29/10/2023

The psalm today proclaims our praise for the Lord. The three readings tell us why we do so. A thousand years of  God's providence for mankind are covered from Moses to Jesus and we today  have had another two thousand years that mankind has lived within the ever changing times provided by God. The times and the individuals change but God remains unchanged, the beginning and the end of time, the ever-greater focus of our existence.

I know that I am a sinner but I also know that God's forgiveness and mercy are far greater than any sin. He has consistently made known to us that we can all live lives in freedom according to his will and that he is the support of Faith and source of never-ending Grace.

Moses has seen the Father. It is this revelation that confirms that I have to put other people before myself.  Paul's whole life is a mission of service to spread the Good News. He confirms his words by his deeds. He can live without sin and the Thessalonians have not only witnessed this but followed his example.

Jesus, the Word, has emptied himself of divinity to become the perfect human. He does not respond to the casuistry of the Pharisees, ("Do you not think that my Father would give 10 legions of Angels?"), as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but as man to man.

I have been created to know, love and serve God and without doing any harm in thought word or deed to any other person. If everybody alive seriously tried to do this who would ever have tried to bomb whole nations out of existence or looked away from any disabled beggar?

Dear Lord, all that I can truthfully be within your sight is this pathetic sinner who cannot get rid of the ego that loves itself more than it does You and my neighbour. My freedom leads me into sin. I know that I can serve you only by accepting without any reservation your aid to conquer my will. May the prayers of heaven which is joy in your presence be heard and let my resolve to do your will become fruitful in this world and find forgiveness in the next.

 28/10/2023

The readings for today's mass are short. Jesus spends a night in prayer. He is truly man. He is also truly God. He has chosen to become empty of all the power of God. The ever greater Father, Son and Holy Spirit has become totally man even in his worship. 

The Incarnation is timeless as "Will of the Father" but within time as Jesus, son of Mary. St Paul knows himself as a "Roman Citizen". He also knows himself as one of the "Chosen People". The citizens of Ephesus have been aliens, non - chocen gentiles, but are now the Church.

The Apostles are all chosen by Jesus to be the foundation on which will be built his mystical body, the guardian of our souls, the channel through which will flow all the gifts from Eternity to  support in the Love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit each created soul in the wonder that is Creation.

I am "Alone but Known" because I cannot join my brothers and sisters in Christ in the Institutional Church that became very quickly, more Roman Citizen than Mystical Body. I hope that in my prayers I can find a true path to the Mercy of Father, Son and Holy Spirit directed by the prayers of Mary and all the saints in the Mystical Body of Christ, the supreme union of Heaven, Earth and Purgatory.

Dear Lord, help me to pray. Let me not be lead astray by thoughts that should conform themselves to your revelation and teaching. I thank you for the security in Faith that I feel in the depth of my being. Let me become a willing prisoner of your Love and may these prayers and the prayers of all the faithful bring Mercy and forgiveness to all sinners here on Earth and to those repenting in Purgatory.

 27/10/2023

Jesus looks at us all in today's Gospel and condemns our hypocrisy. He is more than severe. He is not "gentle Jesus meek and mild". He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit telling us the naked truth.

St Paul's words in his letter today not only describe me but have been uttered by me many times during my life time. I know that, even this morning, sinful thoughts began to come into my head.

Today is " the times" for me. Each second of my life is when I have conscious being. I am free to make the sign of "my times". Before I know objective reality that is "other" for me, outside of my consciousness, I am " created human being" in the image and likeness of God. 

Our God in his eternal Love knows billions of us living and dead. He is not an "unknown god" but has revealed himself to us through prophets whom most of us rejected. The Incarnation is the direct participation of Eternal Power self-limited to the "times of creation" .

The "sign of the times" is Jesus, Father Son and Holy Spirit, revealing to every individual his Love and can be found as did St Paul within each of us. We only have to want to respond with sincerity for even the Pharisees and executioners are forgiven by the Love that flows from the Five Wounds of Jesus, crucified on Calvary.

Dear Lord, you know each one of us in the "time" created for us by your Providence. Our world is a mess ruled by Mammon and Sensuality. Love of money and fornication are both chosen by the souls you have created to grow in love and selflessness. May the ceaseless prayers of Mary and all the saints break through the crust of sinful physical material that the wonders of this life used by Satan to confirm us in our sins has built all around us to masquerade as the "sign of the times", but are only my excuses in sin.

 26/10/2023

St Paul's letter to the Romans continues the image of slavery.

God, however, has created us with the freedom to choose to either live enslaved to hopeless sin or willingly to live lives devoted to the Love which manifests itself in the Incarnation. We are miniscule, feeble and powerless beings even though collectively we seem to have achieved so much . The Love which is Father, Son and Holy Spirit has created us to be free beings for whom the only righteous choice has been empowered by the promise of the Holy Cross.

"True man" means that Jesus is exactly the same as we all are. His body is begotten not made. He has all the organs of any mammal, just as we have. He is the human Son of the Father and faced the same temptations that assail all of us. Thinking as a human he wished that his "Baptism" would soon be over.

He tells his disciples that he will not enforce  "peace on earth" by Divine power. Resurrection does not change the humanity of our being. Our world will always  be composed of individuals who continue to put self before the "other". 

The blazing fire is not that of destruction, that is in the power of Satan. Jesus longs for us all to be consumed by the fire of the Holy Spirit which is the strength of the New Creation, the Resurrection, the only hope.  Each of us can and must break the chains of slavery and turning with gratitude to Father, Son and Holy Spirit pray; 

"Our Father who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven; Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil."

Dear Lord let the words of your guidance to us become the prayer of my heart to share with all your Church, living and dead. Amen

 25/10/2023

St Paul's letter to the Roman's continues as this morning's first reading.

 We all have to live without sinning. For Paul this true life. His conversion on the road to Damascus had, for him, been a "death". His new life is the free gift of Faith; Christ living in him. The Resurrection is now his own life. 

His righteous holiness is not a product of the Law, outward restrictions that contain him as does a strait jacket, but comes from his own soul which has been filled directly from Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We must not confuse this presence of interior grace, spiritual freedom from sin, as a "freedom" to sin. We are now all free to choose our way of life; the bodily life of the Word, His death and Resurrection has destroyed the power over us that sin has had since the Fall.

St Paul calls us "slaves of Righteousness" but that is more rhetoric than truth. We can make ourselves "slaves to sin" but "Righteousness" is the " glorious freedom of the sons of God".

Jesus tells us that we all live bodily lives in the Providence of the Father, the "master" in this morning's parable, but He warns us that it is we who direct our own lives. God has revealed himself to the whole World but it is God who knows and loves each one of us as "My Father" in heaven. Let us know him as pure Goodness and live every moment in the responsible reality that it is to be known by God.

Dear Lord, hear the prayer of my heart and let my words come from the soul that is the spirit of my being. let me be captured to do your will as was Saul on the way to persecute you. May your Mother lead all the Saints in prayer that we the living on earth can know that sin only succeeds in our lives because we let it. Let us all become righteous and respond only to your grace and may all the souls awaiting your pardon pay for their sins with the grace that is made available by the Sacrifice of Calvary. 

 24/10/2023

The teaching in the  letters of St Paul was obviously not instantly in his mind after the Resurrection stopped him in his tracks as he hurried to carry the Temple's messageof persecution from Jerusalem to Damascus. He already had devoted his life to the Law and had studied the Scriptures. His life had been delight in the story of salvation and in IAMIAM and his revealed Law.

For nearly 80 years I have been aware that we all live in God's Providence. I have heard the story of salvation read, I have read for myself commentaries and prayed to be relieved of my sins, against which I have always fought . I have often lost that fight. Today I read Paul's advice and support to the Romans and as I did so I knew that his words were the Truth which has guided my life up to and including this moment.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit are only Love which is fruitful in the "Big Bang" of creation. For all we humans there is to be an individual ultimate, personal and final Big Bang. I pray that the master will find me not only aware of the finality of that moment but fully prepared to be ultimately an individual known and loved as the man I was created to be.

Dear Lord, although I know that you know everything. I don't think that what I do each morning is pointless. Jesus never ceased to pray. Faith reveals to me that you know me only with Love. My good will has not always shown itself in my life. I am always afraid that doing this I may be pandering to my own love of self. Hope tells me that I have to know love and serve and thus accept your free gift of eternal life. Love confirms that Mary and all the saints pray that more and more of us on Earth can become aware that Jesus has won for all sinners here on Earth and in Purgatory the free gift of forgiveness and salvation.

 23/10/2023

St Paul teaches that we have to believe. We have to have Faith. It is Faith that breaks down the walls of our foolish pride and lets us rejoice that we are known by God. It is through the action of our Faith that we become "considered" by God, known and blessed by the right choice for God that we have made.

St Paul is a perfected Pharisee. The Resurrection forced him to recognise that he and the other scribes and Pharisees had turned God's Temple into a sham  and how to find Father, Son and Holy Spirit within the temple that his being had become. Body and soul he was filled with Christ. St Paul was a living temple and it is to become as he was that we all have to live in the time God gives to us.

Prideful Mammon is our greatest enemy on Earth. Jesus consistently teaches that our treasure is to have Faith only in himself, the Father and the Holy Spirit. The way to become "rich in the sight of God" has been cleared out for us by the incredible humility of the Incarnation. 

Jesus has broken the power of sin and with Faith alone we too can have the life of Christ living within us. Our Church was founded by Jesus. He is the Eternal Word who by his life on earth has shown to us that living by Faith in God is not a "treasure" beyond our reach but that even I can reach that perfection of Love.

God wants in timeless eternity for his children yesterday, today and tomorrow to join him, His Son, Mary and all the Saints in the Glory that is the Holy Spirit. It is a glimpse of heaven on earth to have been given this Faith.

Dear Lord, hear the prayer that is the silent sorrow, regret and longing to atone for all my sins. I thank you that I can overcome the baby voice inside me that congratulates, loves and thinks myself a treasure, but I wish it would go away completely. May Mary who is the perfect example of Faith Hope and Love lead all her heavenly children in their pleas for the forgiveness won by her Son to be accepted by all sinners great and small living and waiting here with me and in Purgatory. Amen.