26/05/2024

I am one being out of the billions of mankind whose bodies have been begotten as are all mammals. My soul is the eternal life that is the unseen being, the image and likeness of God, that reveals itself in the awareness of this moment that it is able to become what the Creator intended us all to be.

My mind is the interface between my body and my soul and it is in this region of my individual being that the freedom that allows us to choose to eat the fruit of the "tree" or to follow the revelation of his will made by the Father, that the "my-event", myself and my will in time, becomes part of the reality that is human history.

The mind of man is such a wonderful thing that each of us can become captivated by ourselves and then try to share this self-wonder. The more-gifted can display their wonder to the rest of mankind and can become leaders, artists, gods, for themselves and others to follow even to a useless death. 

The Jesus who died in human ignominy was deserted by all but a handful of followers. They were totally devastated by the apparent futility of the time that they had been avid listeners and followers of the man condemned to death by Pilate. But on the third day afterwards, the Resurrection culminates the most important 33 years of History.

Dear Lord, I thank you for the wonder of my being and for Your Grace which enables me to know my place in the vastness of your material creation and my place before you the Ever-greater Love that envelopes all that exists. You have not created us to be "artificial mini-gods" but to choose to be your loving children who know, love, and serve The Father, Son and Holy Spirit and today we especially are in awe before you The Trinity. The Immaculate, the other two Maries and John overcame their own grief and fear to remain to that bitter end on Calvary so that the empty corpse could be treated with human dignity after the death that is the source of the Resurrection and Eternal life for all of us who choose to be faithful to Our Father. Amen

 25/05/2024

The first reading reminds us how to live a Spiritual life on earth. Prayer must feed our integrity, be our constant companion and we can thus, through the grace of God, live lives of innocence as did the children welcomed with tenderness by the Lord in the Gospel.

I know that even though I was Baptized my own childhood was not sinless and that I still live the same life, a mixture of faith and failure, today as an octogenarian as I did then. I try to pray each day guided by the readings from scripture chosen to be the mass readings for the day.

Today the life that was St Bede's is truly celebrated in the scriptures that he loved and the prayer that was his guide. His monastery at Jarrow was hundreds of miles from Rome and it is a tribute to the "Church", the light of the Dark Ages, that this remote outpost was able to nurture such a scholar and saint. He is credited with creating the calendar based on the birth of Christ, hence A.D. and B.C.

The worldliness, that has corrupted Jesus' foundation on St. Peter and was soon to create in Rome the unbearable reality of sinfulness, that was the mark of the papacy at the end of the first millennium, was well in progress, but St Bede was able to remain true to the teaching of the Scriptures.

Our God is truly merciful and can forgive all our sins if we confess them before witnesses with true repentance. Elsewhere he also said that there is an unforgiveable sin. Institutional "coverup" for clerics who have sexually abused little children must come very close to this but many of those living men are still "Bishops" of the Church and do not come close to the integral holiness that would strengthen them to confess and depart into sinless obscurity.

Dear Lord you know what is in my mind as I remember the sins of my youth. I couldn't control my body in any way. I could have damned my soul in many ways but was always ready to return to You usually as a result of the fear of Hell. These days that begin in prayer are the reason that I wake up from sleep. Your Infinite Grace is available to all of us and when we turn away from our pride we can be sure that your loving crucified arms are stretched out to receive us as the children whom you love with tenderness. You, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are beyond all our emotions but in the Incarnation you know us as we really are,  so are pleased when sinners try to realign themselves with your will. May Mary and all the Saints continue both in their praise of your Glory and prayerful support for the heart of the Church and transformation of the Institution into the true Body of Christ on earth. Amen

 24/05/2024

St James teaches that we should avoid disputes with our brothers. We should be as straight in our relationships with others as is Jesus, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, with us. Oaths become necessary only when we accept the human standards of an untruthful world. 

Jesus looks at each one of us in compassion and love and tells us to keep out of the world, the world of flesh and Mammon, and to open the way for us he submitted to the power of the world but not before condemning it in his declaration before Pilate "My Kingdom is not of this world".

In the events of the centuries that have passed since that moment of Jesus' trial, the history of mankind, we have seen the spiritual descendants of the Apostles who were first commanded to lead us on the Way, the Truth and the Life without provisions for their journey become the "Bishops" who for centuries have lived as do all the princes of this world.

Many of us since the very first centuries have raised this question of poverty in our prayers. Some have challenged the power of the Institution and broken free from the Church of Institutions to seek to follow Jesus into the desert to be alone with the Father. Others have found that in their reformation they have created only another institution to displace the one which they perceived to be sinful. 

Jesus' Kingdom can be shared by us in this world only by knowing without reservation that the vastness of the universe, the tiniest of particles and all that exists therein will all pass away  but his love and compassion will stand. We are a spiritual creation of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and it is to our God that we will have to answer when our bodies become lifeless shells.

This is the only "trial" that has the power to condemn and cannot be influenced by anything other than the Truth.

Dear Lord, let my soul be ever-open to your Holy Spirit and let me treat all people with respect as do you. Your Love encompasses the whole Universe and you become incarnate to free all sinners, past, present and future from the emptiness of their sins. You trust us to know that sin ruins our very being and to help us overcome its strange power you have offered the vastness of your Love to be accessed by any one of us at any time, even at the very instant of death. Help me to repay your trust by witnessing the faithfulness of Mary and John. Let me stand with them though separated by two millennia and bleed in my heart for the corpse but accept the forgiveness with Joy. May all sinful mankind, on earth and in Purgatory stand with us in a Mystical Church and become truly remorseful for our sins and the sins of all the world. Amen!

 23/05/2024

Hebrews   10:11-18             Mark 14 : 22-25

Today's feast celebrates the Eternal Priesthood of Jesus the Son of God. A priest of the original covenants by which God defined for us, our relationship with him was a man who was set aside by the community to approach God on behalf of the people and offer sacrifice on their behalf.

God has never needed anything from his Creation. He is himself the "Good" that he sees therein. The only thing required of Adam was to obey one simple commandment to become the creature that recognised the "Good" as Our Father God.

Thousands of years have passed since Adam talked with God in the Garden. During the years of the Old Testament some men are depicted as being chosen to talk with God on behalf of the people, even to haggle with him about his decisions. Some of these men were priests but not all.

Our God lead Abraham to Mount Zion where Abraham in complete obedience was ready to kill his own son in an obedience to God that he thought would become worship acceptable to God. Abraham was ready in his mind and will but God prevented the deed and provided the ram. Priests in the Temple repeated that sacrifice in Jerusalem until the Temple was destroyed.

Although the Word had emptied himself of his Divinity, Jesus as the perfect man knew the mind of God as well as he knew his own, "You who have seen me have seen the Father". The ram provided for Abraham to complete his sacrifice has become the Lamb of God filled with all that is evil and the death on the Cross has brought forgiveness to the whole world.

The Sin of Adam has separated us from perfect human sonship as lived by Jesus. The sinless Jesus has made it possible for us to return to the state of being that walked and talked with God. He has taken his humanity into the Spiritual Perfection of Father Son and holy Spirit and there the Sacrifice of Calvary is the perfect memorial that is repeated here on earth in the Mass.

The Truth of the Mass depends not only on the "motions", "ex opere operato" but also on the Holiness of the Priesthood, the Community of the Love of Christ who established it the night before he died in the pain which is ever greater than we can ever imagine.

We would never have found ourselves in this parlous state on earth today if we had remained true to all the revelations of Jesus. Jesus directly confronted the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. The Pope did confront our Bishops and Abbots who spend their time flying round the world but absolutely nothing came of it as the deep-seated hypocrisy of our sin can only be addressed by the one who knows he has it and in sincerity implores the forgiveness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Dear Lord, I am totally devoted to you as I write what comes into my mind. You know that I am trying to live without sin and in accordance with your will. It isn't right that Monks and Priests live such worldly lives that are closer to luxury than the poverty that you praised and they profess. You talked directly to Adam please talk again to all of us who are living closer to damnation than to you.You and I know that this moment will soon pass and I will become again the miniscule being that you because you are the Ever-greater knows and loves. May the prayers of  Mary and all the saints be heard that we and the Holy Souls can be loosed from our sins and with the help of thy grace come at last to You our eternal God. Amen

 22/05/2024

James 4 13-7            Psalm 49 2-3, 6-11         Mark 9 38-40

The pride that James warned about 2,000 years ago is typified  today in the confidence in one's own abilities that takes charge of its own life. It is one of the mainstays  of the assertive  Feminism that knows that women have been forced into a subservient position in human society because of their biology. It is the self-belief which is installed into the young men and now young women who are still processed in the Public Schools of England and elite Universities of all the World.

Self-satisfied human pride rules this "world" which rejected Jesus and which has corrupted the "Church" he founded on St Peter. Mankind has created the uniformity of Mammon which has in a remarkably short time completely altered, to give only two diverse examples the culture of the "Saints and Scholars" of Ireland and the "Ancient Confucian Ethics of Korea".

I am sure that the great surge and promotion of  hedonism  witnessed during my lifetime is the  result of the ability to control/prevent fertility either by devices before or abortion after the event. Most humans prefer to accept physical pleasure now rather than wait for the eternal Joy of Heaven.

Our Father, Son and Holy Spirit knows that we are deserting in droves the Love that he has lavished on us. I know that I am a prodigal sinner, trying to come back to my father's house but God knows the confusion that I feel when considering the long sinful history of his Church and its representatives today. I pray that I can find a safer home in the New Holy Family of Mary and John which is the Spiritual Church of Love that has not been contaminated by the Mammon of all worldly institutions. 

Dear Lord, You know that I am complaining to you about other people but not as did the disciples who complained that you distributed your grace as you willed. I know that there is absolutely nothing that you do not know about each atom in your Universe. Atoms are preprogramed and cannot sin but our will is free and always changing. Help each soul on earth not to despise your created bodies which is their responsibility  to care for on earth. May we all share in the holiness of Mary and all the Saints that we may be ready for either your call to us  or your return to begin the new creation that is your promise. Maranatha! Lord Jesus come!

 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.