02/08/2023

What is this "Kingdom of God" that Jesus always presents to us in parables, metaphors and similies.? Today we have the metal detectorist of his era who when looking around in the vicinity of one of the ancient ruins/burial places, of which there were plenty in Palestine, even at the time of Our Lord, comes across a buried hoard. He doesn't reveal his find to the owner of the field. It must be his! So he raises capital from his present possessions and buys the field without revealing its hidden value.

The acquisition of hidden value is still one of the main activities of the Trading Companies of today. Jesus neither condones nor condemns the basic dishonesty of this practice, acquiring goods at less than their true value, but tells us that we should  emulate the persistence  of the wheelers and dealers seen on Wall Street, the City of London and other bourses and exchanges throughout the world in their search for wealth. Our persistence, however,  should be directed to  the " Kingdom of God" an unshakeable adherence to the revelations of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Why does Jesus make no condemnation of the literal "gold-digger"? Jesus' other parables using wealth as their theme also reflect the complexity of the way worldly wealth continues to grow and provides us with many of our moral conundrums. The present day Vatican is  paralysed by the "Patrimony of St Peter."The Church knows that the worldly riches that have been acquired over centuries, two Millenia, should not  be wasted but caring for them takes the time that should be devoted to "The Kingdom of God". 

Prayer is the primary purpose of each soul here on Earth. The Word, the Incarnate Son of the Father became the ultimate prayer on the Cross of Calvary. His mystical body, the Church could offer herself to become a sacrifice pleasing to God in the only way possible when stuck in the "Eye of the Needle". Divest.Divest.Divest. Give everything away and return to prayer.

Dear Lord, I know that I am responsible for myself. Let me never lose sight of the Angel who has brought to me the Holy Spirit and let the sincerity of these moments remain with me until I face death. May Mary and all the Saints support my words and the prayers of the heart that are a truthful raising of my being to God. Lord have mercy on me.

 01/08/2023

Over the years that I have tried to live in accordance with the teachings of the Church I have never paid much attention to Moses and the wandering people of God. So today, in trying to understand how Joshua could stay in the Tent of Meeting, I have come to realise for the first time that the "wandering" in the desert was not a daily event. They did not wake up each morning, strike camp and move to another location then pitch their tents again. 

Very much like modern day Bedouin they would exhaust the pasture and other resources of a location and then move on. Over time they would come to know fertile places in the desert where they would scatter seed, leaving it to grow  in God's Providence. They would then return to this locality to either harvest this seed or leave it as fodder for their flocks. The people I have met who have grown up in this environment are usually tough as nails and afraid of nothing and nobody. "Self-contained" or "Stiff-necked" is not an inappropriate adjective to use of them but they are never rude.

The crowds who listen to Jesus and at times smother him by their demands and presence are a settled people. Their forefathers were the Israelites of the desert. The tent of meeting had evolved into the Temple and local schools, the synagogues. Jesus was able to teach in these urban locations but his parables are often created to appeal to the folk memory of his listeners.

Jesus has completed his mission as sower of the seed. In addition to sowing us into this world he has also ensured our growth with his blood. He has left us to grow in the fertility of God's Providence with the support of his grace but we do this in freedom and not straitjacketed by predestination as St Augustine avers. The seeds of the parable will, indeed, be unable to change their DNA but the souls that they represent, we on earth, can turn to and away from the Sower, as they will.

Fear of Hell often consumed the being of the child that I was. It has taken a lifetime of sin, repent and sin again to realise that there is nothing to fear about death for it is merely a transition to a bodiless spiritual condition where God is everything. May Mary help me to be welcomed into what she and all the saints know. May my atonement be full and my prayers sincere thus emptying myself of all pride and selfishness.

 31/07/2023

I have never noticed before that the "golden calf" was certainly not an elegant work of art as were the idols that were worshiped as gods and goddesses in Egypt and other nations amongst which the Israelites were to live for the next thousand years. Moses was certainly vexed. Throwing things about along with stamping the foot is still a characteristic of a human who is committed to a certainty that is defied by others. Three notable examples of this tendency in my lifetime are Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin and the millions of other petty tyrants that still fill the world today.

Even allowing for the low melting point of Gold, Aaron would have had to construct a primitive furnace to melt the gold that he collected from the people but the result of "the throwing of the gold into the fire" would have been a misshapen lump of gold that he chose to call a "calf".

The descendants of Adam and Eve who were not blessed by God's direct providence filled the world from East to West. They all tried to make sense of their being and of the vastness of the Cosmos they witnessed in the daily round governed by sun and moon. They created myths to provide an intelligible structure for their awareness of being alone in time and space.

God chose to help one nation to understand "awareness of being". The record of this, the Old Testament, is the history of one people amongst millions. I try to understand the history as as factual as any other written text from the beginning of time. But I try not to judge harshly and where there is a difficulty use the example of Jesus to help me.

Jesus at no time criticised the Scriptures that he read in the Synagogue. He came to complete them. His words are filled with references and direct quotations from the earliest to the latest scrolls He himself speaks to us in parables and we too can use a similar technique to allegorise "Moses and the Prophets".We must not, however, come to believe our own interpretations to the extent that a different interpretation than ours fills us with rage against someone else.. 

We must never forget that in obeying  the first Commandment we have to obey all the others and that Jesus' dying words were a direct quotation from the psalms. God's complete revelation is the Bible. He also promises to be for all time in the Church that has preserved the physical books and the message of the Holy Spirit which informs them with the Love that is Father Son and Holy Spirit.

Dear Lord, help us all whose being is filled with media nonsense that captures our senses and fills our memory excluding the prayer with which we should fill our beings. St Ignatius knew the problem of how to beat the "world" but his first as it were "worker priests" were soon lost to the World they were to tackle head on. May Mary lead all your Saints to the greater glory of God and may this sinful servant know the benefit of their prayers and the grace that you pour out from your side. What a horror, terror, must have filled your humanity for you to cry out; "Eli, Eli Lama Sabachthani" with your dying breath.

 30/07/2023

All humans, all mammals have brain. We know that the brain is coded to control instincts and receive input from the sensors that are our senses. The control that is perceived as actions is encoded in the physical brains. Dog and cat lovers are frequently delighted by the intelligence they see in the eyes and memory of their pets. These animals seem to have an awareness of "being"that mimics our own. 

The development from nothing by God of his creation is recorded as "days" in Genesis and the first humans are welcomed into paradise, the garden.The bodies and their control unit, the brain, are for God a logical development from his first spark of light over millions of earthly time but the only souls, human, are taken from himself images and likenesses of his perfection that receive their "being" at the moment of conception and thus mankind is created body and soul. Both body and soul are God's creation and thus we all have intelligence to encounter our Creator and intelligence to understand how to use our freedom to justify his image and likeness and become  joy to his Being.

God himself told Adam to avoid the fruit that brought with it knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam's freedom allowed him the choice. Solomon prayed for the Wisdom to know the difference. St Paul knows that all the human beings are created to be holy and Jesus confirms that he has broken the power of Satan but also leaves us in the Freedom that was misused as soon as mankind was left alone in the Garden.

Dear Lord you know how the power of "intelligence" has led and still leads many of us away from the "pearl" that is true Wisdom. Let this "purity of  conscience" be fed by your grace and let my soul only know your will and my actions follow your ways to the Good that you are. May, Mary who knows you and your ways better than any of us help us to find our own ways of being with Jesus who is with us to the end of time and let us all in Heaven, in Purgatory and  on Earth make our own prayers and petitions to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

 29/07/2023

The Universe, God's Creation, is spectacular in its vastness of time and space which is a "Big Bang"growing ever-greater. Within this observable creation there is nothing greater or more spectacular than the hybrid body and soul called Man who can look at the Universe and begin to name the stars. 

Mankind in his flesh is the summit of creation but there is something within his body that is greater than the Universe. Each soul is a potentially perfect and everlasting spirit that has been created to know, love and cooperate with the Lord our God and to share His Joy in the "Good" that is creation.

Our body is the reality God has given to each of us to do his will on earth. The stages of Creation, the days of  "Genesis", has within it much to be studied but the peak, the highest form of bodily life is mammalian. We share our bodily structure with all other mammals and with them depend on blood to circulate through our bodies all that keeps us alive.

Abraham understood this. He knew that the Creator had to be acknowledged, and thanked for so great a gift as the vastness of the heavens and the power of being that was contained in his own puny body. He was touched by God's Love and knew the need to respond. He knew that there was nothing that could be given to the Creator that matched the wonder of his life and the depths of the gratitude that he felt.

The renewal of the Covenant that took place on Mt. Sinai had to be sealed by the offering by Mankind of Life in its totality. It was the blood of our fellow mammals, the highest form of earthly life that Moses gave back to IAMIAM for he had revealed to Abraham that he could not accept the sacrifice of a human being.

The Being that is God does not exist in created time. He knew then as he knows now that he himself as Son would give up his own human flesh and blood, begotten of the Virgin Mary and that he would accept it and return it as mercy and our Spiritual Food.

Dear Lord, let my words be found by others for they are the sincerity of my soul. May the prayers of Mary who now understands in its fulness the purpose for which she has been created lead all the Angels and saints in the joyful, never ending moment that is the worship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the moment for which we have all been created.

 28/07/2023

The truth of Scriptures is the Holy Word of God spoken first to Adam in the Garden and confirmed to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, We are all created  in the earthly reality of our being to recognize and praise God. God is portrayed as "jealous". 

He knows and is the only Being that exists of itself . The laws of the Cosmos are the never changing "code"that is integral to and inseparable from all material being. The greatest to smallest distances of time and space can never change. Mankind can observe them and understand how their being is organised but he can never control them.

God shares his being with mankind but limits our freedom within the vastness of the Universe to his will which wants only holiness for his children. He knows that human freedom is capable of great deeds within the Physical Universe but wants us to maintain our souls within the Holiness of Love.

We can do this only by accepting that our bodily and mental acts have to always remain within the limits of Love revealed on Sinai. Within the millions of seconds of earthly life that is our opportunity to know, love and serve, our souls have to know only Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and confirm this Faith by the deeds of our freedom that conform willingly to the will of God as revealed to Moses and fully realised by Jesus of Nazareth, Son of the Father, True God from True God, Begotten not Made, of one being with the Father through whom all things were made.

Jealous? Only that within the Glory of his being not one of us should destroy the rich soil that has been fertilized by the humility of so Glorious and Loving a Creator. God wants us to cling fast to him not because he is "Jealous" of any created being but because of his Love for us he cannot let us destroy our souls that are "Image and Likeness of himself, a Glorious Creation. God is total Mercy.

Dear Lord help me this day to be without sin and let my sorrow for all the sinful waste of your gift of life be sincere and never fading. May Mary whose faultless care of the baby that you were must have filled her soul with a unique Love pray with all Saints that your Loving Mercy break open the crusted top soil that keeps the seeds that you sow from entering so many hearts in this world.

 27/07/2023

"Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from God." The history of the Israelites wanderings is filled with fantastic events that are hard to believe really happened. The whole of the Revelation of the Old Testament consists of events that challenge belief. During his preparation in the desert Jesus answered the temptation to change stones into bread using the quotation from the Old Testament that immediately came into my mind when I was confronted with the First Reading of today's mass.

How can it be that the "People of God" could ever backslide after witnessing the Revelation on Mt Sinai?How could they ever lose sight of God who has never completely withdrawn his care, his "targeted providence" from them? 

The New Testament is the commentary on the completion by the Word of the events known in the Beginning. It is too short to be a "live broadcast" Jesus, the Word of God is with us and is welcomed first by Mary who accepted the message of an Angel. God is something greater than Spirit but has his Providence enacted by Angels and Humans and gives each individual Human the freedom to accept or deny his revealed will for us.

So, why do I struggle to believe the Thunder, Clouds and Lightening of Mount Sinai? I have no trouble in accepting and believing without quibble the record of  conception, the miracles of his life, death in torment and Resurrection of the Son that is the New Testament, the record of events much more beyond human understanding than those of the Old. Could it be that Jesus' message is directed to each little one of us and need not be filtered by a Worldly human institution be it Nation or Church?

Dear Lord you know that I am troubled in my heart by the fear of arriving at the end of this life consumed with fear, the result of guilt. May I be accepted into your mercy and allowed to suffer here or in Purgatory as penance for all the sins that I have committed during my life. May Mary lead all of Heaven in prayer for your Mercy to be shown to and accepted by all the struggling souls on earth and may all sinners and Holy Souls be truly penitent and know that you are our God.