07/11/2023

Jesus' words were first spoken to the Jews, the only race to whom specific revelations by God have ever been made. There were in the world at that time many sophisticated civilisations but God chose to guide only the Jews. It was in Palestine that God became Incarnate and it was a young Jewish girl who assented and thus became "Theotokos", Our Lady.

It is hard for me to understand God's neglect of so many other people. When Jesus forecast doom for the cities of Galilee he also pointed out that if the non-Jewish, Tyre and Sidon had heard his preaching and witnessed his miracles they would have been overjoyed by the meaning he was giving to their lives.

Moses had lead the Jews out of Egypt but they did not come as the first settlers into an empty land. The "nations" were groups of humans who were improving their lives by working on the land where they had been born or had themselves taken when there had been a lull in the face-offs between the conflicting Empires of their day.

The Old Testament approves the violence of the "Chosen People" (ethnic cleansing) as God's gift to them of the land "from the river to the sea". We have to contrast this Old Testament support for the Jewish State of their day with the consistent message "My kingdom is not of this world" given by Jesus in his New Testament

Dear Lord, hear my prayer for understanding. You know that the adversaries fighting in your Holy Land are trapped by a world that has never fully comprehended or acted upon your teaching and Incarnate Life, Death and Resurrection. May Mary who probably travelled to escape Herod's violence with Joseph and the Baby Jesus through the regions where today dozens are dying unjust violent deaths, lead all our prayers that Satan may be driven out of the combatants and that they receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Dear Lord hear my prayer. Amen

 06/11/2023

I really do lack self-confidence. I know that the words of St Paul are truthful and sincere. I know that I also want to be  truthful and sincere but I know that I all too easily acte in ways that reveal me as a sinful liar.

Paul teaches the Romans that today we can live virtuous lives because we were sinners. The mercy of Jesus was given to sinners. He did not come to call the righteous but to offer the mercy of our Incarnate God to the whole of humanity. St Paul  was filled with holy joy as he fully understood the depths of meaning in his own inspired words.

"How rich are the depths of God-how deep is his wisdom and knowledge-and how impossible to penetrate his motives or understand his methods! Who could ever understand the mind of the Lord? Who could ever be his counsellor? Who could ever give or lend him anything?

All that exists comes from him; all is by him and for him. To him be Glory for ever! Amen" 

This is not prayer willed by the mind. (I have to make a conscious act of will to turn my mind  and heart to God). It is the heart and soul of the Apostle being penetrated by the Holy Spirit and responding with joyful human love to the Love that comes from God.

Jesus speaks to the Pharisee but tells us all that acts of kindness to others have to be made outside of our circle of acquaintances who will return them. This is the second root of the religion of Jesus Christ. If we want to see "the depths of God" we have to put the needs of other people before our own. 

Everything about our life is determined by the way we freely react to the inspiration of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If I am confident in God I need not fear my weakness for Jesus has poured out the mercy of the Father and sealed it with the Spirit. This is not self - confidence but the confidence that God will give to all who seek it, as did St Paul, with our whole heart and soul.

Dear Lord, help me to choose the right way  to accept your will. I can pray for nothing more for myself . Let your Mercy smother out hatred and violence throughout the world. Let my family learn through my prayers that there is a lot more to life than the material world tells us. Let me become without anything else  a soul seeking your grace. May I know the confidence in myself that must be there because I do know with my mind that your Mercy is for us all but my heart is weak in shouting out this knowledge to the whole world

05/11/2023

When I start my day I sometimes feel self-satisfied as was the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not as other men. 

If anyone else were to tell me that I was a modern Pharisee, I would deny it and get angry in my self-perceived righteousness. At an AA meeting I once heard this as a definition of humility "Once you think you've got it you've lost it".

Words are important but what is much more so is the sincerity of heart with which they are uttered. Even now as I struggle with this keyboard I can feel self-satisfaction breaking through as I tell myself that I am getting closer to doing God's will, even though my efforts could be dismissed as pious platitudes. 

I have never had the worldly talents that win the respect of men. I am disgruntled that no others have come across this record of my prayer which is my soul before God. I do remember "Prayer is the raising of the mind and the heart to God" and this is what the wholeness of my heart is able to do now.

For me, the word "I" is always to be suspect but it is the only way that I can return myself towards the Father who art in Heaven. I am a unit of the being created in His image and likeness and as this person, truly known and Loved only by God. I do search the scriptures so that I can follow His revelation that  has been preached for 2000 years but has been much more rarely acted upon.

Jesus is straight forward in his teaching but he also knows that self-categorized humility is not far from self-pride. I always think of Dickens' fictional but really true Uriah "I'm everso umble" Heap  in this context."

Dear Lord, can anything be known more about you than the return of the prodigal son and about myself than the prayer of the publican "God have mercy on me for I am a sinner". You know me and know that my soul belongs to the spiritual body that began in the sorrow of Calvary, the Glory of the Resurrection and was sealed by the Holy Spirit. Your mother was always present during your life on earth may her prayers lead the whole Earth, Heaven and Purgatory in repentance for sin and unending thanks for revealing your will to mere children.

 04/11/2023

God knows everything there is to know about me. He knows that I am a weak but penitent sinner who knows that understanding His revelations is not as easy a yolk as the gentle Jesus declared it  to be.

St Paul is totally sure that the Jews remain in the Love of God because God has chosen them before time began. St Paul also is sure that it is the Resurrection that adds meaning to our beings.

I think that St Paul has missed the point that separates the teaching of Jesus from that of Moses. "My kingdom is not of this world" tells me that there is nothing in this World to which we should cling. The Church that he preached into being very soon became a human institution that put its own place in the world before the Mission it was created to fulfill.

God  always knows us in the reality of the"I/my" moment in His Providence just as he also knows the truly countless possibilities that have not attained reality. God does not create us to be damned. As image and likeness we have total freedom and each of is created into "our self" and preserved in our "I/my" being by the love of God who knows us only as individually free beings. We may place ourselves into categories, Jews, Gentiles, Christian, Moslem, British etc but to Our Father we are always David, Julius, John, Abdullah, Smith the named individual soul.

The overpowering glory of the Incarnation is not directed at any race or human institution but at the weak and lowly who are each of us promised a place with Father, Son and Holy Spirit in His Eternity. God's Providence is the reality in which each of us can respond positively to His call to each individual soul to live righteously as he did, never swerving from the Will of the Father.

Dear Lord, save me from the disquietude that troubles my soul. I feel that terrible events, of which there are still countless, should be prevented by you. St Paul was troubled in his heart by pondering the role of his "fathers" in the Crucifixion. You are God and I have to implore your help. You have not left us alone and I pray along with Mary and all the saints that all the souls of the world and purgatory receive your mercy and join you in the eternity that cannot be contained in my head but which must be loved by my heart.

 03/11/2023

When I try to think about God I too experience "mental aguish that seems to be endless". I can understand my  failure to express what I am seeking but I cannot match my understanding to His revealed presence. 

Thank God for St Paul who is so obviously continually "pondering" and preaching the Resurrection from the standpoint of a follower of the "Law". Would he really be ready to give up his place in Heaven to bring the "Chosen People" to salvation?

There is nothing "rhetorical" about Jesus. He is the "Word" who is always with God. He is the voiced "Love" that is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. His questions are not part of a philosophical dialogue between him and the Theology of the "Temple". Jesus' interactions with Pharisees are always fraught with the tension that ultimately breaks completely with "Eloi, Eloi lamasabachtani".  

In today's Gospel Jesus has accepted an invitation to eat at the home of a Pharisee. In the Middle East, even today, these general invitations are given out in the same spirit of hospitality that saw Abraham welcoming his mysterious guests under the oak at Mamre. Jesus has accepted the invitation but is aware that he is "a person of interest" to Temple Authority and responds with what is seen as a blasphemous attack on the Law.

Even today there are those who still have the same opinion that Jesus is a blasphemer. Jesus warned us that we are not to expect "Peace on Earth" for "My Kingdom is not of this World".

Dear Lord let the prayer of my heart be the truth of me. These words are nothing although sincere in their origin. They are from the limits of my understanding. May Mary's prayers to her Son lead all the Saints in the Eternal Worship and pleas for Mercy that condemn none of us but are the eternal hope of us, the living, and of the Holy Souls . May we all accept the grace that should be the centre of our lives. Let me make these prayers in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

 02/10/2023

There are two moments in life when there is no doubt at all about the equality of all human beings. 

Today's readings ask us to reflect on the second of these. What will happen to me at the moment of my death? Those of us who have been present at the death bed of a loved one know that the dead body is no longer the living person whom we knew and loved.

The surrounding people, the bed, the room are still there unchanged but the corpse has lost the  being by which we knew our parent, child, sibling or friend. "The souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God." 

The Good News that Jesus brings to us is that there is an infinity of Merciful Grace to help us to become one of the "virtuous". His staff and rod are always available to guide the helpless weak individuals we all are at birth, through to the helplessness of the corpse we shall all become. 

Jesus reminds us that during our lifetimes no matter how the World judges us by wealth or status, we are always as equally helpless in the sight of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as we were at birth and will be at death. 

We are always mere children. We all have to walk in the footsteps of our "Good Shepherd" for he has shown us the way of virtue from the helplessness of birth through the feebleness of life to the helplessness of death.

He has not abandoned us to an impersonal fate but shown us how to live, "with joyful trust in God through Our Lord, Jesus Christ through whom we have already received our reconciliation."

Thanks be to God!

Dear Lord today as always I will ask your mercy to overflow into Purgatory and sweep out the penitents into the Glory of your presence. May those who do not have the peace and comfort in which to turn their hearts and minds to you at their moment of death be strengthened at that moment, which comes to us all, by the grace  prayed for by Mary and all the saints and which was released into Creation by the sacrifice of the Cross and the Glory of the Resurrection.

 1/11/2023

On this Feast of All Saints, the two first readings have been chosen for us to try to contemplate what eternal life will mean for us. The Apocalypse is a vision of the end of time. It is the imploding of Creation witnessed by John. 

All God's spiritual beings are brought before the limitless power of God and worship him alone. The human beings are the Saints who have already been purged by believing in the "Blood of the Lamb" and the Angels are what they have always been, guardians, messengers and instruments of "The One".

The second reading is much closer to our world today in that it is a discourse that can be followed to understanding,  rather than a naked vision. John is inspired by God to interpret the meaning of all that he has witnessed during his lifetime. He is speaking directly to us. We are all God's children now. We must put aside as worthless all our worldliness. We must be as pure as Jesus and forgo the approval of any being other than Father. Son and Holy Spirit.

In the Gospel Jesus, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, looks on the multitude that we are and guides us into holiness. The way to "blessedness" is written as a list but the steps are virtues that we need to  absorb entirely into our Being and in our human deeds show through them how we have accepted  the Eternal Love thus taught.

Dear Lord, May the whole of creation sing out in praise of You and all your Saints. Mary is a constant reminder that you have accepted true humanity and thus know all the strengths and weaknesses of we thy children. None of us can add anything to your Glory but we can all become part of it. With the help of thy Grace we can act in freedom to purify our hearts so that we are not obstacles but can become co-heirs with Jesus in the New Creation that will be the end of Time. I thank God that this is my prayer for today and may the spiritual union of the saints in heaven, lead by Mary, we sinners on Earth and the Holy Souls in Purgatory become stronger that the evils of the Worldly institutionalism  be overcome by the Love of God.