20/09/2024

Each morning when I begin to read the mass readings I also question myself as to what are my intentions. Why am I doing this self-imposed task?

When we read St Paul's preaching and encouragement we are in no doubt that he is striving with the whole of his being to share what he learnt from Christ on the road to Damascus. It was not only the sight of the Glory of the Resurrection that he received; he also received a mission in which he continued until the day of his martyrdom.

In today's letter he is desperate that he is losing some of his converts. Some are denying that the Resurrection ever happened but he is sure that we all are going to experience the same event that he witnessed the "first fruits of" in the personal epiphany that changed his life for ever.

Today's martyrs had been brought up in a civilization that had managed to bring order into the lives of millions of men and women for centuries. It was an order that was able to achieve a peaceful stable society that must have impressed the first Europeans from the continent of wars who first witnessed it. 

In many ways it was a delight of peaceful calm as was the Empire of the Chinese. It was however a totally human order with an unknowable world of Spirits that had to be appeased and ancestors for whom they brought immortality in Buddhist inspired "rebirth". 

The Christian FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT's revelation to Westerners in Palestine has no equivalent in any other place in this World.

I cannot not believe in FatherSonHolySpirit and in the Bible as the true story of God's intentions for mankind. I do not believe that to be one of the chosen people of the Lord is a result only of God's Providence, my birthright. I do believe that I can live in this world and by following the way, truth and life of Jesus become the holiness that God makes possible for all human beings.

Manmade technology means that all the world can receive the revelations that were first preached in Palestine. Even these ideas, weakly expressed but my own, can be accessed  anywhere on Earth. Could this be the reason that God has tolerated all the evil perpetrated in his name all over Europe and the Middle East?

I cannot forget that God is complete Truth and Mercy but his Justice can only be complete if each individual is proffered the opportunity to respond to his teaching.

This is today's answer to my self-imposed question.

Dear Lord, I have always felt sympathy for the unknown thousands slaughtered and driven out in the first land clearances of the Holy-Land recorded in the Old Testament. Also the aboriginal peoples encountered by European settlers in all the "new worlds" discovered outside of Europe were given short shift. You know that I am trying to be aware as much as is possible for me to find the "good" that you saw in creation. I can only be responsible for the soul that is the centre of my being, but hope my profession of faith is not a pandering to my pride but a true confession of how I try to know love and serve each day that I begin in this way. May my prayers be joined with those of Andrew Kim and the many others of all races who have accepted death rather than deny you. May your mother continue to lead all Angels and Saints and we sinners on earth and in Purgatory in praise of you and pleas for the Mercy that is needed by all the other souls that you have created.

 19/09/2024

"All generations shall call me Blessed". It is thus how Mary received God's announcement to all of us that from her generation onwards all human beings were to receive in this world the gift from our Creator that would enable us to avoid the sin that more than tarnishes the "Good" that God saw His Creation to be.

In that single historical event we learn that IAMIAM is three persons and that SON is to humble his eternal self to become a temporal human; true man; that he has become man within the only sinless being since Adam fertilized by the naturally spirit, Holy Spirit.

Of course, I am now wordlessly awestruck when considering that plain statement of how the story of Salvation began.

Today we read in the first and second readings of two sinners who had both seen the Lord. St Paul had been chosen; he had been blinded by the Resurrection and reborn as an adult to preach what he had to first learn for himself from the Apostles. He had been a notorious member of the Chief Priests' "Gestapo". How hard it must have been for Peter and the others to accept the conversion of the man whom they had witnessed participating in the murder by temple authority of their friend Stephen.

The second sinner is depicted performing a welcoming ceremony for an honoured guest that had been neglected by the host. I find the image of the woman using her hair to dry Jesus feet quite disturbing as she is of "ill repute" but whatever they were, Jesus forgave her her sins. There are many unanswered questions presented by Scripture and the identity of this woman and her subsequent history is yet another one.

The psalm that unites the Epistle and the Gospel is a song of thankful praise that should be the thanks of all mankind for the intervention that changed the choices that we in our God-given freedom can make to do justice to the free-gift of the loving mercy poured out in the human blood and agony of the cross. The whole of the Gospels of the New Testament is the history of FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT living as Jesus to create that only thing that can lead us away from temptation and deliver us from the evil that doesn't exist until we choose to prefer our own to the will of God.

Dear Lord, have mercy on all of us who continue to sin within the time of your creation. Angels, and Mary are the only ones of your created beings who are with you now in the naturally sinless spiritual and bodily way of being, that have never sinned. The Saints have all had their sins forgiven. I can do nothing more than implore that your Grace is as unlimited as you and can be poured out over all the peoples on earth to keep us as free from new sin as are the Holy Souls in Purgatory. May my soul be united with and by the prayers of Mary and all the saints within your Mystical Body which never fails to respond favourably to cries for mercy and forgiveness 

 18/09/2024

Would that St Paul's first letter to the Corinthians  been read and acted upon by the Jews who occupied what we now call Israel 80 odd years ago. Would that the Christian Germans had acted truly to the teaching of the Lord 100 years ago. Would that I had always acted according to the treasure of faith often buried under the shield that sin fatuously builds to protect my selfishness from the unblinking gaze of God.

All moral outrage at the material greed of others has to remove the plank that is my own sinful-self before condemning others. Our Lord came not to condemn us but to reveal the way, the truth and the life, his salvation. His own people had been privileged for centuries but each new generation found new ways to break their covenant with IAMIAM. 

Jesus warned us of the pains we would suffer if we did harm to children; he even encouraged us to  turn to IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT with the trusting faith that a child has in his Father. But he also condemns in today's Gospel the childishness of his generation of Israelis who still cannot maintain consistency in their response to the Prophets.

The Apostles preached the Resurrection and made it crystal clear that the Son of God had sealed for ever God's revelation of himself to humanity by the only acceptable Sacrifice to permanently eradicate sin from our beings. Each individual in all subsequent generations has the responsibility to live the life revealed by the way and the truth, we have to strive to keep God's Love alive in our hearts. 

There is nothing evil in our world that does not come from the individual wills acting alone or in a joint-enterprise (millions of us) of the only being which has been created as the "image and likeness" of he who taught us that the only way to live righteously is to never put our self before our neighbour. We have to become the caring family founded on Calvary.

We have to know that "God's unblinking gaze" is that of the Love that "passeth all understanding" and will always carry the lost sheep back to the fold; we have to do more than just wait for the Spirit to move us but actively seek out ways to keep ourselves free from the contamination that is Mammon, the triviality of the kingdom condemned and yet the abode that is saved by the Cross of Jesus. 

Dear Lord, Come again to save us from ourselves as we are still finding new ways to kill each other and in no way living the life of Love for others as you showed us how. The Covenants were replaced by your Sacraments created out of your human death on Calvary. Let the Church of Peter pull itself out of the things of this world and unite itself with Church of Love that is the Communion of Saints founded as a New Holy Family and also present  although hidden by lace, aesthetics and wealth, in the hearts of some institutional clergy. I remember that St Paul was a Pharisee. I can only be myself in this generation and know that all the "good" about my life comes from you whom I have in my sins oftentimes ignored and defied. May I retain the Grace freely given to me and may your loving mercy be channeled through the Prayers of Mary and all the saints to all sinners on Earth and in Purgatory. Amen.

 17/09/2024

I don't know whether or not St Paul was the first to use the image of our own human bodies to explain the relationship we have with each other in any organisation, but his image has been the most widely known. He had been forced into thinking about what had been happening within the groups in various locations throughout the Middle East since he and the Apostles had "gone out to the whole world" in response to the commandment of the Resurrection.

We all know that each one of us is a different unit with personal attributes that we all share but to different degrees. St Paul knew that he had to know, love and serve God. I expect that he began each day with the  prayer of the People of God. 

"Listen, Israel IAMIAM one God and you shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart and strength."

He may not have used the exact words but he was, as Jesus and all the Apostles,  a Jew with a yearning to know God and do nothing but his will on Earth. He had been unceremoniously stopped in his tracks on the Road to Damascus and totally converted to become a servant of Christ Our Lord and nothing was able to separate him from the unforgettable intensity of the moment he had seen IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and lived.

I think that in a short time he became shocked by the realisation that his one track mind was not duplicated in those to whom he had preached and so he had been forced into creating a reliable "organisation chart" so that his converts could know how to remain together as one body in the Lord.

It was Jesus who founded "the Church" on St Peter which guided by St Paul soon become the Hierarchical Institution that it has remained to this day. St Peter knew that he had been given a special task to prepare for the "Second Coming", but Jesus' enigmatical answer to his "What about this man?" question about St John reveals that he suspected that his "Church" was not the exclusive way to Salvation that later worldly Clergy have claimed it to be.

Dear Lord, I am here 2000 years after your Resurrection and still focused on your revelation of New Life, of Salvation by the forgiveness of sin and the Eternal Life which will be ours at the end of time. Help me to live with the "Last things" as taught by your servant St Robert never forgotten. May I find my way to the grace that is your response to the prayers of Mary, Angels and Saints and we sinners still on Earth. Let us share grace with the Holy Souls who in Purgatory are secure that after your justice has run its course they will be welcomed into the Joy for which we have all been created. Amen

 16/09/2024

The readings that are read at mass are to prepare us to receive the Sacrament that is the result of the final acts of the Incarnate Son. Jesus is with us in the Sacrament, the same Jesus who had been known to Mary from the moment of Incarnation announced by an Angel. The same Jesus who is  IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT without beginning and without end.

The forerunner of all Christian liturgical rites is the "meeting" in Corinth that had got out of hand. It had become an all too human social event where the disunity of individuals had become its hallmark rather than the "common prayer" that St Paul had taught to them.

There has never been anything like  "Jesus' Last Supper". It is the unique sacred dedication of the twelve Apostles to their Sacramental Mission to "do this in memory of me". This Sacramental mission was given to those at table with the Lord; they became the Christian priests, the first of many who would preach the Resurrection and repeat the Sacramental words that are eternally uttered by the mouth of God.

The Church that was known by today's martyrs Cyprian and Cornelius was in a state of disunity. Many Christians had died in persecution and many more had apostatised. All the Bishops were faced with the problem of what to do about those who had not been strong enough to follow Our Lord into untimely, painful and humiliating death, those known as "Lapsi". How could they, who had even burnt their scriptures and bowed down before idols, return to the communities which had remained steadfast?

We do not know what happened in the subsequent lives of those who two hundred years before the episcopy of today's saints had met and been forgiven by Jesus. The Church of Cyprian and Cornelius was exactly like we are, a Church of the "blessed ones who have not seen and yet believe". 

Today's readings take us to Paul's foundation at Corinth which was in disarray. Two hundred years later, many challenged the moral authority of the Pope and Bishop Cyprian. Disputes such as these have continued to mar the purity of Jesus' foundation on St Peter. In the Gospel Jesus praises the Centurion for understanding how authority could be used in this world. There has never been a generation since the first century that has not had to discern for itself how to implement God's will in this world and it is thus that we have fulfilled Jesus' hard saying "I do not come to bring peace into the World" by strife among family and friends.

For myself, I have to stand with Mary and John and pray that I too can become part of that New Holy Family which seeks to live in the Love of God and recognises the total Authority which is not of this world. This is not a "cop out" from Life but is an authoritative principal for us all to adopt to keep us free from sin.

Dear Lord, I always feel awkward as I raise my mind and heart to you for you know everything and I cannot imagine how that must be for you. I can beat my breast and confess my sins but am never sure that I am truly opening myself to what it is that you see in me. There is a seed of goodness planted in all our hearts and we must seek this out to live not according to the standards of this world but become by delighting in your grace beings that you fill with love to shine in the material darkness which far too often overpowers the puniness' that is, a human will such as mine. May my prayers unite in a "Stream of Divine Consciousness" with those of Mary, Angels, Saints and all those poor "Lapsi" who are now gratefully accepting the mercy which they refused on Earth, the ultimate pardon of Purgatory for all who sincerely repent of their sins. Amen

 15/09/2024

Today's Gospel contains another of Jesus' "buts". He first asks for a summary of how the world sees him. To do that today would be a lifetime's work, a summary of all that has ever been written about God and our relationship with IAMIAM; an Old Testament and a New together with all the other commentaries that have ever been made about IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. 

Our God is only one BEING and I too am only one being. Jesus asks me the same question, directly to my face; he in the Palestine of the Romans and I at my desk two thousand years later. He does not want  me to condense the wisdom of the ages in my being. He trusts every human being to be able to face this direct question throughout our lives.

He knows me in the same way that I know my family. He has a wondrous Love for me and every other person that has ever lived, is living or will in the future but I have to filter through a mind that has often been cluttered and lost in the tangle that is it, my body and soul; a sometime sinful mess out of which I am being pulled by "Amazing Grace".

My body is surviving largely as the result of the wonders of man-made science which has unravelled many of the mysteries of bodily life. My mind is a human intelligence that is able to inform and seek out Truth. My soul is pure spirit that unifies the "I" of my being; it is the gift by which God shows to us all that he is FatherSonHolySpirit, the Creator, the Guide, the Saviour of us all.

We all have to respond directly to "Who do you say I am?". Parroting "Lord, Lord", the Lord's Prayer, the Creed is not enough. Our lives are all "events" in time. Our "event" has to respond to the "Jesus event" that is the "timelessness" of Eternity entering into creation as "True man and True God". 

It is the very Nature of mankind to know, love and serve, and we can turn this into temporal reality by joining in Peter's answer to his Lord and ours. "You are the Christ, Son of the Living God." 

The Nature of God is totally knowing, loving, and serving by revealing his purpose to mere children. He is, indeed, the Ever-greater but there is nothing imaginary about his creation and his Love for all. He is revealed on the Cross and is boundless, everlasting and his Grace can be accessed by our deeds, our way of life for he came to save not to condemn.

Dear Lord, help me to truly avoid error in my thoughts. Help me to remain in your grace. Help me to avoid sin in my thoughts words and deeds. Let me be the being You created me to become. You know how I feel unguilty about my words today to you. Let me continue to be conscious of my being always within your consciousness as an individual sinner who can strive to do your will for him. May my prayers join those of Mary, Angels and all the Saints in the Unity that is your Mystical Body on Earth, Heaven and Purgatory, the human unity that thrives in the Mercy that you poured over all creation and which, as in this morning's readings, you ask us all to acknowledge and prove by our actions.

 14/092024

For some time now, I have tried to put myself into the mindset of the first Christians. 

The first conversions were made not by the beauty of a liturgy or the intellectual power of a logically systemized dogma, a Theology, but by the shared charisma of the first believers. These human beings were filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit and it was into this community of joy that all converts were attracted and welcomed. 

They also expected that the promised return would happen in their own lifetimes.

Human patience can be stretched but for each of us there are limits. Moses' followers had had enough for their "slavery" to the Egyptians had kept them alive in comfort. The life of the desert although lived in freedom was intolerably harsh, their internal elastic bands broke and they defied both IAMIAM and Moses.

The Jewish early Christians had grown up listening to the readings of the scrolls and the wisdom of the Rabbis, but for the gentile converts part of the "Good News" that they heard from the all Jewish Apostles was the prefiguring of Christ to be found in the Old Testament. We continue to treat it as such.

Our FatherSonHolySpirit never runs out of Love; he is eternally patient. Jew and Gentile converts all share the New Life that is limited in our bodies but without end for our souls. The Old Testament is a training ground for us to use to prepare our souls for the one historical event that reveals the Glory that awaits each one of us.

The Resurrection unites the first believers and us for all time. We are united in the Spiritual Body of Christ who rose from the dead. We all have to choose this for ourselves as we are the new Chosen People, chosen to accept or reject the place prepared for each one of us by our resurrected and ascended Lord.

We must never forget, however, that this place is not a birthright but has been bought for us by the triumph and horror that is the "True man's" true death on the Cross. "By this sign" we will conquer not the world, for that is an empty triumph, but the weakness that draws us into sin. 

We will become an individual saved by our choice to follow the Son "sent by God not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved."

Dear Lord, you know that I still struggle to remain free from sin. You know that my mind is still filled with all sorts of images of remembered failures. You also know that there is also a continuing hope that I can remain true to you. To your teaching but most of all true to the remembrance of the suffering that FatherSonHolySpirit undertook in the person of Jesus to eliminate the Evil created by sin. May my prayers join those of Mary, the Angels and all the saints in that joyful moment  when all is completed and I will sin no more. Let us all become part of the community of souls, the Church of Love the New Holy Family that remains untainted by the world "Son behold your mother, Mother behold your son". May I, this day, remain in your merciful care as I say "Our Father.......