07/05/2023

The Liturgy is the presence of the Jesus of the first century maintained within the Church. The Church is marred by all its worldly accoutrements collected as does a snowball when rolling down a hill collect snow but the "Readings" bring Jesus and his first century Church directly into our modern lives.

At the centre of the Mass celebrated throughout the Globe, however, there is the consecration which is the moment that bread and wine become the Body of Christ, the Son of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The daily turning of Planet Earth carries with it this moment of the eternal renewal for it to become the spiritual centre of the created Universe.

St Paul taught us that The Church is by the effect of the Holy Spirit within her "The Mystical Body of Christ" which has to mean that the Presence of Christ in the continuing sacrifice of Calvary in the Eucharist brings us all into contact with God who knows us all. However, this "Holy Communion" was soon marred as was the first in Eden by man's misuse of his freedom.

Anyone who has been in contact with parish fund-raising events will know of the rummaging through donations in search of choice items that takes place before the event opens. The Apostles were faced with similar problems as they tried to maintain within their growing community the spirit of unity which their group had had during their three years of wandering "formation" with their rabbi. That choice of formal separation of function amongst believers offered Satan a chance to begin a guerrilla war on earth against the Kingdom which is not of this world.

Our Church after many centuries of fighting the World on the world's terms has given up that battle and to comply with its defeat has begun to appoint lay leaders to ensure that "The Body of Christ on Earth" complies with the laws of the "Caesar" who ordered the killing of her founder. 

How long will it be before we in England are even more scandalised by our Church, which  now has chosen to accept all the "nutty" employment legislation that is a minefield for worldly Mammon and has no place whatsoever within Christ's body on Earth, as it advertises for "Chief Operating Officers" to supervise her Dioceses?

Dear Lord you know that we cannot live without your loving presence in the sacraments. We know that your mother is the only created human being who knows you fully. You must know that your bishops need the unlimited amount of grace you poured out on the whole world. Over the centuries many of us have avoided the world the flesh and the devil with the help of your grace, let the prayers of those saints lead by your mother shake some sense and holiness into the souls of those who truly in their complaisant knowingness "do not know".

 06/05/2023

The Synagogue of Pisidian Antioch was one of many congregations of devout Jews who were living throughout the World. The "world" then being the Empire ruled from Rome. There were many such synagogues as there were also in Palestine. They were not formed as a "missionary" activity but there to meet the religious needs of the Chosen People who were scattered throughout the Empire for various reasons.

 The world of the First Century was the Pax Romana where strong men had been tamed by  stronger men and it was possible to travel in safety along Roman Roads or through "Our Sea" from Spain to Persia. St Paul of all the Apostles was aware of this multi-cultural world. His appeal "Civis Romanus sum" made in Jerusalem tells us that Paul knew not only the Scriptures but was also aware of the Human ( Roman) Rights of a "Citizen of whatever race," and that these "rights" were accepted and deferred to throughout the Roman World.

The Gospel passage we read today is the one we read Wednesday of this week, the Feast of Sts Philip and James. St John's recollection of the events that set his life on the path he followed until his death  are the "words" spoken by Jesus confirmed by John's own deeds and the growth of the Church. The teachings of Paul and the other Apostles and the arguments and discussions, many of them fiery, he was part of or witnessed would also have formed  part of his memories. Most of all his Faith would have developed during his care of the Virgin Mary, Theotokos who would have continued to ponder the words and wonder of what had happened since that revelation made to her by Gabriel the Messenger of God.

Dear Lord all that you willed for our Salvation happened during the lifetime of your Mother Mary. All of your revelation is to be found in the Sacred Scriptures. May the hearts of all who read/hear your words today be open to receive them into their whole being. May Mary of whose body you became part, be for us all the Mystic Light that reveals the Truth of your Being , Father, Son and Holy Spirit and The Way to be followed in repentance for our sins so that we can be faithful children of our Brother Jesus' Dad who is to be praised by all beings, obeyed, thanked and is the source of all Love and Mercy that we share and pass on to each other in the Peace that  will shelter us from all harm and evil.

 05/05/2023

Today St Paul is preaching in Antioch not the Antioch where the followers of the "Way" were first given the name "Christian" but another one in what is central Turkey today. Paul is very much at home in this culture. He too was a Jew born in the diaspora of his day. He too was a Roman Citizen. He too knew what it was to be faced, on a daily basis with the abomination that was statues worshipped as gods, the ubiquitous paganism. 

He first makes clear his credentials both religious and political. He is a son of Abraham  and the events that he is proclaiming took place in Jerusalem / Palestine during the Governorship of Pilate. They were contemporary events of the Roman Empire. He sketches out the position of Jesus in the long history of God's revelations with which the whole congregation was familiar from the scrolls. There was no dissent to begin with but it did not take long for arguments to break out and Paul, who was focussed on spreading the Good News, moved on to what is now Konya, the city of the  Dancing Dervishes.

In the Gospel John is recording what he remembers of the The Risen Lord. Jesus whom Thomas had already worshipped as the Resurrection of the Crucified One, my Lord and my God, is asked for more clarity, this time by Philip,  and we are given this "IAM", the Way, the Truth and the Life to wonder at and  put into practice during our lives.

We can be sure that Jesus is seriously preparing an institution in which we can find living sacraments to channel the love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit into this world and so protect us from the snares of the devil. We can also be sure that this "Kingdom" is not of this world although he taught us to pray " Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in this world as it is in Heaven" for it is not the outward sign of mystical grace that washes us from original sin, forgives us our sins, feeds our souls, infuses us with Holy Spirit, sanctifies our procreation, accepts and activates our commitment to Heaven or prepares us for death, but it is the same Jesus who in ultimate humility on the cross poured out his own life's blood for he is the only Way to the Father. That Jesus is not an outward sign of inward grace he is the Grace and in The Sacrament he is also, indeed, the outward sign, the Body and Blood. What a great God we have!! 

Lord, please guide my thoughts that I may stay true to your teaching in my soul and there accept the gift of forgiveness won by so much pain and the strength to make true amends. May your mother Mary for whom you could refuse nothing lead all the Saints and Angels in Heaven, the Holy Souls in Purgatory and we sinners on Earth in pleas for Your Mercy without which there could be no life at all.

 04/05/2023

This day is dedicated to  those Priests and layfolk who refused to obey the laws passed by the "Mother of Parliaments" and implemented by the King of this country. The laws forbade there to be any worship of God in England other than that sanctioned by the newly created Church of England. The supporters of the new laws and Church particularly denied the "power of the keys". Many suffered humiliations, torture and the barbaric punishment  that was handed out to all convicted criminals of those days.

Martyrs are celebrated for their fortitude in the face of death. Some of us living today are "martyrs in the face of life" which is certainly not a joy where there is no food or water or where the soul is not able to overcome birth defects or subsequent chronic disease. There are many hidden "martyrs" surviving in the midst of our plenty. Those whose "life"is surviving this day to be able to struggle on the next are entirely in God's hands.

St Stephen is celebrated in the Liturgy of today as the first Christian Martyr. It is right to do so. It is right to remember the struggles and physical pain suffered for three hundred years to be a Catholic in England. It is also right to question why it was that there were so few doing so. Was it only one Bishop who really had faith in Christ? Why were so many noble families instantly Protestant?

The instant collapse of the Papacy's power in England was mirrored in Europe which was devastated by one and a half centuries of war. Peter's successors were the first clerics who really did "not get it" just as those rightly castigated at the IICSA did not have the Holy Spirit to support them in their lies and evasions.  "My Kingdom is not of this World" does not mean that the Successor to St Peter is  the supreme sovereign ruler of this World, a sort of one-man United Nations. Jesus has never condemned any one to death let alone by Elizabeth's hanging, disembowelling and the quartering of the subsequent corpse or by her "contrary" sister's preferred holocausts in Oxford. 

Dear Lord, you know that facts of our past can truly disrupt our present. Humanity has always lived in your Providence but we still do not learn how to pray "do unto me as you will". I am responsible for my own life and strive to influence for good all those whom I love. May Mary who was created sinless to become Theotokos lead all the saints in their intercessions for all who, then as now, do not live up to the teachings of Jesus, Father Son and Holy Spirit, whom we all profess to follow and worship in obedience to his revelations.

 03/05/2023

Thomas is remembered as "Doubting Thomas". We know of Philip mainly as the teacher and spiritual father of the Royal Treasurer of Ethiopia and the natural father of daughters mentioned in the Acts as "prophets". In today's Gospel he is reprimanded for being unaware of the reality of what he has been witnessing during the last three years.

He has been together with the Way Itself, both learning and witnessing the Truth of the New Life that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Resurrection. The Resurrection is looking into his eyes with disbelief. How can so many spiritual gifts have been given to him and yet he does not  know that The Father and Jesus are One.

Jesus hides nothing from us. He has revealed the totality of God's gift to us. Our first parents got it wrong and for thousands of years afterwards no matter what gifts God lavished on the chosen people they always proved their unfaithfulness. Today there are no "Chosen People". Each individual human soul in our World living now here with us, or "being "in the other Spiritual World, waiting in Time or Timelesness for the Parouisia at which there will be the Judgement opening our beings to "God the All in All". What we will become then has not been revealed to us.

Philip is reprimanded. How much more must I reprimand myself not because of my faulty understanding. No one except Father Son and Holy Spirit can truly know, love and serve for that is the being of God. But for wasting my being and freedom by not trying to know love and serve with totality of mind, body and soul.

Dear Lord I want nothing more than to worship and serve you in this world. Let me avoid sin for it defiles all my good intentions and refuses the grace of your forgiveness. May Mary's and all the saints' pleas for grace for all sinners bring all of us to the forgiveness that was won for us by Jesus our saviour.

 02/05/2023

None of the texts that were collated as authentically inspired by the Holy Spirit were dated by their writers except by reference to Roman and Temple officials. Some of Paul's letters are the earliest texts. St John's Gospel is his memoir of the time he spent with Jesus. It was written some fifty years after the Resurrection and was inspired to summarise all the teaching of Jesus within the the revelations made to the Chosen People and contained in the rolls of scripture proclaimed, translated and explained in both Temple and Synagogue.

The only reason that Jews came to accept Jesus' New Covenant was the Resurrection. The Apostles and converted continued to worship in the Temple and daily faced the problem of accepting Gentiles as members of their new Synagogue. They had the Scrolls to refer to but there were no other texts recording the teaching of Jesus by word and deed until Paul's pastoral letters to the mainly Greeks of Asia Minor. Those letters had been informed by the Holy Spirit and Paul's questioning of the, at first, highly suspicious apostles and direct disciples.

The Resurrection was IAMIAM stopping each one, who witnessed the Living Lord, in the timeline of his life to be the point after which nothing could be the same. They lived their new life in a community of love, prayer and reflection. They all knew that the One True God, the All Powerful had lead them out of Slavery to the Law.The Apostles who had been with Jesus, their Rabbi, preached what they had heard and bore witness to what they had seen.

Since those first days millions of us have sought to live lives obedient to the Love with which we were created. In the first days of the Church there were endless arguments about the Truth and words that  Jesus had preached but for the strict monotheist nothing could have been more difficult than "The Father and I are one"recalled some fifty years after the event by the disciple who had stayed with Jesus to the end and then taken on responsibility of caring for Theotokos till she returned to her Son but now in Heaven.

Dear Lord, let me always try to find the Truth in everything that has been saved by your Church as inspired by you. May Mary continue to be the Mother of your faithful and guide your Church against  sinful pride and greed. May my heart be open to receive the grace that will keep me free from sin and may all our souls on earth be united with the Holy Souls in Purgatory in penance for our failures and dishonesty.

 01/05/2023

"My Kingdom is not of this world". Instead of totally accepting these words at face value, the Church of Christ founded on Peter very soon became "worldly". Buildings dedicated to Jesus had to be maintained and protected especially during the time Europe became the target of emigrating hordes from Asia and the weakened Empires social structures had to be replaced.

Individuals who had dedicated their whole lives to prayer and avoidance of the World became communities of believers. These communities became great landowners. The Church became a "power"in the collapsing Empire and was soon dominated in the west by the rich and the powerful "Roman Aristocrats". 

The Church of the Apostles really did not want to be "of this world". They had seen the Resurrection. They lived through persecutions lead at first  by their own people and then by the Pagan Empire. They had been seen to welcome death as Martyrs in the arena. They knew that Jesus was the Son by whom they had been taught to wash away the stain of sins both inherited and their own, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Today's Feast is a totally worldly event. Joseph's obedience in accepting Mary's virginial conception of and his own subsequent paternal care for Jesus is his spiritual legacy to us all. There had never been within the Church a need to honour any social class until Marx theorized about Capital and workers became the "power" in the State.

Jesus' sharp reply to Judas at Bethany"The poor will always be with you"is not at all a cynical retort. It is not at all prescriptive but a descriptive statement of worldly fact. Jesus never praises any "class". He does reprimand the "clerics" of his day but as for the "workers" we are all individual souls who will not find "rest" until we "take on the yoke and burden" which tells us that there is no lasting comfort in this life for "My Kingdom is not of this world."

Dear Lord, your foster father on earth accepted the message you sent via a dream. As a child you would have called him "Dad" but then you revealed that the Father of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in heaven loves us as we do our own children. You are "Dad", our Good Shepherd. May the prayers of Mary and all the Saints continue to be heard and let your grace support all who work in the vineyard that is your Church on Earth and those Holy Souls penitent and seeking pardon in Purgatory.