12/07/2023

Today I am struggling to find how to begin this reflection on the mass readings. But that is not important. The reason why I am doing this is what is important, not its results. I am trying to become honest in the sight of God. 

The Old Testament is witness to God's Providential care of his chosen people and I am, as usual, upset by the favouritism which God  displays to the Jews and to some individuals amongst them. I can't begin to think what this favouritism has meant to the millions of other created souls which have not received this free gift from the Father.

There is always something greater than what we read, see or experience in our present lives. For my own part, I cannot understand why I have not been obliterated for my being has always been corrupted by sin and yet I am now sitting happily reading what is coming on to the screen from my heart via my fingertips, keyboard and CPU.

These moments where I face my woefully inaccurate perception of God is my place in the Universe and God's gift 12/07/2023. I am 82 years of experience of human life and hope for nothing more in this world than a painless and dignified end to life. 

I am still able, thank God, to strive to understand all that God has revealed via his Apostles, Saints and most of all by the being, words and deeds of "my beloved Son with whom IAM well pleased." It is this ambition that enables me to type "happily" and find joy in every word that comes from the Father .

Dear Lord let me become the man that you created me to be and let our Mother and all the saints join me  in my plea for forgiveness and mercy. Let me receive the Holy Spirit and follow your guidance in these my last days on earth.

 11/07/2023

St Benedict tried to live his life in a literal adherence to the words of Jesus. He was not the first to try and he will not be the last. The abandonment of all mundane ties that are God's gift in his providence to all of us is no easy matter for they have come to us from God. It is still you, me, St Peter and all the Saints who make that decision. Very few of those individuals who make the right choice are chosen.

Jesus is not a hard taskmaster. He told us in Sunday's Gospel that his "yoke is easy and his burden is light". Peter pleads for some recognition for himself and his fellow disciples. Jesus again emphasises that he is revealing to us the Kingdom of Heaven. There is no Kingdom of God on earth. We live in God's Providence but we, each of us, have to answer that direct connection that Father, Son and Holy Spirit makes to us.

"He keeps his help for honest men, He is the shield of those whose ways are honourable". The solidarity of humanity, the Communion of Saints, the True Presence of Christ founded by Jesus on earth very soon slipped to become  the Mundane Power of the Papacy and it has degenerated further ever since. St Benedict tried to reestablish the direct contact that the Apostles had with Jesus.

His prayer filled community was not founded to do all the wonderful human things for which his Order is rightly renowned and praised. St Benedict, St Anthony, the Little Flower and all the Saints throughout their lives on earth refused to become enmeshed by their family, institutional Church, or Nation and so  are now part of the Kingdom of God that is not of this world.

Dear Lord help me to live another day without sin. Keep the ordained members of your Church free from sin so that we sinners have confidence that the Sacraments they administer are truly your Real presence on earth. May the prayers of Mary and all the saints unite to bring your Mercy to all us sinners on Earth and those Holy Souls thankfully awaiting your pardon in Purgatory.

 10/07/2023

Throughout recorded time God has captured the being of some individuals. They have become, body and soul, tied to the the Lord and have consequently received great gifts from God's providence. Such are the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets. There are some saints who also had this direct line from God and shone in this world with God's love.

Jacob saw in his dream/vision a constant traffic of angels between heaven and earth. He accepted the truth of what he had seen and named the rock on which he had rested his head, House of God, Bethel. He also named the place Gate to Heaven but there is no mention of Heaven as being the destination with God that is the purpose of our lives.

Jesus comes to fulfill the Law not to change it. He constantly stresses that his Kingdom is not of this world. The genealogies with which Mark and Luke begin their memoirs of  their lives with Jesus emphasise the continuity of God's revelation. Every human being is a descendant of the created Adam and Eve. We are all born with their sin and saved by the Will of the Father through the suffering of the eternally begotten Son whose bodily being can be traced back to, Adam. 

At a religious gathering some time ago I remember a now Archbishop saying that the Church we have got today is what God wants his Church to be. It is God's Providence that allows the whole of creation to be as it is. The Bishop was being clever along the lines of another prelate's reported "we don't do religion". 

I have never had dreams of angels. I can be as cynically "clever" as our witty and worldly prelates but I do know that Jesus was never "clever"or cynical and that he, together with Father and Holy Spirit, have trusted us to live lives of holiness and that yet again we are proved by our own sins and  the deeds of men who have been called to feed us sheep, unworthy of that trust. 

Dear Lord may my soul be undamaged by sin, my heart be turned only to you and my will focused on doing only your will.  Save thy people from unholy Clerics and let the bounteous results of Mary's, together with all the saints, prayers bring the change that is needed if your Church is to be your real presence on earth.

 09/07/2023

In trying to live the rest of my life in harmony with the teachings of Jesus and guided by the accrued wisdom that is in the readings from Scripture chosen by the Church to be part of the Liturgy, sometimes I realise how very little I know. The reading from Zechariah is obviously chosen as it can be read as an anticipation of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.The scholars call this type of reference to Jesus found in the Old Testament a "type". But I know nothing about the times and the prophet himself.

St Paul is himself. His conversion is not a "type"; it is the real thing. He is a living person who has had the anointed King whose kingdom is not of this world, Jesus the Messiah thrust into his very being.  God's Kingdom is not part of our physical universe. Our physical bodies are programmed by our instincts. Christ has brought the Holy Spirit into our lives and now our souls are supported directly by God. It is this Spiritual Self that should direct our lives, overcoming our instincts if they lead us away from the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Jesus is also not a "type" but the real thing. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. IAMIAM. His body is not created but begotten in the same way as all other bodies except that Theotokos, Mary, was herself eternally protected from original sin. The fulness of God's Being is unknowable but for us who come to him with the weakness and trust of a toddler for his/her mother he is always Our Father who has "compassion for all of his creatures" for "he is gentle and humble in heart". 

Dear Lord may I be sustained throughout this day in Hope, Faith and Charity. May I become able to genuinely put all my trust in you. May all sinners accept the mercy which you offer to all mankind. May these prayers be added to those of Mary and all the Saints that forgiveness which never can be earned by our own efforts fall like St Therese' "roses" from heaven with the Mercy that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

08/07/2023

Today's reading presents us with a stark choice. Do we accept Jacob's deception of his aged father as justified in the eyes of God or is it on a par with Adam's sin, another disobedience to add to the pain of Calvary that is endured to enable sinful man to return to the arms of the Father?

A Latin phrase from the Easter Vigil that has stayed in my mind since I was an altar-boy is "felix culpa". The magnitude of the Incarnation, the Choice by God to take on flesh and become true man, begotten not made is a result of sin brought into creation by Adam and this "sin" is fortunate for us because we now have the opportunity to live our lives freed from sin by choosing to live in the grace of God, which so much greater than man's disobedience.

The first sin of Adam is from that time forward stamped on the beings of all of us. Jacob's life even with the "blessing" he stole is still lived in God's providence with the constant need to obey or disobey; to chose life or death. Isaac's "blessing" is a prayer of hope to God, it is not a "coded program" to predetermine life.

God has truly blessed us with the ability to determine objective right from wrong. Many of us, however,  have become gods to ourselves and claim as our own the right to decide on the sole basis of  personal choice. "My body my choice" is their unthinking rebuff into the face of the Crucified Christ.

The disciples of John asked Jesus about "fasting". Jesus' objective answer is that there is no need for sorrow for his disciples are with him, he is the new wineskin that is Father Son and Holy Spirit. The Mystical Body of Christ is the loving unity of all comrades in belief. Some of us are known to each other in the living world, some are known with Mary and all the Saints, but all of us, including the Holy Souls are known intimately by our loving Father who art in heaven. 

Dear Lord, let me hold fast to what is being revealed to me by my prayer. May I be steadfast in my Faith, Hope and Charity and may my prayers be joined with those of your Mother and all the Saints in Heaven. Let your Mercy flow over the Holy Souls and let me too experience total regret for sin that true awareness of your forgiveness brings.

 07/07/2023

Jesus found the world as it was 2000 years ago. He was born as one of the people who had lived with the awareness of God that had been revealed to the Patriarchs and to the Prophets; the prayerful awareness of God that was recorded in the Psalms and the other books of the Old Testament.

It was their awareness of God that prompted the Pharisees to complain about Our Lord's willingness to accept all sorts of people into his company. Jesus is God's last direct intervention into his creation. He is God's Love. He reveals that God is still with us; that sinners can repent and turn to him. He shows to the Pharisees that God is greater than their "Law". He shows them that purity in the heart is more important than the ritual purity they meticulously seek and complain about the lack thereof in others.

Jesus' words in response to the complaint about his table companions prompted me to ask myself; "who are the "virtuous" that Jesus does not need to call ? Were they the priests and regulators of the Temple, the biblical scholars who taught in the Synagogues, the clique that organised the Crucifixion?

The Sacrifice of the Temple was based on the revelation to Abraham that for a man, puny and helpless in the face of the Universe, to make an attempt to thank the unknown creator of the  wonders, in which he knew himself to be a tiny part, by a gift from his possessions was an acceptable act of worship by one "being" in response to his awareness of the "greater being" which surrounded him.

The Good Shepherd knows his sheep and his sheep know him. Jesus knows the virtuous and they know him. There have always been virtuous human beings in the World. God was pleased with all his creation at the moment created time began. 

The virtuous in the gathering in Mathew's Custom house knew and welcomed Jesus with the awe and hope his deeds had inspired. and they attributed the virtue that they could sense in his person to the presence of God. Some of these even wore phylacteries.

Dear Lord let me know you, love you and serve you this day. Let me truly repent for my sins. May Mary help me pray without self-consciousness and pride and let my penitence for past sins bear some grace for the Holy Souls among which there are some of the dead whom were known to me in their lifetimes. Let me accept all that I may meet in your Providence. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

 06/07/2023

I do not know the Liturgical Calendar of the Church at all well, so was surprised by today's reading from Genesis. It seems that the story of Abraham and Isaac was used not very long ago. I  commented then  that there is a trend to interpret the the recorded experiences of the Patriarchs as allegories to shape our behaviour and our beliefs. "Don't ever teach your children that God ordered Abraham to kill his own son" thundered one priest that I remember. I can't remember what he preached on Good Friday.

"God will provide the lamb" is Abraham's reply to his beloved but terrified son. On the blackest of nights the world has ever known, the true lamb, also in  a fit of terror, pleads that the horrors that are to be perpetrated upon him be taken away. He also knew then that the Providence of the Father, Abba, is the reality of living as a begotten not made "beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." and he prepares himself for what is to come with the perfect alignment of wills that is the Incarnation.

In his everyday teaching Jesus knew that there was a huge opposition in the persons of the scribes and pharisees. Our Evangelists don't give the organised religious practitioners of their times a very good press but  we must always bear it in mind that the named and unnamed characters who harried our Lord to his death on Calvary, were all human beings and it is to find a way to pardon all of our sins, theirs and ours, that Jesus suffered and died. 

All of the evil being created by man in the Middle East and in the rest of our world today is the result of all sin that was brought into the Garden by the one sin of AdamEve. "Our God provides" but it is up to us to use the gift of freedom wisely and within his boundaries. We pray "thy will be done" and then choose to be sinful rather than wise, Death rather than Life-Eternal. 

Dear Lord each of us has the soul created by you to be part of your Kingdom. Our bodies too are to be resurrected. Mary and all your saints who worship you in heaven pray continually for your grace to shower down on us all on earth and in Purgatory. May this "today" be sinless for me and let my soul be protected by the power of your grace. I pray as always in the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.