02/09/2023

There are some beautiful images in all the psalms. Today the rivers clap their hands, the hills ring out their joy for in creation we can know something of the Majestic Glory of God. People rejoice and give thanks for the salvation from sin that comes to us from accepting God as our "ruler"on Earth. 

The psalmist sings of the the Covenants of the Old Testament. The prophets of the Old Testament had to continually remind the Chosen People of the need to always remember that they had to praise God by obeying his commands with joyful thanks. 

St Paul knows that the Thessalonians have learnt to live in peace with each other directly from Father, Son and Holy Spirit for he is teaching and writing in the first years of the world that has been redeemed by the Incarnation. God has chosen to become man, to share our life and death and to reveal the Glory to come by his Resurrection. He has walked with and taught his disciples.

First of all, Jesus taught by example. He is the perfect man and we should strive to imitate him. It seems to be an impossible task but our Saints both men, women and children have stretched their humanity to the limits, as did he, in devotion to God. Jesus also taught directly. Sometimes, he would capture their imaginations with a story and his listeners would interpret the message for themselves or sometimes the Apostles would ask him for an explanation.

For me, today's parable falls into the category of "hard sayings of Jesus" i.e. a category that seems to be contradictory to the Gospel and thus not easy to understand. I have, for example, been able to be at ease  with "I come to bring a sword"which does seem to contradict "peace I bring to you", but today it seems that the third servant is condemned  for feeling and being powerless before God. That is indeed a "hard saying".

Dear Lord, you know I keep on trying. I bumble along but sometimes trip over a boulder that I should try to move around. Please give me the grace to understand your teaching and the sincerity to imitate your life. May Mary and all the Saints, who must have sometimes misunderstood your word's, pray that all sinners on Earth accept your mercy with the gratitude and never to be doubted sincerity of repentance of the Holy Souls in Purgatory.

 01/09/2023

Jesus left us many parables. They all have the same basic message that we should live our earthly lives in holiness to be ready for their end. The foolish virgins locked themselves out of heaven because they were not prudent. Prudence is being wise before the event. God's incarnate life, teaching, passion death and Resurrection was to give us the grace that is the fuel of faith needed to keep our souls alight ready to welcome the "bridegroom".

St Paul accepted that straight forward message in the revelation of  the Resurrection made to him on the road to Damascus. St Paul makes it clear that holiness cannot come from "fornication". Many Western anti-God formerly Christians condemn the teaching of St Paul and there are some "foolish fornicators"who claim that our God commends their vices because they are doing them with what they call love. They mock all who do not join them in their sexual practices and also they mock the consciences that try to break free of habitual sin.

Science has broken the link between procreation and sexual pleasure. The human fruitfulness that is God's gift to us is denied. Conception is prevented but if this measure is unsuccessful the unwanted child is killed. We claim that life in the modern world is different than it was in the Palestine of Jesus. Saying this is no more meaningful than saying that today is not yesterday for the nature of mankind has not changed.

In my life time, I have sometimes actively pandered to my own lust and at others I have been ambushed into fornication. I do know though, that I could have avoided each sin and that without the mercy of God I have not won a place for myself even in Purgatory.

Dear Lord, guide with your grace the true repentance that is the only essential for your Mercy to overcome the sins that have ruined my soul. May Mary and the Saints in Heaven cherish your grace and plead for us sinners on Earth and in Purgatory. May my sins be forgiven but not forgotten as I continue my way through this life. Amen

 31/08/2023

What is it about the Thessalonians that so pleases St Paul.? He must have spent some time with them and got to know the individuals who listened to his teaching to become the Church, the Body of Christ, in Thessalonica . What is it that they received from him to grow their own community of faithful servant-friends of God and make him thank God for their faith?

Paul had studied the Scriptures and knew the intricacies of the devotion of the Pharisees. We can be sure that he did not burden them with this "law". God is never changing so we can be sure that the Holy Spirit was no stronger then than now. 

Paul had been literally blinded by the Resurrection and was possessed by the Holy Spirit to do the will of the Father. He was an extension of Christ, preaching the same Gospel as Jesus. He was a learned man but his teaching was unmarred by any human thinking. He was the same Paul, preaching the same message who had been received much less successfully down the road at Philippi.

God has created us all to be free beings. We are in his image and likeness. Our bodies are limited in the same ways that all animals are but our minds and souls are free to choose how we will live out that life which is a free gift from God. In those Gospel times Jesus walked on earth and completed God's will for mankind but he did not force anyone to obey him. 

Jesus told us that there is a place for all of us in the glory of his "Father's House"but equally warned us that there are limits to the "free gift". The first Church of Thessalonica chose to respond positively to the Good News. The Philippians were less positive. Today we humans are conquering space, defeating the causes of disease but what good can come to anyone of us if we do not guard our most precious possession. Jesus warns us that the burglars are prowling all around us. May we all be warned.

Dear Lord, Please help me in the daily task of being watchful and awake to the dangers the comforts of our world bring to some of us, may the less fortunate be aware that the sorrows of this world will also pass away as do the riches. May Mary and all the saints implore thy mercy on all this world so that rich in their pride and poor in their misery know that God will ensure a just eternal outcome for us all. For rich or poor we all have the freedom to know or reject you. May your grace ensure that we are all true to you. May the drowning migrant and the dying pampered billionaire accept the grace you offered  to the repentant thief. Help me to become deeds not empty words.

 30/08/2023

The First and Second Readings  for this morning are both from the New Testament. They are held together by the O.T. Psalm that sings in praise of the "Ever Greater". The Psalmist rejoices that everything is entirely known by our God. Everything!

St Paul speaks directly to his converts and reminds them and, thus all Pastors, that he laboured to bring the Good News to them. While he was with them he worked to support himself and acted as does a father diligently caring for each of his family. Paul praises God for the way in which the Thessalonians reacted to his message. It seems that he did not have the trouble with them that he had experienced at his previous stop along the road.

Jesus again warns us to beware of hypocrisy. Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God praised by the Psalmist knows everything. He knows us better than we can ever know ourselves. Everyday I have to try to confront my own being which includes everything I have ever done and includes the present moment. 

Today the Church remembers three Martyrs of England. They were killed by the State for refusing to acknowledge the State-Sponsored Church. 

I can only ask and pray that each Mass-celebrant in England today compares his own self with Margaret Clitheroe, Ann Ward and Ann Line and give an honest answer to "Do I believe and trust in Father, Son and Holy Spirit as did they? Do I love and respect the Church as they did? Do I live and preach as did St Paul?"

Dear Lord, you know what I am and how I try to live according to your will. I fail because of my own faults. Your Church has to first worship you in truth and then guide sinners along the way to truth and eternal life. Let her free herself from the World and Mammon and with the humility of St Paul truly care for sinners in this world by being seamlessly united with Mary and all the Saints and Martyrs who in heaven make one Church, (the Mystical Body),with the repentant in Purgatory and with us who are still striving here on Earth.

 29/08/2023

St Paul covered hundreds of miles to spread the Good News of the Resurrection and hundreds more were covered when the letters were circulated among recipients. He tells us all that he is doing God's work and that there is nothing he is seeking for himself. There is no way of understanding his life except to see him as a messenger filled with the Holy Spirit, Father and Son. He himself tells us that we too can/should be filled with Christ.

About twenty five years before St Paul wrote to the Thessalonians the events recorded in today's Gospel took place in Herod's palace. Some scholars of recent times have tried to explain Jesus as a "revolutionary". This was also a common view of their Messiah Rabbi by many of the disciples. This is simply not correct for Jesus' Kingdom is still "not of this world". 

Jesus' reaction to the death of John was to go into the wilderness away from the crowds who would certainly have focussed on him to protest Herod's injustice. Jesus knew that "his time had not yet come". It seems to me that for the thirty three years and nine months that the Jesus was on Earth he had chosen to empty himself and acted on earth only as "True man". He was still truly God as Father Son and Holy Spirit. 

His was the perfect sinless being of humanity that Adam had broken and acted as such throughout his life. St Paul had seen the Glorious being of the Resurrection and had through that inspiration become  able to  continue to spread the story of  Christ's Love, which he had learned from the Apostles, throughout the Empire that had crucified, as it was written, the "King of the Jews".

Dear Lord you know how I become confused by too many thoughts. Help me catch hold of the thread that can connect me to your will and thus live a life without sin or fear. May Mary and all the saints continue by their prayers to open mine and all the other hearts of sinners in this world that we may be able to accept the free gift of God's mercy.

 28/08/2023

I don't know where St Paul was when he wrote  this letter, but I do know that he was somewhere in the Roman Empire. Caesar's realm made it "easyish" for God's Good News, the Resurrection, to be spread as quickly as it was.

I do know, however, that Paul had not anticipated that this is what he would be doing when first he became a student of the scriptures under Rabbi Hillel. None of the Apostles had any idea of what was going to happen to themselves and to the whole world when first they met Jesus.

Jesus and his Church completely changed how we live our lives as individuals and in communities for ever. He explicitly taught that God cares for each one of his creation. He taught that we are all free in our being and can freely respond to God's Love. He taught that although we are responsible for our own lives, Father Son and Holy Spirit will never forget to strengthen us with Love.  It was he who taught that after our life has been lived we will be judged and continue to be ourselves in a New Life of perfect happiness or pain.

In the Gospel Jesus continues to condemn the hypocrisy that is evident in Temple Worship. The Temple in Jerusalem was no different from the hundreds of other vast structures the remains of which can still be visited around the Middle East. All temples had twin purposes they served a religious cult and they protected wealth. There could never be pure worship of God in the Temple of Jerusalem for that space was shared with Mammon. It was a "Central Bank".

Jesus' radical challenge to each of us is mirrored in his open challenge to the Temple then, and to the Church of our day. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's". Our Church was already going in a wrong direction that led to Caeseropapism, the Crusades, the Papal States and Holy Russia  by the time St Augustine was converted.

Dear Lord, help me to live with my mind firmly fixed on virtue and with the safeguard of your grace avoid the self congratulations that have disguised sins of my past. Help my picture of the past be close to the reality you knew on earth and let the prayers of Mary and all the Saints bring your free gift of Love into my heart to be shared with all sinful souls on Earth and with the contrite in Purgatory.

 27/08/2023

Yesterday, I was reading about the civilizations that evolved in the Middle East. There are millions of surviving clay tablets that are the records of the business dealings of those days. I was amazed that the cuneiform writing inscribed into wet clay could be deciphered and that I could read the "bank account" details of another human who had died four thousand years before I was born. 

These and similar records from Egypt, India and the Far East tell us of the long history of man before Jesus was born.  Ur of the Chaldees had been a Sumerian city for hundreds of years before God's revelation to Abraham. 

I thus have to include within my belief in Father, Son and Holy Ghost, questions about the fate of millions of souls created, as we are, in the Love of God, who have died before the biblical record of revelation begins. 

I am truly disturbed by the thought that God would have created souls whose "being" was only to be damned. Such a "being" could never have the "freedom" which is part of our image and likeness to the Creator nor receive the grace of the Resurrection which is eternally for all.

St Paul, who was similarly disturbed by the idea that any of the chosen people would lose their souls, tells us today "It is impossible to penetrate God's motives and interpret his methods" and he asks"Who could ever know the mind of the Lord?" We can only agree with St Paul and accept Jesus' commissioning of St Peter for " All that exists comes from him; all is for him and to him . To him be glory for ever." Amen.

Dear Lord I cannot hide anything from you. You reveal to me what I need to be able to care for the soul that is my image and likeness of you. I do not see myself as outside of the community you founded on St Peter and know that the true heart of your Church was at the foot of the cross waiting for your corpse to be put into her arms. May Mary and all the Saints support the Church invisible which has been forced out by the worldly corruption within  your foundation on St Peter.