14/05/2023

Philip's  first  recorded mission is to the Treasurer of Ethiopia and this second one is also to  " separated brethren" the Samaritans. It is still not clear for me how it was that the apostles were able to recognise that the Holy Spirit was present or not. In this and other readings they recognise without any quibbles that "the Holy Spirit is present in another person. The signs of the Holy Spirit "speaking in tongues, drinking poison, handling snakes " could not have been used by Philip or by any other of the Apostles as a test of holiness for that is what it is to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

We have been taught that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The only recorded self-defining words from God can be thought of in English as "IAMIAM", the ever greater totality of "being" that can never be contained by thought but only worshipped in obedience. I was baptised in the name of the "Father, Son and Holy Ghost".. The first Christian Baptisms were in the "name" of "Jesus". 

I am always stopped by this word "name". It is certainly not made up of the letters of any alphabet. My "name" is probably who I am to God, a unique creation, as are we all, a being who has been saved from sin and given the grace to be in holiness during life on earth. If I am right about my "name" then Baptizing in  the  "name" of "Jesus" is identical with Baptizing in the "name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit".

The Apostles were aware of the Father, their lives up till the Resurrection, had been lived in the Law of Moses, who had been in the presence of God, they themselves knew the Son and had talked, walked and even eaten with the Resurrection but what was it that confirmed the third person of the Trinity and made this Person of God visible in others? I am not in doubt about the Trinity but the Apostles recognised the Holy Spirit. What was it that they saw that I cannot see today?

Dear Lord bring me to better understanding of your scriptures and with the willing open heart that this requires Let me be without pride kneeling at your feet  to receive every word that comes from the mouth of God. In my seeking for grace let your Mother and ours be the exemplar of how to obey your will on earth and thus be saved by the mercy you poured out with your blood on Calvary. May all sinners on earth become willing to accept Mercy with the Understanding that penance needs to be paid and thus accept willingly the pains of Purgatory.

 13/05/2023

The "one-liner" that is today's Gospel asks us to think as deeply as we can how it has happened that today it is possible for us to reach out and receive as a gift, additional to our being, additional to our self, a garment of salvation which will conform us to the only "dress code" that really matters, if we are to enter the wedding feast of the Lord.

Jesus' apparent rejection of his mother together with other moments in the Gospels where Jesus does not fawn on her have been taken as evidence of the "false teaching" of the Catholic Church regarding Mary. I am told even by Catholic Theologians that the position of Mary in the story of revelation and worship has been in the past exaggerated. I do not know of any time in Church History, in the memory that is the New Testament, when Mary was ever separated in either event or Theology, from her Son except for the panic that was still about Jesus, the apparent loss of him in the Temple.

She lived the Perfect Life. God chose her from all eternity to fulfill his incarnation. Jesus is "begotten not made". He is "true man from true man". She is our "Yes"; the consent of human freedom to the will of God so that we can achieve what he deems necessary for the disobedience of the Garden to be cancelled out by the outpouring of Love on the Cross.

No human knows, loves and serves to a greater degree than she. No human heart has been filled with all human emotions as much as hers. She was there, Bethlehem to Calvary. How is it possible to not pray "Hail Mary" everyday at least once to thank God for her place in Creation.

Dear Lord,to know something of your purpose is only possible when supported by your grace. Your Saints in Heaven have completed their Missions but none more so than the Mother of the Church, Theotokos. You have founded your Church for each of us to support the others. May all Saints in heaven join Mary in her never ending pleas for us here on earth and all the souls in holy atonement in Purgatory.

 12/05/2023

Today we read what is the prototype of a Pastoral Letter. James who was leading the Church in Jerusalem was responding to Paul and Barnabas' request for guidance about how to accept the Pagans into the baptised community that was the fledgling Church in Antioch and other cities in Asia Minor. It is interesting that there is nothing Creedal in this first recorded advice to the Baptised. 

I suppose that all of the Jewish "converts"still did not see themselves as anything other than the Chosen People lead out of Egypt by Moses for they had already made the great leap of Faith that was accepting that Jesus' whose preaching and miracles had brought turmoil to their Priests, Scribes and Rabbis and who had been legally crucified for blasphemy had returned to life on the third day of his burial. Many had seen him and it was this fervour of Resurrection belief in Jerusalem that kept on inspiring further conversions.

The letter is a record of how freed from the need to become physically the same as Jews, the Pagan converts were now able to learn how to understand themselves as being united with all the Jewish Baptised Believers. Antioch is where the name "Christian" was first used as the consciousness that the teaching of Christ, repeated by the Apostles, and Supernaturally witnessed by the Resurrection was the beginning of a new and final Covenant.

At the time that St John completed his "memoir"of his life with God the first codices of the Gospels were circulating and St Paul's letters were already taking on the character of divinely inspired Scripture. St John's special mission was to take care of Mary. Mary has been seen as the  obedient heart of the Church. Jesus' humanity is her humanity. Mary's "be it done unto me according to thy word" is the perfect exemplar of how we should all react to whatever God shows to be his mission for us.

John's prayerful remembrances of being in Palestine with Jesus gives us a firm base on which we can build and verify our own Faith for as Mary is Theotokos, so is he the Theologian.

Dear Lord thanks be to you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit for the grace that has dragged me out of the mire of my own making that was my life of sin. I know that I can let your grace into my being and thus can continue to atone for, no matter how I try otherwise, it is only through the intersession of your Mother and all the Saints that I will be able to purge the effects of my sins in Purgatory.

 11/05/2023

Today, in the Acts, we see the "discussions" in Jerusalem concluding with a summary made by Peter, the leader chosen by Jesus, and justified from Scripture by James, who as one of Jesus' "brothers" in the extended family of Mary and Joseph, shared in some of the Charisma of the Risen Lord. James it is who speaks with authority and proclaims his intention to prepare a letter stating the ruling of this Council of Apostles, Priests, Scribes and all "Friends of God" held in Jerusalem, to all the Pagans who were welcoming the Light of Christ into their lives.

The details of the discussion were not "minuted" but must have been, at times heated, as, for the Pharisees, living by the Law meant that life was a ritual with the letter having to be applied meticulously. They shared the Resurrection and Parousia  Faith of the early Church but their old Jewish certainties which had already been shaken by the "Wandering Prophet" of Galilee even before the Resurrection were, as they saw it, still being questioned and rapidly dismantled. They knew that they were Jews the only People to have direct contact with God through Moses, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob their ancestors who had "seen" God.

It is not surprising that some of them went shamefacedly  away as they had done when challenged by Jesus to be the sinless one to cast the first stone at the woman taken in adultery. The families of Christians who also followed the Law of Moses probably died out with the fall of the Temple. As for the "requirements" made of Pagans the only ones that were not already part of the teaching of the Apostles were the rules for slaughtering animals.

Dear Lord, the way that we have to follow during our lives to do your will has been confirmed by Jesus who is the completion of your Law. We have been forgiven and have lost the straightjacket of the Law as known by your Countrymen. I pray for grace to avoid sin not out of pride but out of a sincere love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and understanding of my Mission to know, love and serve. May your Mother lead all her children to eventually become immaculate as she and thus participate in the Divine Life that is the finality of eternity, a joy which surpasses all creation and can be ours only by the grace of God.

 10/05/2023

Each day the reading from the Acts chosen by the Church for the Mass records more of how in the first days of the Church, the divide between Jews and Greek-speaking Pagans was not ignored or papered over but faced openly and discussed but not completely resolved. The Jews are still with us.

In the first days of the Church, the Jews were more aware than ever of how from the time of Abraham they had been chosen by God to be his witnesses on earth. They were his people and he was their God. They could not have been at ease in the company of the former pagans, especially at table for dietary laws and sharing of food were one of the basic marks of belief and witness to that belief. 

At the same time they were now witnesses to the Resurrection as were the former Pagans. The Apostles, all Jews, however knew that this was a fundamental shift in the way God had revealed himself and they  knew that their old Law and Covenant had been fulfilled. IAMIAM had revealed himself even further in the Son begotten not made and with the Holy Spirit completed an unimaginable Trinity. 

During their time with him they had not anticipated the Glory of the Resurrection although they could have interpreted some of his remarks to point towards this. At the Ascension, he had told them that he would return and so everything that they did after this was to fulfill his Mission to spread the Good News and prepare to greet him in this world. There must have been, at the time,of the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the Temple an anguish in the Church as great as that at the Crucifixion for these "signs" did not bring about an immediate Parousia.

 I don't know of any discussion about Temple Sacrifice. It seems that the first joint Liturgy enacted by the Baptised was their meeting together on the Lord's Day to praise God and share bread and wine. The deeply devoted among the Jews who knew that their sanctimoniousness had been condemned by Jesus were still the same human beings before and after the Resurrection and their personal Baptism as were the Pagans. Both parties believed in New Life and expected the Parousia in their lifetimes but the Jews had the rightful claim to being the first receivers of God's revelation and therefore have laws and customs direct from the Father.

Thus it was that dietary laws and Circumcision were fault lines along which the completely new phenomenon in world history, the Baptised Church of the Resurrection, could be rocked and potentially destroyed before it had truly begun. This was resolved by a Council of the whole Church in Jerusalem. The whole of what the Church has grown to be is present in the memories and practice of  those first days in Jerusalem. We have to accept that the unity of the infant Church was of the Holy Spirit and that Conciliar Unity over all the centuries has still to be accepted as God's Providence even until the end of time. 

At the first Council we lost men of integrity who would only agree with themselves and at each subsequent Council even that of Vatican 2  there have been similar results. Is this evidence of the power of the "Prince of this World"?

Dear Lord today I felt drawn to St John's image of the vine but was captured by the the nitty-gritty of how Jews and Gentiles could unite into the Institutional Church that you founded on St Peter. St John's image of pruning can be applied to the Church as Person and to us individuals who can respond to your Evergreater person as created persons infused into unity by your Love. May Mary our Mother continue to pray for Your Grace to be directly injected into the hearts of all Clergy that they may care for us sheep in the same way that you, The Good Shepherd, care for all who know you as you do us as living persons.

 09/05/2023

Jesus was alive with us for about thirty three years. He died in his youth. Of that youth most was spent in obscurity. He taught his disciples for only three years and during that time, as far as we know,  he was close only to his Apostles and to his family in Nazareth and to Lazarus and his sisters in Bethany. It was not a long time in which to build the community that was to become for the whole world the example to follow on Way Truth and Life.

The success of Paul and Barnabas in Lycaonia was soon disrupted by what was becoming an organised resistance to the Good News. Paul was stoned as result of agitation against him but was not killed and was able to move on before returning to "Mission Control" which had moved from Jerusalem to the Antioch that has become Antakya and flattened in the tragedy of the 2023 Earthquake.

I do not know if I have seen the workings of the Holy Spirit in anything other than in my personal existence but the Acts is all about God's Providence. What was it that Paul left behind in these "Churches" when he left them?There was no written New Testament to leave behind. It is truly awe-inspiring how the Word grew in these first communities of Asia Minor. Some 20/30 years later St John could address his Apocalypse to them.

In St John's Gospel today we are reassured that Father Son and Holy Spirit are still with us. I know this in my heart. I have at  times been weak and acted as if there was no love in me but the Holy Spirit has returned me to the Way which helps me know Truth and thus come to Life. This means that I am not blinkered and have to face the reality of the whimpering away of the Church that once filled the world with Faith Hope and Charity. But did it?  Who is the "Prince of this World" and what is his place in God's Providence?

Dear Lord, you know that it is my intention to praise your Glory. I am weak but really do seek pardon and seek to make amends which is impossible without your grace. May Mary and all the Saints continue to pray for the Light of the Truth of your "ever greater" being to flood our world as it did when preached in those first years after the resurrection. The Holy Ghost then came from the brightness of heaven and took possession of our souls. Let it be so again. Maranatha

 08/05/2023

Amongst the vast changes in the world that I have seen in my own lifetime is this one that is  most probably the greatest, "this one" being the screen and keyboard that I am now using. Sixty years ago when I was going to a job in Turkey, I had to go many, many times to the Library to borrow books to learn about that country. Today after reading the passage from the Acts, I wanted to know where Lycaonia was situated and why it had a different language. In two minutes that question was answered.

The mission of Paul and his companions was successful in that they planted the seed, the Good News, throughout  the "whole world" and overcame many hardships and dangers. We are not told that Paul and Barnabas preached to Jews in Lycaonia but the people proclaimed them as Zeus and Hermes in their own language. This could only have happened in a pagan crowd and both Paul and Barnabas were horrified in their fundamental Jewishness to hear these blasphemies and countered them by rushing into the crowd to prove their humanity.

John's account of his remembrances of Jesus' teaching tells us today that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The First General Council of the Universal Church came about to unify the teaching of the various Churches throughout the world.The Parousia had not happened and the fundamental beliefs about the way  to salvation had to be the same not for the sake of "unity" but because there is only Jesus and thus only one Way Truth and Life.

The result of the Council did not suit everybody and some of us knew that what we had learned through, prayer, the scriptures and meditation was closer to the Lord's teaching than what the others were agreeing to preach. Each of us who has ever lived has known what it is to be "right" and so it was that the formulation of the creed enabled us to have different versions of the "Good News" which  were right because that is how "I" interpreted the words of the Creed. Paul warned us about "slogans" and he was right. 

Today Jesus tells us that there are three persons in our God. His Father, Himself and The Holy Spirit. We are weird and wonderful beings who can out of 1,2 3 conjure up divisions, merciless killings large scale raping and looting and talk ourselves into believing that all these sins are doing the will of God because "filioque" is the right/wrong way to understand the totally unknowable Holy Spirit, Son and Father.

Dear Lord you know that my body is not up to much today and that medicines may mess with my brain. Help me keep control of my will that my soul concentrate on you and humbly continues to seek your forgiveness and mercy. May Mary and all the Saints pray that we on earth can truly know that when our hearts are open the Holy Spirit will enter in and then we will know an intimation of heavenly peace here on earth and let us join our prayers to theirs that the penitential punishment of Purgatory will absolve the Holy Souls all of their self justifications of sin on earth which is Satan's greatest ally in his war against our souls..