11/06/2024

The "Church" in the Acts is never an "it", it is always a "they". What is it today, an organisation or the millions of believers who are each one in their real person known only to God? Does God know the structure or the people? It has been argued over centuries that the organisation is the source of the sanctity of its adherents and office holders. It is the "Mystical Body of Christ on Earth". There is no salvation outside the "Church".

The Church founded on St Peter soon became an "it". In fact, "it" became the first non-government organisation ever to exist on earth. It was the very first Corporate Body long before Capitalism was born. It was incorporated not in this world but in the "Kingdom of God". Jesus, the founder, when on trial before the only Earthly Power told us that "My Kingdom is not of this world".

We have to believe Jesus. He is present in his Church for ever. But is it in the worldly structure that we find him? The Incarnation (life, death and resurrection) is a historical event and by it we have been taught how to use the joy of living to arrive at the New Life prepared for us by Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Can anyone still believe that the evil deeds done in the name of God by the burning of heretics, the Crusades against Cathars, Muslims, Waldensians, or Hussites, or the European wars of the 16th and 17th centuries were indeed sanctioned by God working through the Institutional Church? 

There are no Bishops praising or blessing the perpetrators of the slaughter in Gaza, Yemen, Burma, Sudan where our brothers and sisters are slaughtering each other at the very moment I am sitting in front of this screen.

The source of all holiness on Earth was known personally by the Apostles whose eye-witness accounts of the facts of revelation were recorded  and verified by the Holy Spirit at the time the worldliness of the Church first began to become more important than the personal holiness of its hierarchy. 

Scripture is our protector from the deviances of men in ecclesiastical power but it is not our sole protector on earth for even during the most disgraceful years of the Papacy there were holy men and women whom by the grace of God were able to be the Church of Love also founded by Jesus who included his mother in his New Holy Family of she and John.

Dear Lord help me be true to your grace. Let me find my place in heaven. Let me know that your grace is for all even those to whom you have not revealed yourself. May the prayers of Mary and all the saints overcome the backsliding by which both Jews and Gentiles lose touch with their faith which you have granted to us. Let us know what we can do to overcome the pain and suffering of so many innocent on Earth. Let my sins be forgiven and may my soul be ready to accept whatever death comes to me. Amen

 10/06/2024

God knows how unhappy I am at the state of his institutional church. Actually, I am really saddened when I try to understand how the Church of the ages forgot so quickly that its reason for being is not of this world. 

The Jews and Gentile/Pagans of the first century gave true meaning to their lives by accepting that Jesus is the Word and that his Resurrection finalizes God's explanation of why each one of us has this mystery of self living at that the centre of our beings.

Jesus was born into a world that was ruled from Rome. The Romans had lost their fight to maintain the political system that had been the republic, pride of their forefathers. The Greeks of Europe, Asia and Africa had also been swallowed up into this Roman Empire. 

All political power was maintained by force but in the Promised Land  God had settled those to whom he had revealed that he is Perfect Being, Love, Power and Glory and promised special care for them and their descendants. 

All that I do in life is done in the presence of God. That is true for all individuals. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is the template to fit which we all have to modify our own lives. He does not only reveal our target but also by his life, death and resurrection provides us with the source of the help to reach the Eternal life as promised.

Dear Lord, help me to be sincere in my search for and obedient to your will as revealed to the prophets and completed through the Incarnation. May Mary and all the Saints pray for us to receive the grace to live lives of quiet beatitude never venturing after things too great or avoiding those of which we are capable. You have never asked us to be true to a human kingdom or institution let us all join with John and Mary in the New Holy Family you created on Calvary in your last words to your mother and disciples and to all mankind.

 09/06/2024

As we live out our lives, our time on earth, we have to conform to the will of God which is revealed to us by the Scriptures and by our consciences which we have to choose to keep open to be formed by the Holy Spirit.

St Paul tells us that our outer man, our bodies, decay but the inner man, our souls are renewed by the Holy Spirit. The older we get the more aware we become of bodily decay but our souls can still be the never changing/ever growing centre of our being. 

The Psalm begins in the pain of our humanity when we have separated ourselves from God. It is our sinful selves. In the first reading Adam blames Eve, Eve blames the serpent but their and all subsequent sins are our own. Our EverGreater, PerfectBeing, IAMIAM, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Unbounded Freedom cannot turn a blind eye to the fact of our rejection of his Love by misuse of his Gift of Human Freedom. Today's Psalm  becomes thanks for and recognition of the Loving Mercy that is the Being of Our Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In the Gospel, his human family, which is totally embarrassed by the public beginnings of Jesus revelation of himself, they count it as notoriety, are not rejected by the adult Jesus. At the age of thirty, he is a complete adult male and is free to worship with the other men in the Temple or Synagogue. He is His Father's Eternal Word revealed within the confines of a truly human body. His rebuke is directed at those who think that there is ever a valid reason to interrupt the Word of God.

Our earth has never seen the equal of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the total perfection of God in what is the perfected human body. He is father, mother, brother and sister of the whole  human family and through his life, death and resurrection continues to bring the Holy Spirit into our lives. He is the salvation that only each one of us can let into our individuality and so into history. We cannot find blame for our sins other than in our misuse of freedom. May God protect me from the "unforgiveable sin".

Mary was never excluded by Jesus. How could he who was first borne by Theotokos ever deny the immaculate source of his humanity?

Dear Lord, today's readings are the summation of  the meaning of Your Creation that is and is known by human life. Help me to keep your teaching to the forefront of my mind so that I can avoid the pain that my sins create for me. Let me know that all humans are your family and let me avoid doing harm to anyone in thought, word or deed. Help me join your mission to spread the Good News by directing a first reader to these prayers and meditations that have arisen out of disappointment in the institution that became "of this world" very early  and the corruptor of many throughout its history. 

 08/06/2024

The Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Apostles and disciples who had known the Lord in his lifetime had accepted their mission and had gone out to preach the Good News. They first of all would follow the Temple ritual prayers and met in the Portico of Solomon. They prayed, as had Jesus, the Psalms and they studied the scrolls of the Old Testament as enlarged upon by the " Translator ", the Targum in the Synagogue and by their Rabbi during their three years with him.

It was  there that they announced the Good News of the Resurrection and recalled the teachings and deeds of Jesus. They did this by word of mouth; the only texts that they had were written in Aramaic, Hebrew or in Greek.Their world was governed by Caesar, it was the Roman Empire but its language and its culture were Greek. 

We do not have any fragments of written New Testament texts earlier than the end of the second century. Scholars know that they existed but our original "Church" was just men and women who accepted their own belief in the scrolls of the Old Testament and Jesus as the living faith that, as did St Paul, they had received from the Apostles. It was in this spirit of faith that they would meet on the first day of the week  to give thanks for their resurrected founder's new commandment sealed by his eternal sacrifice, the Sacrament of his Body and Blood.

God can do anything he wants to. There are no limits to his being. God could have just "cancelled" us if we were displeasing to him. But we have to try to understand that we are "Good" and we are "Loved".

We are loved to the extent that he prepares a sinless human body from which to procreate himself as a complete human being to live all the stages of human life before accepting death in atonement for the sins of the world. This is the will of our God revealed by Jesus. This is how much we are loved.

Mary is the perfect human being. She is sinless Woman as her Son is sinless Man. Jesus spent the first months of his humanity physically close to her heart and he never loses the sense of that closeness to Theotokos. Even in this today Mary and Jesus are close to each other in Eternity which reveals that the Immaculate Heart of Mary really is an essential part of the merciful forgiveness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. She is not God but there is none closer to his Love than she. Thank God for Mary the Mother of Our Lord.

Dear Lord, May I learn to love you as do your saints. Let it always be a struggle for me to find what seem to be the right words to express what is the meaning in the tangle of words, wishes, images and memories that is  my inner self. Let me be honest with a sincere desire for atonement for my sins. May all the world recognise that the riches and ambitions that are of this world are themselves nothing that will last. The only lasting joy is ours if we can follow your footsteps even to Calvary if you so wish. Help me to accept with an open heart the grace to atone for our sins that the prayers of Mary and the other saints of heaven win for me and all other sinners living and dead. Help me to know you better, love you more sincerely and to serve you more honestly in this world so that I can become ready to be engulphed by your Glory in the next.

 07/06/2024

All Feasts Days of the Institutional Church are in celebration of God's love for his creation. "Greater love has no man than he give up his life for the sake of his friends". The ultimate sign of God's Love for us is the abandonment of his own being, the emptying of his power and glory, to become human in body and soul exactly as we are. Jesus is thus "begotten not made". 

We are begotten of our human parents. Jesus' mother is Mary Immaculate,  the sinless one prepared by God to become the womb where God became man and grew for nine months before his birth. She is Theotokos and in her body the embryonic Jesus passed through all the stages of human growth, which we share with all mammals, before being born. It was in this embryo that the Sacred Heart of Jesus was first formed.

The passage from Hosea was written seven or eight hundred years before the birth of Christ. It is a warning that God's message to Moses and the Israelites was still in effect and that they should always live lives directed to righteousness.

St Paul prays with the Ephesians that we can be confident that the revelations of The Father have been completed and that Paul has the special grace to "explain" the mystery that is the complete Christ living in our souls; breadth, length, height and depth can be filled by the holiness that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

St John is the eye-witness that did not desert his crucified Lord. He was there when the crucified corpse was accepted by Mary and the other women. Before that he had seen the water and blood flow from the heart of the pierced one. The physical heart of Jesus had stopped and the hearts of his followers were desolate and hopeless in their unknowing.

Today's feast celebrates the resurrection of the Heart that continues to beat and is the first fruits of the New Creation that will be inaugurated by the Second Coming when we all can be filled with the utter fulness of God.

Dear Lord, the world in which I live has all the hallmarks of the last years of the Old Testament. We are all captivated by Mammon and our own persons and we are even worse than they. Tiny hearts of many are destroyed by their own parents before they ever see the light. Our Hierarchs have very rarely taken on the detachment from the things of this world which you declared to be essential if we are to do the will of your Father. Your "chosen people" have lost their respect for you and perpetrate unbelievable acts of cruelty. Let me pray for the forgiveness of my sins and let the whole world come to a similar acceptance of guilt knowing that our individual deaths end our only chance of being true to your creative love, symbolised in your Sacred Heart. God have mercy on us! Amen.

 06/06/2024

In today's Gospel instead of the disputes that Jesus usually had with the leaders of the Temple and Jewish Worship, there is a dialogue that results in mutual approval. The Scribe approves and enlarges on Jesus' reply to his original question that he had not framed as a challenge. 

He knew Jesus as the wandering Rabbi and miracle worker of whom the Chief priests were extremely wary for they could not categorize him as belonging to any of the groups that made up the "Church" of the Temple. 

He was not Sadducee or Pharisee, Essene or Zealot. Jesus had been welcomed by John, whose execution by Herod was still fresh in the memories of his followers, as the "Lamb of God" a phrase whose significance was yet to be made clear. 

The unnamed scribe was sure, however, as were so many of his contemporaries that this man, Jesus, was totally outside of their experience or knowledge and by his question he wanted to be able to come to an understanding of Jesus and the source of his charisma and miracles.

Twenty or thirty years later St Paul, also a learned scribe, has been fed by the "Lamb of God" ever since his experience of the "Glory of the Resurrection" and he too knows Jesus as a unique being but much more than that. Jesus is  the "only begotten" for it is only by himself becoming the victim that God can receive the sacrificial atonement for the offence that is sin.

The growth of the sin of Adam in the our world is so evident today and yet ignored by so many of us. Our minds are filled by so many earthly wonders, by so much beauty and intelligent "wranglings" that we have blocked out the questions that we need to ask Jesus who is the only "Way, Truth and Life". 

We can only find the lasting joy that we have been created to share by being one with the man Jesus in his answer "Listen, the Lord our God is the one Lord and you must love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.You must love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these."

We have not been left alone by our Lord to do this but we do need to open our hearts to the sacramental grace that still pours out from the "Lamb of God" that man bleeding out his life on Calvary.

Dear Lord, help me to learn and follow the love that you have lavished on your creation. Let me avoid all occasions of sin and treat all others with the kindness that I would like to receive from them. In our world, you  know that the sin you defeated is still being chosen by the people for whom you died to bring to eternal safety and Love. May Mary lead the heavenly chorus in prayers for our individual sanctity  which is the only way that your will can rule our world. I can still ask why so much evil is permitted to be completed on earth and hope that I can be answered. May Father, Son and Holy Spirit hear my prayer and let my heart be open to receive and accept an answer. I know that I am tiny but I am more than nothing for you have chosen to save me. Help me to be truly thankful for your grace. Amen

 05/06/2024

It seems that St Paul continued to conform to the Jewish daily prayer rituals even though he taught and celebrated the new Liturgy based on Jesus' last meal with his Apostles before his Final Sacrifice. Elsewhere he is also proud of his descent from Abraham and prays to God to let him change places with his unbelieving brethren and become dammed that they might be saved.

These moments from the first century that were first reported by word of mouth have become our scriptures and we can find in them all that we need to cooperate with the will of Father, Son and Holy Spirit to become dedicated to the holiness that "Our Father, who art in heaven" has created us to share.

In the Gospel, Jesus is today face to face with the casuistry that marks much of our human religious discussion even now. When that comes to the fore the "Casuists" have lost the desire for understanding  truth but only want to win an argument. 

Jesus evades the trap set for him and at the same time assures us that at our deaths we do leave our bodies and live on in our souls as the spirit created in the "image and likeness", for each one of us to be. That is heaven, the state of spiritual being where we join the angels and the saints and Mary in the never ending joy that is our perfected prayer in the presence of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Dear Lord help me deepen my faith as I live out this day. Let me avoid "cleverness and self-esteem". Your words are the Truth that I want to understand to the extent that you will let me. I do feel sad that there are many souls, human lives, that you have created who have remained and still remain in ignorance of your being. Sad because that picture does not match my idea of "Love" and I am fearful of why that should be. Help me to understand and so love you for what you are, the broken and pierced body on the hill outside the walls. I hope that out time is coming to the end and that there will soon be the new creation when heaven and earth will pass away but your word will stand. Maranatha Lord. Lord, Jesus come!