08/11/2024

"No one can serve two masters" begins Jesus' summary of his discourse that starts with today's Gospel reading. This is perfectly clear to me but the parable of the dishonest steward has always been hard for me to grasp. It seems to tell me that we can learn from dishonest business practises how to live as Christians, honest to God.

The continuation of this preaching makes it clear that Jesus is not praising dishonesty but warning us not to get tied into the standards of the material life of the era into which we are born. He is not telling us that the excuses of the military as at the Nuremburg Trials  "I was only following orders" or the ubiquitous "everybody else does it" of the pilferer of trifles "from work" and the killers of the unborn are ever acceptable to Our Father who always means what he says. "Thou shalt not kill", "Thou shalt not steal".

We are judged by how each one of us has upheld the will of God during our lifetimes. 

We are not judged by our adherence to  the Splendour of Liturgy and depth of Theology of the descendant of the Church founded on St Peter.

We are not judged by our nationality. "In God we trust" stamped into coinage means nothing to our loving Father and just Judge.

We are always free to decide for ourselves how we, who naked at birth, have been clothed first with parental love and cultural heritage, and, as we grew to adulthood, ever more absorbed our worldly culture chose between it and the revealed will of Our Father in our daily lives.  At death our soul again naked has to be ready to face IAMFATHERSONANDHOLYSPIRIT who knows how we have cared for his gifts to us.

God is Love and he trusts us to accept The Bible as the complete revelation of His Loving intentions for creation. It brings Truth into the world. It is the Light which we keep on ignoring as Mammon continues to captivate us by ever new material power and pleasures. We are all souls and become the Children of Light, even in this world when we prepare ourselves to receive the Grace created for us by our Incarnate FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT on Calvary. 

We are always free to choose. I hope that I am doing so correctly at this moment.

Dear Lord, I always begin the day with the wish to do your will but frequently get it wrong. My hope is always for forgiveness as I am guilty of sinning far too often in this world and thus resisting the grace that you show to all the world on Calvary. May myself and all the sinners of this world become worthy of  your trust that you reveal in our freedom of will which we far too often misuse in our defiance of you. May my unspoken prayers clear my mind so that I can be ever open to your grace which is directed to your Church by Mary, Angels and Saints from their place with you. May all the Holy Souls continue in the realization of what they missed on earth and thus thank you continually in their suffering atonement. May those for whom I now pray in my heart become aware of your grace and turn away from the world of sin once more into your embrace. Amen

 7/11/2024

Our Father has always been concerned for the state of each individual soul he has created to know love and serve within our physical bodies in this material universe.

He, first of all, guided the patriarchs and the prophets, but the chosen people were unable to break free from their attachment to this world.

The incarnate Son lived as does all mankind, all mammals, from fertilized egg to death. God on earth is the event that completes with the Resurrection for everyone God's demonstration of his Supreme Being, Infinite Knowledge and Total Love. 

The Hebrews never got it completely right about IAMIAM. 

They became another current in the progress of Time. In Mary's womb FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT stops and restarts the being that failed him in the Garden and in the Promised Land but now human body and soul are doubly blessed by Incarnate Son.

This time he promises to be with us until the end of time. He promises always to keep the spiritual line between Him and each one of us open at His end. 

 God offers himself Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Birth, Death and Resurrection of Son as Grace for us to accept with pure hearts,

In today mass readings, St Paul is ready to face all hardships to announce this Good News, Jesus teaches us that it is a source of joy in heaven when we renounce sin and listen to our inner voice that is calling us to forgiveness and David shows how and why to sing.

O sing to the Lord, sing His praise,

Tell all his wonderful works!

Be proud of his Holy Name

Let the hearts that seek, the Lord rejoice.

Dear Lord, May my soul never be blocked from listening to you. May my mind remain as a child always lost in learning the wonder of your Love. May my body know that you have shared its misfortunes in away far more serious than my petty pains and discomforts. Help me to understand how it has been possible for your foundation on St Peter to have been as atrociously sinful as it has been. Help me to be obedient to your will and secure in your words from the cross to St John and your mother. May the whole world come to realise that for "Your will to be done on earth" each one of us has to avoid sin. You still trust us with the freedom of choice that is part of the "image and likeness" that only we can become by our individual choices. May the prayers of Heaven led by Mary shower down Mercy onto all sinners here and in Purgatory and may there be a reawakening in the hearts of us all as there was in the first years announced by the Apostles. Amen

 6/11/2024

There have been many ways throughout the two millennia since Jesus challenged his disciples and us  as he did with the "hard saying" preserved in this morning's gospel, that we have tried to accommodate Jesus' use of words into our Christian Faith. "Hate" is not "Love" nor is it "Honour". "Love thy neighbour as thyself." "Honour thy father and thy mother". 

Our instant personal reaction is to try by interpretation to find a way out of the warning that living our lives according to the teaching of Our Lord requires us to hate both our families and ourselves. 

Our reactions to the Word are always personal. God is not an abstraction. He is three persons that are separate beings but are identical with each other. 

The Trinity is not some human thinking. It is a "hard fact" of reality revealed to Mary by the announcement of Gabriel. When we say "God" we acknowledge that the IAMIAM revealed to Moses and followed by Mary is FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. This is He whom we love and serve.

St Paul tells the Philippians that they must shine in this world by being virtuous in contrast to those who form a "deceitful and underhand brood". It would be easy to "hate" those thus described but to hate those we have known since childhood, our family and our literal neighbours has got to be informed and clarified by the total New Testament.

As for hating myself, that is easy for me but knowing that Jesus died to rescue me from the clutches of Satan has to tell me that there is something about me and all of us that can respond to such great Love and become persons that welcome and accept the revelations of Our Father. 

O Lord, may we all be strengthened by your loving infinite mercy. May we never be led into temptation by  those who should be leading us along the path to the personal Calvary that we can endure because you first showed us the way. Let us be secure in your teaching and totally aware that there is nothing in this world that is powerful enough to block the grace that I seek in prayer. Your grace has never forced itself upon us but is always ready to answer our supplication. May the prayers of Mary and the Holy Ones of Heaven, both human and Angelic, include my family and me in their pleas for your Mercy to be showered down as the rose-petals beloved of St Therese and may the Holy Souls receive their punishment with loving gratitude, Amen.

 5/11/2024

There is nothing that we can do during our lives that is more essential than doing the will of God. 

We, therefore, have to scrutinise all of our habitual actions that are a result of Providence and cancel all our worldly plans that do not comply with the will of God as completely revealed in the Bible.

At the time of Jesus, abandoning female babies to die was a common cultural practice. Today, preventing conception is the norm in most of our world. If there is a "mistake" the child is killed in it's mother's womb.

The Western Culture  into which I was born has completely changed in my lifetime from being vaguely trying to be Christian into one that promotes and celebrates the satisfaction of our physical appetites as the only reason  for living.

In today's parable the invited guests refused the invitation. The refusals were all within the acceptable cultural norms that were those into which they had been born. 

During Europe's equivalent of the Cultural Revolution the then rulers claimed to be doing the "Will of God" by killing opponents for their's was the only true Faith. 

The men who plotted to destroy the English Parliament this day in 1605 excused themselves for their sinful actions by claiming to be doing the will of God who was using them to protect the Catholic Church.

"Sorry Lord, I can't come to your banquet for I am busy doing your will by breaking your commandments" is still the reality of the evil paradox which is revealed throughout history and of which we must be wary during our lifetimes.

"Everybody does it" is the Catholic cultural blanket that stops us asking ourselves why we go to accept the Lord's Body but never go to confession.

Dear Lord, Today my prayer is the hymn of praise that St Paul uses in today's letter to the Philippians 

His state was divine,

Yet He did not cling

To his equality with God,

But emptied himself

To assume the condition of a slave

And became as all men are;

And being as all men are 

He became humbler yet

Even to accepting death,

Death on a cross.

But God raised him  high

And gave him the name

Which is above all other names 

So that all beings in heaven

On earth and in the underworld

Should bend the knee at the name of Jesus

And that every tongue should acclaim 

Jesus Christ as Lord,

To the Glory of God the Father.  Amen

 

 04/11/2024

In today's first reading, St Paul speaks to the Philippians  and to the whole world about how to show that being "in Christ" brings unity. He himself has had such a polar-shift of conversion, persecutor to Apostle that he is anxious that his Churches maintain the same spiritual unity with Christ that has become his own complete earthly life.

A century or so later Church Unity which is based solely on  Apostolic revelation is used to counter those who are indulging their own egos by always knowing better than the Apostles. The Gnostics were not the first or the last to preach their personal "Good News" a product of egos too big for their own good.

Today's saint, Charles Borromeo, was a hero of what Historians call the counter-reformation which was an attempt by our shamefully worldly church to defend itself against the progress of Protestantism. He is remembered for his personal righteousness and his public works of charity during the plague in Milan.

Fifteen hundred year before St Charles, and very shortly after the deaths of the Apostles those first Christians convinced by those who had witnessed the Life, Death and Resurrection had come to realise that in their lifetimes there was not going to be the "return" that they had had preached to them. 

They had not been left helpless without a shepherd but still many did create their own solutions to the same disappointment that the Apostles had been unable to endure in the garden and on Calvary. 

All of today's multiplicity of "Churches" comes about because we have never been completely satisfied with the never-changing revelation that is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT's warning/message that our whole lives have to be lived out trying to find his will for us while all the time putting the needs of others before our own.

"Woman behold thy son. Son behold thy mother." Speaking from the cross, Christ reveals how he will be with us to the end of time in this his  New Holy Family.

Dear Lord, You taught us to pray. You taught us that your oneness is a Trinity and Eternal. You placed us in the care of your own mother. Your Apostles taught us Your Truth that there is one Spiritual Community our Church but also that it is not of this world. Help me to remain faithful to You and Your Mother and become able to genuinely put others before myself. May the sins of the world and my own sins be forgiven and may the Holy Souls soon join the Saints for whom there is an endless peace in the complete Love of Our Father. Amen

 02/11/2024

"What's it all about John?" were the last words to me of a friend as he lay dying. Shortly afterwards he learns the answer. 

He "learns" and still "knows" because to be with God is to be beyond time. St Paul today confirms in writing to the Corinthians that we pass from life in a "twinkling of an eye" into the deathless eternity beyond the material universe, where we will know God as he has always known us.

Throughout his life on Earth Jesus has always taught us that our mortal lives are a gift from the Father, they are like lamps that need oil to burn, they are to be unspotted wedding "outfits", they are to be lived in the spirit of always putting the needs of others before our own.

In our only life on earth, we have to listen to the teaching of Jesus and always be aware of IamFatherSonHolySpirit by striving with all our being to be guided by everything that has been revealed in Scripture.

Job laments his lack of writing tools to record his experience of living in the hands of God without any control of anything beyond his own being. Millions of us in the three millennia since then have recorded billions of thoughts and prayers but we are still faced until our final moments, by the same question as was Mike.

My friend  died quietly into eternity. He had lived for 90 years and for most of them he, as do I, knew the teaching of the Church but in his last seconds of bodily life he knew that he was dying into the answer that we can only find in that final milli-second when we learn whether or not our death is the end or the new beginning.

May his soul and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in Peace and  may the Holy Souls in Purgatory  welcome the second chance that only the infinite mercy of God can provide for them. Amen

Dear Lord let me sincerely pray that the dead be loosed from their sins for that is a "good and holy thing to do". You know my parents and all other family members whom I have forgotten. There are some good friends, priests but many others who pass through my mind as I write this. Mary is always sinless and thus fit to be your mother whom you gave to us as you came to the end of the bodily torture you endured for us. May she lead the Saints and Angels in the collection of the "rose petals" that you never cease to shower down on us and the Holy Souls to bring the overpowering defeat of the evil that delights us into sin on earth but reveals its complete uselessness at the instant we see that Your Truth banishes all who ignore both Our Father and Your teaching. Amen

 01/11/2024

On this year's feast of All Saints I have no problem in accepting the writings that have been collected and saved by the "Bishops" who unexpectedly had had to continue the mission of the Apostles.

I don't think that there are any records of how those who had expected to see the return of Jesus reacted to the realisation that they and their descendants were having to continue to live in the unchanged world that they had known since birth.. The Old Testament was already an accepted text when Jesus read from the scrolls and made his own "translation" in the synagogue of Nazareth, but the New Testament was still in the process of compilation.

The beatitudes which Jesus confers on the crowd in today's Gospel are the complement to the Ten Commandments revealed through Moses. We must obey the Law to enable us become the "Saints" who have attained the human holiness that is the target for us all set by IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

Each of us can become in this world someone who is "Abused, persecuted, calumniated and able to not only accept these hardships but also to be joyful in them" for  this is proof that we are following the only way, the Jesus Son of God way, to  Heaven.

We must, however, never forget that this is only possible when we believe/know  in the depths of our being that Jesus is the Son of God and it is only through his insulted and spat upon, naked and derided, scourged and pierced human body that his human blood becomes the grace that never ceases to flow over all the world.

Even though there are many who do not accept John's vision as a divine revelation (it is considered to be an example of a literary genre classified as "Jewish Apocalyptic") it is an extremely powerful attempt to express the total otherness of the Spiritual Reality that is also created by God.

There is, however, nothing that is unreal about the loving grace which flows out of the empirical reality of the Incarnation undergoing death for us on the cross, the only sign of Eternity by which we can live up to the will of he to whom with Jesus and all the Saints we pray "Our Father".

Dear Lord, Help me to be what you want for me to be in this world. You know us in complete intimacy but we have to find for ourselves what is the image and likeness that we have to become to do your will for us on earth. You bless each of us each day and when we accept your blessing we become  holy in your sight but always vulnerable to Devil, World and Flesh. Help me to treat my body with the respect due to a gift from You, let the World with all its deceits be for me the irrelevance that it is between me and You, and let the Breastplate of St Michael be my sure defence against the snares of the devil who is sure to fail in his assaults on my soul when I call out for your help. May my prayers become mingled with the stream of praise led by Mary and followed by all the saints that never ceases to be raised in the  Eternity of the Blessed who see your face. Amen.