05/07/2023

Everything that we know and experience in our lives, past, present and future is provided for us by God for it is He who creates each one of us. Abraham is the ancestor of two great nations, not because he deserved to be but solely because he was chosen by God to be so.

God's providence is in each one of us. Each one of us has an effect on all other being both temporal and spiritual. We are known by God and our freedom from predestined intrinsic spiritual limits separates us from all other animals and is God's gift to us. 

God reveals to each individual that He is the Evergreater Spiritual Being and that we, real persons in this real world, have first of all to know that we are created beings who must "bow down" before him and that we have to always curtail our bodily needs to ensure that what we receive of God's Bounty does not deprive other "adopted children of God".

The mass of material wealth and the awe-inspiring understanding of physical matter, the intricacies of human psychology and social and economic relationships accumulated by mankind in response to Divine Providence has pushed Father, Son and Holy Spirit off the stage of our lives when in fact he is still the much more than the central character in the drama of life on earth. Nietzsche and his followers now know that they were wrong.

Jesus purified the "demoniacs". The pigs, lemming-like, destroyed themselves. The towns-folk like our world then and now, satisfied in its bodily life, was afraid. This town of pagans "en masse" implored Jesus to go away. Sometimes it seems that that is what our Church is doing today.

Dear Lord may my thoughts and words be acceptable to you. May my sins be forgiven. May the prayers of Mary and all the saints bring grace to all men and let we sinners on earth unclutter our minds so that we accept your Truth into our lives for you are merciful and full of love that can bring each of us to the joy and peace that is beyond human understanding.

 04/07/2023

Abraham witnessed the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. God had warned him that the vices enjoyed there were a sin intolerable for him. Each of our sins is intolerable for when we do commit sin we do put our self-love before our love of God. Modern scholars are divided in their opinion as to what exactly was the sin of Sodom.

During my lifetime there has been a trend to make excuses, which then become total denials of the ten Commandments, for "sin". This trend has been so successful that there are very few of us left who accept that "pleasuring our bodies" is sinful. Not only is the use of contraceptives encouraged but they are advertised as adding to the pleasure of sex. 

This trivializing of the roles of man and woman in the creation of new bodies to become the ensouled human beings that God wants us to be has resulted in the concept of same sex marriage. It is now a civil offence to fight and to preach against this totally fruitless unnatural abomination.

Afraid of appearing "judgemental" our Bishops even welcome  the organization which by its very name shouts into the face of God its challenge to the Lord the Giver of Life, into their Cathedrals for "Masses of Mercy" and most of them will preach that the sin of Sodom was not lust but "lack of hospitality".

It was for sinners that Jesus became the Sacrament of his Life, Death and Resurrection. Each one of us has to live by supporting our bodies in this world so that we can attain never-ending life. We have no need of sexual satisfaction except that which results in the fruitfulness by which the world is populated. 

We have to live according to the Law of Moses. We have to " walk towards your Truth" on the "Path of perfection". We can do this for the God perceived to shower down fire and brimstone in his persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit showers down Love and Mercy to preserve his faithful in the midst of a sinful world and Holy Church disturbed by the sins of Bishops and their unholy cliques.

 03/07/2023

St Thomas, whose Feast Day is celebrated today, is by tradition the bringer of the Good News to India. If this is true, then he is the first bringer of the Good News into a culture that was basically alien to the civilisations of the Mediterranean Sea. It was a culture that was although polytheistic had a core of believe that connected life on earth to supernatural being which was totally spiritual but impersonal.

Saint Thomas' encounter with the risen Lord is totally person to person. Unlike Mary Magdalen he is invited to touch. He does so and we all have it confirmed that the Resurrection is totally physical in this world but at the same time time something greater, for Christ's body is not confined by the laws of physics.

The first heresies were like St Thomas in his initial refusal  to believe the Resurrection and they chose to teach that Jesus was not only a spirit after the Crucifixion but was not even a human body on the Cross. The Incarnation should have driven such fear and denigration of our bodies out of our human consciousness but it is still there.

There is no matter, especially human flesh, that is created to be sinful. God looked on his creation and saw that it was good. We all have freedom in our beings but it is not in our bodies that freedom exists. No-one is free to be alive without breathing, eating and drinking. Jesus, true man and true God could not have nails pierce his body and a lance thrust into his side without bleeding and wounds being left there.

Some paintings of St Thomas accepting Our Lord's invitation to confirm by touching what his ears had heard and his eyes have now seen, this bodily reality that is our Saviour God can cause us to squirm away from their intense realism, but Father, Son and Holy Spirit want us to know that " the beloved Son in whom I am well pleased"is still with us and still in the flesh he begot from Mary. . 

The only way we can come to the rooms God has prepared for us is to use our freedom to become thankful and obedient in this life and be in our bodies knowing that from the day we are born they begin to decay and  that the inevitable dust and ashes we become have the potential to become like the Resurrection a glorious New Life. 

An impossible dream for mankind but, Jesus is with us so it will happen if we remain true to "Our Father" whom we have not seen but still believe.

Dear Lord I have to thank you for these moments of inspiration which I know to come from you. I am never free from sin and sometimes feel too pleased with myself but with Mary's prayers  I know that  I can face my end without fear. Lord keep me strong in my last days for without your help I know that my best intentions cannot keep me from the primrose path of bodily delights in this world. Let me become by my death the inspiration to others that I have not been in my life.

 02/07/2023

The Church begins her liturgy for today with a call for celebratory joy. It is the joy that is felt by sports fans when their team wins, by parents when we know that our children are well and happy, by the Apostles when they could hold it in their hearts that Jesus is resurrected for ever.

It is joy that we may feel as we put our faith into practice. I say "may" for sometimes our joy in Christ is held back by knowledge of our continued sinfulness and the vagaries of our reactions to Providence, "Why me O Lord?".

Jesus and the Apostles in the New Testament prepare us for all that we can ever have to face in this world where each of us is responsible for the parts we are assigned by Providence. The Shunamite woman shares her wealth, has the great joy of a promised child and, as did Job, she faces the ups and downs of her life without cursing God.

Jesus is preparing us to live our lives in the Providence of this World but without ever losing sight of our Heavenly Father and His Kingdom of Heaven.We all can find joy in our place in life and feel pride at our personal achievements but we must,all of us, be sure that we will leave all the people and things that have become "our life" behind when we receive the inevitable " promotion to Glory" , the Salvation Army's happy euphemism, for death. 

By the providence of God we have all become part of parents' and offsprings' lives and we have to honour and not drive them to resentment if our own life  is to be "alive for God in Christ Jesus". There  is, however, order to life in creation and in obedience to God's will. Each human being must never forget that God is always first before all that we can know and do. The next in rank is the other person, my neighbour whose needs must always come before my own if "I am to love him as I do myself".

This is also true for mother, father, children and all other people too. We all have this cross to bear. We are our brothers' keeper.

Dear Lord help me to live true to what I am, read, think and write. May Mary who is the only created being to have lived exactly as you will for us all to live, lead all the Saints of Heaven in praise of your Being and in supplication for the divine Mercy that is You, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 01/07/2023

Being alive at the time of Abraham meant so many different things in different places and for different people. Abraham  had been given that name by God  thus revealing not only Himself to Abraham but also revealing Abraham to his own personal role in History. 

From the time of Abraham mankind has been able to begin to understand what "life" is all about. Abraham's nomadic life was lived in the deserts of the Middle East which, at that time was one of the regions of the world well populated with urban life, as was China, India, South -East Asia, that had been well organised and is God's Providence for all mankind but which had been unrevealed since the time of the flood and the new beginning from Noah.

Deserts are still empty places on earth and there is a marked absence of trees. Any one who has travelled  off-road through the deserts of the Middle East is aware that any bit of shade at noon to be unoccupied by  herdsmen or other travellers is indeed a rarity. Three travellers are hospitably received by Abraham into the welcoming shade of the Oak at Mamre and God's Providence is revealed as the third beginning for Mankind's life on earth.

The History of the Jewish People is their start stop relationship with God, revelation followed by unrighteousness itself followed by renewal led by Prophets who were inspired by God. Jesus is our final prophet. He himself lived in a far different world than did Abraham but emphasised that God's Law as revealed to Moses and perfected by himself, Son of God, is the way, the truth and the life that will enable each one of us to become the person that is known by Father, Son and Holy Spirit as was Abraham under the Oak at Mamre.

Being alive in the "busyness" of modern times curtails so much of the prayerfulness that Jesus "Could you not watch one hour with me" tells us that is the "better part". I missed my morning meditation yesterday because I was taken up with a dispute about an invoice for a boiler replacement. I don't feel devastated by that but know that I could have been better employed in prayer.

Dear Lord as I grow weaker in body and mind let my soul know that your Love is always here to guide me. Welcoming your Grace into my heart and always being both aware and thankful for the gift of life lived in family love without hardship should be my main concern but often is forgotten. May Mary's prayers bring our Church back to her loving faithfulness that was with you and your disciples as they fulfilled the promises made to Abraham.

 29/06/2023

The people who gathered together to pray, proclaim the resurrection and await the promised return of their friend and teacher whom they now knew to be the Son of God, lived in a situation on earth experienced by nobody before or since those days.

They had witnessed the preaching of Jesus during his public ministry. They had been in awe at the proof of his power over material being. Water had been changed to wine, the blind really did see, the lame did walk and they themselves were the poor to whom the Good  News had been preached. They knew that Lazarus who had begun to rot in the tomb had been brought back to live on and to pray again with them.

Most of all they had seen, touched listened to and eaten with the Crucified Jesus who although retaining in his flesh the holes made by nails and lance was the now gloriously revealed New Life, living Son of God, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit who now filled their beings with grace and the understanding of what had been dimly recognised  during their lifetimes.

The Institutional Church celebrates today the words of Jesus to St. Peter and the Missionary work of St Paul. Neither Simon nor Saul had shown themselves to be potentially great Saints before the Resurrected Lord had spoken to them. 

St Peter who had confirmed his human weakness in the garden, at the trial and on Calvary,  had seen something in the empty tomb and had this confirmed by the later appearances of Christ in the Upper Room and in Galilee. St Paul had originally cast himself,  in his fierce monotheism, as an "Enemy of Christ". God was having none of that and brought him both to his knees and his senses on the road to Damascus.

Thus we have weak human vessels filled with the Holy Spirit, acting in the roles previously reserved for the beauteous Angels as the Messengers of God.

If we can live with these remembrances of the Apostles, recorded by Evangelists, always in our minds we can truly relax in the certainty of the Love that Jesus promises to all mankind until the end of time.

Dear Lord, let my Faith grow strong to resist sinfulness and Let my hope overcome my weakness in the face of sin and let human Love as personified by your Mother become the heart of my soul. Save all thy people, dear Lord and turn us all away from the self-love that corrupts in your Church the "ordained" and non ordained alike.

 28/02/2023

This morning I looked at the readings for St Irenaeus' mass. I wanted to brag to myself that I knew who he was. What I did do was look at the first reading of that mass from St Paul's letter to Timothy. Avoid idle "speculations"!

In today's Gospel for Wednesday Week 12. Jesus is speaking to all of us. Beware false prophets! In her liturgy the Church really does continue Jesus' message into our lifetimes. 

It is how she acts on that message that really bothers and makes me want to cry for the stupid nonsense that Bishops and Priests have perpetrated and then tried to cover up. Don't they know that there is nothing that can be concealed from "Our Father who art in Heaven"? Jesus tells us to call no man "fool" but how are we to refer to those who are reading the Church's texts today and then continue to try to  deceive first themselves and then God.

Abraham received the "Word" in a dream, he didn't  know the origin of "being" by Philosophical speculation but by listening directly to God. Through him the whole of mankind was shaken up by the true God who was ready to accept the sacrifice of physical wealth in animal form as the token of worship, thanks and praise for the Love with which the Being we now know as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, created all that is real.

 The rottenness that disfigures the face of the Institution that the community of friends and disciples of Jesus has become so obvious that I cannot believe that the confected "Eucharist" can be relied on to be the Sacramental Real Presence. The Church's teaching on this which relies on God not requiring holiness on the part of his priests for them to act with him during the Liturgy falls easily, in my opinion, into the category of "idle speculation"and has long been perpetuated  by the "false prophets", who have acquired the vast economic wealth of this world which shackles our Church to the profane. 

Today Jesus himself warns us about the futility of expecting good fruit from a rotten tree. I can hear him and believe the simplicity of his Truth. How can anyone close his ears to the purity and clarity of the Holy Spirit? Can the Father still look on his Church and his creation and "know that it is good".

Dear Lord, my prayer is always that you take back your Church from the "Pharisaical" hordes of Clergy and hangers-on. Let us the simple be bolstered in our Faith rather than mocked by self-centered clergy of all ranks. I pray that I can be a part of the "Spiritual Church of Love" that has always been present despite the malfeasance of clergy and that Mary, John and Irenaeus and all the saints plead for the return to the Church of the Holiness that your hands conferred on the Apostles. You know my sinful state Lord, please help me and all sinners to return to sincerity of Faith, Hope and Charity. Amen!!