13/09/2023

There would be nothing bad have ever happened to us as individuals, families, communities or states if we all had lived in God's Providence following the rules he has revealed as Son to us.

Jesus is the Son of God. He is the perfection of Humanity. He is how we all should be. He lived in this world for thirty-three years without his Godhead. He was subject to the laws of human nature just as we are. He did resist the same temptations that assail us. The perfect prayer of the perfect man was answered by God and thus his followers witnessed miracles. He has known from all eternity his place in creation. When alive as man and subject to worldly time his human self "dreaded his hour to come". At his death he cried out the fear that all mankind has in the helplessness of death.

St Paul preaches "Christ". The  Glory of the Resurrection had blinded Saul on his way to confront the dissension caused in the Synagogues of Damascus by followers of Jesus who claimed that he had been resurrected and that all who followed "The Way" would also pass through death to life. They taught that Jesus' "Way" superseded "the Law of Moses"and therefore he, Saul, would stop them even as he had witnessed in Jerusalem. But God stopped Saul and Paul has been captured for ever by Christ. 

The temptations listed by Paul are part of being human. They are the part of God's Providence that we pray to avoid through the power of prayer as did Jesus in the desert. Most of our lives now are lived in a desert of temptation and we it is hard to feel blessed if we think about the state of our world, our country and our Church. 

The first Christians suffered and died for their witness to Christ. Today our Church is denounced as criminal not because of its teaching but because of its "Pharisee-like" hypocrisy in failing to follow that teaching.

Jesus' eyes are still fixed upon us. Father Son and Holy Spirit never change in the Love they lavish upon us. When we place ourselves unflinchingly honest in the sight of God the blessings promised by Jesus are ours and the grace to stay true to our vocation will bring us to peace of mind in this life and the wonders to come that are beyond all imaginings.

Dear Lord, there is nothing that you do not know about me and about your creation. You know that the only thing I want for myself is to become as Jesus, sinless and devoted to you. I regret ever having succumbed to the temptations that I have encountered in life and pray that I may have a "good death". May Mary, the only sinless natural human continue to lead the worship of all the angels and saints and may her prayers make open the gates of heaven for all repentant sinners on Earth and those paying the price for their sins in Purgatory.

 12/09/2023

When we are taught something new our teachers have to make use of images of what we do know so that we remember the new in its differences from the old. 

Today St Paul makes us think of Baptism as a complete stripping away of all flesh. He compares it to circumcision. Before Baptism we were guided in our lives only by our  bodily needs but the spiritual cleansing that is Baptism by Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a sinless new beginning. 

The earliest Christians had first been instructed in Faith and then Baptised. Most of us were baptised as infants and we have had to devote our lives to the Church in which we, by the providence of God, find ourselves. Later Church members would conceive of our births as a predetermining act by God. This of course resulted in the "empty second hand, rational philosophy based on the principles of this world instead of on Christ." that St Paul warns us against.

Paul is writing to educated people of the first century. He is teaching them, and us, how to complete their lives in this world to be accepted into the Resurrection which is Christ's gift to the whole world. When he speaks of "debts" our Christian formed understanding thinks "sin". But in the time of the Roman Empire "debt" would have been understood as the crippling burden of financial debt endured by most citizens.

The "triumphant procession" would not have been just the figurative language it seems to us  but was a reference to the celebratory, triumphant displays of rulers slaves and bounty granted by Rome to its victorious generals and their legions. It is more than possible that Paul and some of his readers had witnessed  Claudius' Triumph to celebrate his successful invasion of Britain.

All of the above happened in the "real time" that is past for us. For the timelessness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit everything is still as Now.  St Paul, the Colossians, Claudius were real people of those times. They are all known to God as each one of us is today. The billions of us who have lived since then have all had the same freedom to choose to follow or not the path to Blessedness that Jesus began for us with his choosing of the twelve who were to be with him throughout the years of his earthly ministry.

 Individuals 

I believe that God knows me exactly for what I am. I also believe that  billions of others  are known by God in exactly the same way as I am known. 

I am known by God as body and soul. Body a product of natural creation in the same way as all mammals. Soul with a similarity to God himself is an individual new creation at the moment of conception. A free Spirit within the reality of  creation but with a necessity to self-control into containment within the will of God.

I know God as the Evergreater revelation of himself through the Bible, Old and New and through the Apostles who continued his revelation and who tried to respond to the mystery that captured their hearts and minds 2000 years ago in Palestine. They who saw the resurrected Lord had also seen his corpse bleeding out on the cross.

I loved the Church, in its liturgy, its prayers, its teaching until I was shocked by the immorality and abuse that had been skilfully and wilfully hidden from view in my lifetime by all levels of the Church.The history of past corruptions I had dismissed as unbelievable exaggerations or fabrications.

Now I realise that since the time she started to clothe herself in the physical trappings of the Roman Empire, there has never been a time that she has been what she claimed to be. Christ's Body on Earth.

"My Kingdom is not of this World." leaves no room for misunderstanding. God's Providence in the reality in which we live has to be judged by the revelations made by the the Prophets, by Jesus' life on Earth, his death and Resurrection. There is no room nor reason for Mammon in Jesus' Church. 

As soon as donations were received they should have been redistributed to the suffering poor. St Paul did this but it was a practice that soon disappeared and the result was our Worldly Church today which is more concerned with the administration of what they call the Patrimony of St Peter, who had no such thing to bequest, than in being true to God and the Kingdom of Heaven.

 It was not intended that the lifetime of Christians was to be spent in the maintenance of the hedonistic lifestyles of priests and prelates and of the beautiful buildings built with the best of intentions to praise God. God, who is the creator of all has no need of man-made beauty and is mocked in St Peter's in  Rome by those who mar our souls by sin and help to destroy nature by their addiction to wealth..

Some years ago I read that the English Cardinal with all the names who was more fond of the "great and the good" than he was of his own flock, and who spoke with an Irish brogue acquired from Reading and Bath had "hidden" one of  his "abuser priests" in a Confessional at London Airport. I had confessed at both Heathrow and Gatwick and was disturbed by wondering that I had missed the grace of Absolution. I had been sincere but what about the charlatan to whom I had confessed? And what about his superior who had placed him where he had?

The Church's position on the validity of Sacraments is very clear. Jesus is the one who produces the ontological change, the priest has to use the correct words and material and have the right intentions. I have engaged in many fruitless conversations on the web in connection with this. At the moment it cannot be denied that the Church's advice to her priest is "Go through the motions" and don't even respond to the concerns of parishioners. Of course the direct reply is disguised in Latin. For some that is enough to make it truthful.

How can a priest have right intentions when he consecrates, if he intends to distribute communion to those whom he and the rest of the congregation know are living together without the benefit of matrimony. This is happening every week in Catholic Churches in England. Our Bishops are for ever collaborating with an organisation which rather than express repentance wears "its sins with pride". 

How it can be that Our Lord in heaven will co-operate with a sinful abuser-priest to confect valid sacraments is still for me an unsatisfactorily answered question. God cannot tell lies. Not so our Bishops, Not so!

 11/09/2023

In today's Gospel Jesus anticipates the probing by the Pharisees that he knows is surely to follow his words. Jesus is the perfect man and has emptied himself of the power of God. As a perfect human with a perfect intelligence he already knew that he had caused the Pharisees to be concerned. The man Jesus knew that today was no different and that the leaders of the congregation would be waiting for an opportunity to challenge him. He did not have to be God to answer the challenge made to his teaching by Synagogue and Temple.

Jesus teaches us how to pray. His whole life is the perfect prayer to the Father. In our midst for thirty three years during the Empire of Augustus and Tiberius he became a part of the Providence of God as a true man. Man does not have the ability to change the reality of the moment in which he is living, but God does.

 All Jesus' miracles are the work of Father Son and Holy Spirit who answers the perfect prayer of the perfect man. Jesus tells us that we too have the ability to move mountains if we have perfect faith in God and proves this by the "wonders that he wrought and indeed we are glad".

For centuries the people of Colossae had been living in a well developed culture but were always close to the chaos of war. In many ways they were as we are today. They had "heard it all before". They were people whose forefathers  had seen Alexander and before him Darius. They lived surrounded by the wonders of nature. The petrified waterfall of Pamukkale is close by. There were also among them  descendants of Jewish prisoners transported there from Babylon three hundred years before.

We do not know by whom the Word was brought to them but St Paul treats them as true believers who will understand the secret, the Mystery that is Christ present "when two or three are gathered in my name". They know as well as we do that we can only be bound together in the Holiness of God by that Love which pours out of the heart of Christ Crucified and covers us with living Mercy which to preserve we must share with the whole world. That is the open secret spread by Paul.

Dear Lord, forgive me my sins and let my whole being be open to receive thy grace. Humanity is all one in your eyes but you know each soul who lives or has ever lived on Earth. May Mary who may have known in Ephesus Colossians and neighbouring Laodiceans lead all Saints in praise of the Glory of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and let us all be sure that Jesus assures us that our true happiness is not to be found in this World.

 10/09/2023

There are only a few words in today's Mass readings. They answer the question of the rich young man. "How can I enter the Kingdom of Heaven?" 

Ezekiel tells us that we do have responsibility for our brother's behaviour. God reveals through him that when we see sinful behaviour we must warn the perpetrator face to face. If that fails then do the same before witnesses. If we do not comply with these instructions, God will hold us responsible for the other's misdeeds.

St Paul warns us about the dangers of debt. Thousands of people in his day were living lives crippled by debt. Jesus' only act of violence was to overturn the benches of the money changers in the Temple. The Pharisees in the spirit of today's first reading condemned him for associating with "Publicans"the last layer of the corruption that was Caesar's system of squeezing money out his conquests.

A popular "anthem" of my youth and sung by another Paul and his mates, is absolutely true. All we need is love. First love of God and then love for each other for Love can do no harm. Love knows that each of is known by God, that each of us can choose to return to God his love which he has lavished upon us.

Jesus told us to gather together in small groups in awareness that he would be present with us. St Paul and the other Apostles spread this message throughout the whole world. God wants each one of us to live without sin. The Apostles, Mary and her friends were as insignificant in the Empire of Caesar as I am in the world today but their foundation is still with us after the Empire has been long gone.

Would they recognise in the Vatican of today the love of God and neighbour that Father, Son and Holy Spirit had inspired within them or would they cry out with their Lord and friend the last words from the Cross.

Dear Lord, forgive me for my sins. I am sorry for I know that even the sins of the little ones like me are your pains on Calvary. Help to find two or three whom I can join  in  worship that is untainted by Mammon in the teeming desert of the Web. May Mary and all the saints who have no trace of sin pray that all us sinners on Earth can find true repentance and the repentant ones waiting for merciful release from the pains of purgatory come to know the joy of God's infinite Mercy

 09/092023

If I try to put myself into the shoes of those who listened to St Paul and were drawn into believe in Christ's Good News I am struck by how those peoples' experience of living so closely resembled our own. Of course they didn't get up and put the kettle as I have just done.

 They couldn't turn on the radio or TV to get the latest news. Each one of them, however, would awake into their own reality and hope to get through the day in the "quiet desperation" common to those who have not received the Good News with true Faith. 

The Resurrection changed everything and those to whom St Paul was writing although they were living in "interesting times" had accepted that mankind would only ever be misled by "Caesar" and that they, just as we are, were living in a worldly society which was the result of Mankind's refusal to live aware that we have only one true "Emperor" whose kingdom is the Eternal Empire of Heaven.

St Paul warns those Citizens of Colossae in the Roman Province of Asia that they must not drift away back into that sea of turmoil that was the Empire of Nero, who would himself condemn Paul to death, ruled by the unrestricted will of man. They and we are in the world but not of it now that we both have been baptized.

We are even more mislead by the leaders of our Society than they were. Our Age has proclaimed  to have no need of God. We are told complete untruths and top ignore God's Will. It is easy for anyone to  become the overburdened camel. The modern mob can still be provided with enhanced "bread and circuses". Man can create intelligences and control life itself. The very very rich and stupid can have their carcasses frozen with the intention of some future revivification.

The Colossians were aware of all the vagaries of being alive in the first century but just as we have, they had heard the Good News and can live in hope of a better life to come. 

Dear Lord let those citizens of Rome whose faith has brought them into the Glory of your Now continue to be lead by your Apostles, whom some of them met, and by Mary who too lived through the ravages  that was Pax Romana of the 1st Century, in prayer for your grace to bring repentance into the hearts of sinners on Earth and Mercy to the Holy Souls in Purgatory.

 08/09/2023

No matter how we feel this morning, the Church's chosen readings for mass tell us that we should be joyful. Our Lady's birth was the beginning of the worldly process that would complete God's gift of salvation to all mankind. It is God's will that his creation in his  "image and likeness" should live in holiness to be the "Human Being" that knows, loves and serves in the physical reality that is the Universe.

We have no record of the date. St Matthew and all the Apostles who knew her did not ever get invited to a "birthday party" but they knew that it was out of her humanity that the only begotten Son was born. The length of the genealogy  that begins his narrative is for us tediously long but even today there are still illiterate dwellers in the deserts of Arabia who remember similarly long lists of the names of their forefathers.

Luke and Matthew were trying to emphasise Jesus' place in the history of the Jews that can be found in the Old Testament. It is the record of God's providential relationship with his chosen people. It is the "according to the Scriptures" to which the Scribes and the Pharisees were devoted and which our Lord made no secret of their fulfillment in himself. 

Every time that we begin to think about Jesus we have  to know him as true man and true God. The Incarnation was unknown except to Mary. Joseph was totally dumb-founded for he knew the girl he was to marry as a quietly God fearing credit to her parents. His shock at her pregnancy was completely soothed by the Holy Spirit and he was thus chosen to be the first man of true faith in the Son of God.

Before Jesus, IAMIAM, the wholeness of God revealed himself to the prophets. "The Lord is going to abandon them till the time she who is to give birth, gives birth" but with Mary and Joseph he for the first time openly reveals himself as a Trinity of persons and a oneness of being. Our Lady totally believed and Joseph was the first to believe with her as he continued to care for Mary, Our Lady, Theotokos.

Dear Lord, I only want to pray. To worship you and to keep free from sin. Meditating on that day in Nazareth when you inspired St Joseph to accept your revelation made to Mary as truth without cavil makes me want to sing out with joy. How can it be that a Church with such glorious beginnings has fallen into the unholy mess much of it is today? May Mary, whose birth we celebrate with joy today lead all the Saints in prayer that the mercy of Father, Son and Holy Spirit continues to protect us from the snares of the Devil whom St John saw as crushed under her heel.