical event of the New Testament. The Holy Spirit has been breathed into the Apostles directly by the Son who has been raised to new life. God has put new wine into old wineskins. Baptism has recycled our flesh into vessels fit for the New Bread and Wine of the New Covenant and our first priests have been given a spiritual power that is not for their own benefit but to be shared among the people of God.

At the Last Supper, before Jesus blessed the broken bread and the wine, he performed the menial task of a household slave. There were no theatricals, no lace, no bells no Magna Capas. There was only the total humility of the Love that ranked sinful humanity higher than his Godhead.

Dear Lord, you know  that I keep repeating what I have learnt about you.You are my Father and my goal in life is to become ready to accept the punishment for the scourge of sin I have laid on you. May my atonement be sincere. and after the necessary punishment let my soul reach the perfection of Heaven where Mary and all the Saints join their prayers to those of thy people on Earth and in Purgatory. Thy will be done.