21/05/2024

1st reading    James 4 1-10        Psalm 75 7-11,23        2nd reading Mark 930-37

Many generations other than this one have looked back throughout history and found that the "Word" heard by those who had known Jesus is still speaking directly to our hearts. James' exhortation to his brethren is still the Truth. 

Those of us who see military might as "genius" make heroes of  Alexander, Caesar, Belisarius, Atilla, Cromwell, Marlborough, Washington, Clive, Napoleon, Wellington and seek for themselves the same renown are not only wasting their own lifetimes but destroying millions of others.

Mark reveals that Jesus spoke about the culmination of his mission but instructed the disciples not to talk about it. The subsequent debacle of the desertion of their Rabii by all the disciples save the three Maries and John is further proof that they did not fully listen to him. The argument among the Apostles  about worldly position is enough to  prove that what would become the Petrine Church had even  before the beginning had not completely understood her mission.

The arms out stretched on a crucifix are the image of the perfect love than of which no greater can be found. In the "Pieta" we can see the perfect human response to the inevitable pain of that Love. In the Gospel Jesus' living arms clasped that child, the exemplar of how we should come to him. 

Most of us can find a lovable innocence in, not only children, but also in the young of all created species. I sometimes dismiss the warmth I feel in my heart for family dogs as a sentimentality, a weaker form of love but then I ask myself what more than sentimentality is the love that my God has for me when I am much less than a dog is to me than I am to God. The Love, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit becomes the whole of creation and so my unconditional love for "this dog" is a human form of that all encompassing Love. We can learn how to love just as we learn to hate.

God loves us not because we are something cuddly as a puppy but because we can know, love and serve and become his image and likeness in our sinless love for all creatures. We have been saved from the permanent annihilation introduced into creation by Adam not by our own merits but because "God so loved the world that he gave up his only Son that they who believe might have eternal life".

The vastness of the idea, the being, the revelation, the glory, the knowledge of Father, Son and Holy Spirit literally overpowers me and I am silenced, I do not have even an emotional response. God knows that I hope to feel the Love for him that is  Mary's and all the saints but first I am an  embodied tired, old sinner and secondly I am afraid to let my soul come "face to face" with the Almighty.

Dear Lord help me to learn how to pray. Let me be less fond of myself and truly care more for others than for myself. Help your Church to overcome the worldliness that has tangled her into much less than you wanted her to become. Human beings are clever but even the greatest Saintly Theologian does not really know anything about you until the moment of death. May Mary and all the Saints help me through these my last moments and pray that I can sin less and less each day I continue to live. May the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace and may the Holy Souls experience in the pain of punishment the results of your Mercy

 20/05/2024

Feast of Mary our Mother.

I am one of the billions of human beings who are waking up this morning to begin our daily routine. 

We all first become aware of ourselves and then of the others in our consciousness. I have been trying for the last three years to begin my day conscious of my being in the presence of God and thus begin to pray. My "I", its consciousness and the prayer are the reasons I have been given this gift of life and so share in the infinite being that has created everything that I can know.

God has created the unique "I" of whom I am the only one and he knows each of the billions of other unique "Egos" as the one person we become as each moment of our life evolves in the time that passes, measuring the age of our bodies and witnessing all our deeds, spiritual, mental, and physical.

Adam knew that he was naked and blamed Eve. How can I know that God is the ever greater perfection of Love and still put the puniness of my will before his? Somebody has to be blamed for my sin. I cannot be that stupid! For Adam there was only Eve, for me there is the reality of billions of human lives and deaths, words and ideas to captivate and obscure my nakedness in human time before God.

Among the descendants of Adam and Eve there have been many outstanding, seemingly chosen ones but there have been only two who are sinless and thus able to distribute God's free gift of salvation to all of humanity.

We can thus thank Father, Son and Holy Spirit for our salvation by saying "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

 19/05/2024

Our God is beyond all human knowledge. The Incarnate Son is the final revelation. He is the "True Man", the New Adam. Not a new creation but the sinless only Begotten Son who in his completely human flesh developed naturally, as do all created mammals, in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

The IAMIAM, creator of all things, who spoke to Abraham has through his life, death and resurrection revealed the Son and the Holy Spirit is the Love that was first presented to Mary by the message of an Angel.

I have come to learn over the years that, although I can always find excuses for my sinful behaviour in the weakness of my flesh, that my body is not itself programmed to inevitably fall into sin. We all have the opportunity to live lives that give glory to God and we live in the same "human flesh" as did "Our Lord",  that can become sinless. Mammon takes over our beings once we concern ourselves only with the material world and we thus exclude the Holy Spirit.

In the words of John, Jesus appeared to his fearful disciples and breathed onto them the authority to forgive sins. The Holy Spirit did not manifest himself except in the words recorded in the Gospel. 

In the Acts, Luke records that there was a physical manifestation which shook the room and  touched each one of those present with a "tongue" of fire. It is a historical fact that all the nationalities mentioned had, by the time the Acts were written, the beginnings of the faith that leads to the "Way, the Truth and the Life".

Dear Lord, Father Son and Holy Spirit you have revealed all that we need to know about you to be able to love and serve. We have  to "know" by "loving", to "love " by serving" , to serve by obedience to your commandments and always putting the needs of others before our own.You have given us infinite spiritual power but we have ignored it even though we have seen the Resurrection. May Mary and all the saints together with whom I can be part of your mystical body ask for ever more of your Mercy to send the Holy Spirit who is Father, Son and Himself into the hearts of all mankind. Let us all speak not with tongues but with one voice, your voice, Eternal Love. Amen.

 18/05/2024

The whole of my life, of anybody's life, if written to capture every second that we have lived would, similarly to the last line of "John's" Gospel,  not be contained in the books of the whole world. 

There have been millions of human lives lived on this planet but we actually know very little about some of them in billions of books. I am sure that some scholar has worked out, with or without the help of "AI", the exact time that the events of Jesus' life recorded in the Gospels took to unfold in real time.

At this moment, we know everything about ourselves. God, however not only knows everything about me and every other human but he also knows the results of the infinite other choices that the freedom he has given to all mankind makes possible. The changes to the reality that I am, if all of my "what if" speculations and "if only" regrets, had materialised are known to God. 

We measure our lives in years but we live in each moment as it comes. I try to understand what it is I think that I am doing each time I begin my day in the presence of "Our Father". I want to be loving like the "little child" beloved of Jesus and confident that if I keep my ego, the source of my sin, at bay I will become able to look on the "Face of God" and live.

Most people of this generation would tell me that this is a forlorn hope, pie in the sky a stupid self-delusion. Mammon rules the lives of most of us. We are prisoners not in self-funded lodgings as was St Paul in Rome, but in the very flesh that embodies the "image and likeness" that is our created soul. 

Our souls belong to God and have been created to join the eternal New Life that will be the end of time. We can all align ourselves with the will of God because the power of sin has been eliminated on Calvary, but we are still completely free beings and can choose at every moment of our lives to accept God's Grace or create evil by refusing it. Father, Son and Holy Spirit really are the EverGreater. Our All Powerful God, however,  trusts us to join in the Love that is our only right choice and our personal gate to heaven. How can we ever refuse such unspeakably beautiful, perfect Love that humbled himself to accept in a human body the reality of such cruel torture and death on a cross , for our sakes?

Dear Lord, help me to know, love and serve and let each moment become for me prayer that is  praise, petition and penance for my sins. May this morning's offering to you be my plea for your grace to convert all of mine who resist your grace. Jesus lost only one; help me to approach that target. May Mary and all the saints of heaven pray that all we sinners on earth and in purgatory be forgiven by the Evergreater mercy of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen!

 

 17/01/2024

Today's reading from the Acts is a straightforward recording of what the Roman authorities did in response to St Paul's formal, as a citizen, appeal to the Emperor.

St John expands on the mission given by Jesus to the Church he founds on St Peter.Three times he asks the same question. Is this a purely rhetorical device or can we hear Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each triune person, asking and emphasizing that our first duty is to love God and to prove it in this world by taking care of all our neighbours,

The triple repetition upset Peter. Was he being doubted in his sincerity? Jesus who was with them was unmistakeably the Incarnate Son of God. His very presence confirmed the reality of the Resurrection. His wounds proclaimed New Life for our bodies after death. Peter was upset as he knew how easily, such a short time before, he had, also three times, denied that he even knew Jesus.

"Love" is a simple word but it is infinite in its significance and ever greater than my ability to understand it. We have to stand wordlessly before the cross on Calvary and look with wonder on the disfigured body of the Son of God and choose to share in the Love that unites the women, Mary, John, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is for this we have come into the world.

Dear Lord, you know how my ego is so hard for me to contain. I try to pray in humility but as you know,  I always begin to admire my own words. Help me to be silent and open to the Holy Spirit so that I can receive the gifts that you pour out onto the souls that sincerely try to do your will. May the prayers of Mary and the Saints for sinners bear fruit on earth and release from Purgatory for the Holy Souls.Amen

 16/05/2024

Jesus is praying for us to be "one". The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are "One". The oneness of God is in each person of the Trinity. Jesus does not pray for us to become an amorphous mass of collective humanity but reveals that each of us is an individual person created and known by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are born so that we can each become equally aware with love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and of each other.

The "Jews" of John's gospel are not treated as individual "beings" but as  a "mob" a mass of humanity subservient in will to a simple idea become slogan; "Crucify him!" St Paul divides the collective call for his own death by identifying his beliefs with those of one of the parties at the moment united by their hatred of the "Way". He is saved from "The Jews " but sent on to "The Romans".

We are not pre-programmed to unite automatically with Jesus, the Father and the Holy Spirit or with all men. God has revealed himself as our Loving Creator, Our Forgiving Redeemer, Our Spiritual Support. Jesus tells us that it is we who must listen to his words and become one with them. It is only I who can choose for myself to obey the commandments and thus live in this world at one with all who do the same. 

It is thus how Jesus taught his Apostles on the night he was betrayed and before showing us the power and integrity of all his teaching in his death and resurrection. No matter how our Institutions claim perfection for their version of "the way" and the infallibility of only their teaching, if we choose God in our hearts and obey his Commandments we can find Christian Unity in the Church of Love also founded by Jesus not at table but as he hung dying on the cross in his words to Mary and to John."Behold thy mother, behold thy son". This is Love that never fails.

Dear Lord, help me to understand your teaching without becoming "clever" and more concerned with my "ego" than with your will for me. I hope that I am ready to come to the end of life and that I am open to you the Holy Spirit. Show me how to influence the family which I have fathered. Let my death become a turning point for them in their lives. Your will is evermore my guide. Let these words from my mind become proven by the deeds of my body. Let my prayers be joined with those of Mary and all the Saints that the Holy Souls be loosed from their sins and that the Unity of God and his Church of Love become a visible reality and thus shake up humanity to act as one created to love.

 15/05/2024

St Luke's account of St Paul's farewell to the Ephesians is a snapshot of the mutual love that Jesus lived and preached and is the purpose of the Good News with which he had commissioned his Apostles to fill the whole world. St Paul sums up his mission on its completion. 

During his three years in Ephesus St Paul and his companions had preached, argued and been persecuted but he had never lost his own way and thus the humility of his own love had become the mutual heart of this Church in one of the great temple cities of the Western World.

St John's account is part of Jesus' own farewell discourse to his Apostles. Jesus is also summing up his mission and is reporting, as it were, to his Father what he has done in life before the coming "hour". Jesus has revealed to us that eternal truth is not to be found in this world, the material universe in which he too lived out his incarnation. 

There are no words that can contain the blessing that Jesus is conferring on the whole of humanity living in human time. We can open our hearts and allow the grace of the Eternal Father to rule our lives on Earth and so live in Truth, or we can refuse the promise that is to be sealed soon after this discourse with the blood of this new and everlasting covenant.

Dear Lord, you know that I am truthfully a little one overwhelmed by thoughts of the human beings who have not received your message of love. I cannot understand your ways but humbly pray that I may become one of the ones not lost after listening to Jesus. Help all the innumerable souls who have died not hearing your word and let us all be welcomed into your new and eternal kingdom whenever you choose that to be. May Mary and those saints already saved pray for all the millions of us who have become trapped by the Mammon which rules our world and disfigures your Church founded on St Peter.