07/01/2025

John tells us that we should love one another because by consciously doing so we become the image and likeness that IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT created us to be. 

Our bodies have been created out of nothing in a process of creative evolution that can be understand by studying the evidence that has accumulated in organic remains that over millions of years have become as stone.

The bodies that we know as ours are totally limited by the laws of matter and have a limited "shelf-life".

Our non physical awareness of self has an empirical knowledge of all that is not "me" centred in the "I" which is "iam" and is revealed to be the "image and likeness" of our Creator, IAMIAM.

My being, my "iam" lives in consciousness of self and aware that my body has physical needs exactly as do all animals. 

Towards the end of his long life St John still knows that Jesus is not only his beloved friend but also knows that he is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT who is the very being of Love.

He passes down his certainty that if each one of us strives to live in the Love that is the Being of God we will truly be able to become the "image  and likeness" and thus cooperate with "Our Father, who art in heaven" until the moment when we see "God as he really is".

Dear Lord, You know that I am still trying to live according to your will as revealed in the Scriptures. Let me not get impressed by my own words for You and I both know how my being fails dismally to become "image and likeness". I, a sinner, am aware how much of your grace I have spurned and pray that I will be able make amends for my cooperation with "devil, world and flesh" which were denounced at my baptism. May Mary and all the Saints help me in these days remaining to me that I truly repent and live according to your will and striving to make amends for all my sins. Amen

 06/01/2025

I always try to put myself into the same  mind-set as those who first became the "Church" in the "real-time" that is recorded in the scriptures. 

The groups of people to whom St John wrote were only different from us in their lack of technology.

Those first century Greeks and Jews were the first products of human civilization that had for even then centuries faced the same questioning that was confronted by pure free human intellect in the case of the Greeks and by the same human intellect guided by God's revelation in the case of the Jews.

Each individual then as today can only understand the "why?" of his/her own being by confronting the fact of their own deaths. 

For the Greeks the philosophising of Socrates became intolerable and those for whom the celebration of the beauty of a purely human life was the totality of being ordered him to end his own life. He did so.

"I am the bread of life" "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood" were concepts that were totally intolerable to the Jews and they had the Romans, followers and admirers of Hellenic culture,  torture Jesus to death.

The resurrection and all the historical events recorded in the Bible are the complete "playbook" for human life. We are all ensouled bodies who need to live in this world guided by FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. We have this one chance to prepare ourselves for the judgement that  comes with our inevitable death.

When we open our beings to grace, the spiritual help that comes from God we have to be aware that it is very easy for us to become misguided by the seeming virtue promulgated by the unholiness of that enemy of the human race we call the Devil and all his works that are to be found in the world and in the flesh. 

Revelation is complete. Jesus is the Resurrection and he has completed the revelation of God's purpose in creating the Image and Likeness that is himself, the template for our humanity.

By this you know the Spirit of God. 

                Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is from God,

                                 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God

Dear Lord, help me to resist all temptations which even when they seem to be of benefit to me are in reality the work of the Devil. You know that I am not aware of the "spirits" which surround my physical being but recognise that my true life is in my soul which is confined in a material body in a material  world. We all can only know the Holy Spirit by raising our hearts and minds, our souls, to You and refusing the clutter of materialism that is powerful enough to keep our attention to the detriment of the soul that you have entrusted to the control of each one of us. You have never left any of us to search for you without help for on Calvary you entrusted John and Mary to the maternal and filial love of each other that forms the Heart of your Mystical Body that will be with us on Earth to the End of Time. You my God can understand the confusion that this prayer seems to be . I pray for your help that I may be able to understand more and thus become enveloped in your grace that pours out to forgive us sinners here on Earth and the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Amen, 

 05/01/2025

I, along with all mankind, live my life in a body that is the product of millions of years of evolution. Our Creator is not constricted by the time that is the outcome of the Love, "let there be light" with which the IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT chooses to reveal in the "Good" that is his creation. 

The sole purpose of  our awareness of being is to learn how to return that Love. There has always been only one human being who knows the Father, only one being who has the message of eternal truth, only one who knows each created being better than we know ourselves.

Today the Church chooses to remember and give thanks for the moment in time when the Glory of Eternal Love chose to be totally present to the whole world within time in the form of a new-born whose crib was the feeding trough of an animal shelter.

Only Jesus can know why the freedom that was integral to our first parents was so easily misguided and how it did such an inordinate amount of damage to Divine Love that it was he who chose to become the perfect human sacrifice to take away the sins of the world. 

Only Jesus can know why it was that IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, the Word, came into the time of our material universe at the time he did. The disobedience of Adam/Eve is obvious but, there does not seem to be anything unique about the failings of Temple Religion at that moment in historical time. 

The human choices made by the "Early Church" soon corrupted the visions, "the Epiphanies" of the converts and the human jockeying for positions that had marred the Apostles even in the lifetime of Jesus, became evermore obvious and viscous.

We have to love God for he never gives up on us and even though so much harm has been brought into the world by the Church founded on Peter as a result of the human failings of her members, clergy and lay, we are, each one of us, still able, by using our freedom, to make the right choices that are acceptable to Our Father for the merciful love of God is not confined in any person or institution. 

The only door that has to be opened for it to enter our being is operated by our own will.

Dear Lord let all the souls that form your mystical presence by the right choices we make continue to return the Love that you never cease to pour out over all your creation, seen and unseen. Let us become aware of the prayers of Mary and all the saints and consciously join our own to theirs that with the human hope that you return soon as mankind is still no better than were the priests, scribes and Pharisees who conspired with the Empire, the kingdom of this world, to kill you by torture and hanging you on a cross by means of iron nails driven through the flesh of your hands and feet. Help us to overturn  our own sins that were the cause of so much pain. Come back soon Dear Lord you know that we have corrupted your Church and continue to misuse our corporal lives by devotion to devil, world and flesh. Maranatha, please save us from ourselves. Amen

 04/01/3025

I know that I am not a biblical scholar. I sometimes regret this in the same way I regret not having put my mind to Science during my schooldays. 

I am reminded of this today as I am taking note for the first time in my life of the historical discrepancy between John and the other Gospels in this account of the first meeting between Jesus and those who were to become the core of his "Church".

I have always liked to picture "Our Lord" walking on the beach at Capernaum and out of the blue summoning the fishermen to follow him. That they did so has always filled me with awe at the charisma of Jesus. Jesus did not have the same effect on his own family who were so ashamed by his  claim to be the "Jubiliee" in person at their local Synagogue that they declared that he was mad.

John's account of how the two pairs of brothers became the first disciples does not have the drama  of the fishermen instantly leaving their boats, nets and families. It is, however, more in keeping with the continuity of the narrative that begins with the Annunciation in that the brothers were disciples of "The Baptist" and thus were aware that their "voice crying in the wilderness" was preparing the way for one much greater than he. They had found the Messiah who is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

Dear Lord, help me to consolidate my faith. Help me to understand the message that is your life and works. Faith comes before understanding because we are all enabled to live righteously by making a personal choice. No-one can understand you who are the "Ever-greater" but you know each one of us and always respond when we totally commit ourselves to your offer of salvation that began publicly in Capernaum so many years ago. It was to forgive the sins of the devil, world and flesh that you walked among us so we can all turn to you and say "forgive us our trespasses" and we can also love our neighbour by making sure that we completely forgive those "who trespass against us". Let my prayers join the chorus of praise led by Mary and all the Saints that channels your forgiveness to all sinners on Earth and in Purgatory.

 03/01/2025

All that we know about God and his purpose in creating our beings is imparted to us by the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. St John tells us that when Jesus returns we shall see him as he really is because we shall all be like him. St Paul gives us the same message when tells us that at the end of time God will be "all in all ".

The Apostles and their first followers were all separate individual persons who recognised that the longing for permanence in the depths of their beings could only be satisfied by the reality of IAMIAM who during their times was revealing himself to be IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT the source of loving perfection that could be recognised and worshipped by our human intellect. 

They all preached the New Life of the Resurrection. 

Thus the bedrock of my life today is the belief that I am alive as a thinking human being because God loves me. I know that the things about me, and I too, are real but will all pass away. The words that are now appearing on the screen come from my being that tells me it needs to conform itself to the revelations of its creator.

Not only can I know, love and serve but also have the obligation to do so. I can become holy because the Son of God is "The lamb that takes away the sins of the world" and by the sacrifice of Son on Calvary, Our Father creates the grace that Holy Spirit brings as spiritual food to maintain the loving freedom that we create as the "Mystical Body of Christ" in spite of the Devil, World and the Flesh always biting at our heels to bring us into the pain of the Nothing that is separation from the Joy of life with the All-in-All.

Dear Lord, may I continue to open myself to your grace which never ceases to seek out the souls that have been closed off to you. It is human will that chooses to ignore your revelations and continue living in defiance of your Commandments. Let me practise sincere repentance for all past sins and share in the pains that you endured to enable me to become again the being created to know, love and serve not because I seek any future reward  but because I truly know that serving you in sincerity is itself a grace far greater than anything of which I can be worthy. May my prayers join those of Mary and all the saints in seeking grace for us sinners here on earth and for the Holy Souls who can suffer happily for they now know the justice of their punishment that will have an end.

 02/01/2025

Yesterday I got into a bit of a mess as I tried to reflect on Mary's part in God's Loving Kindness. So did the Early Church.

Today's Saints, Basil and Gregory lived in a time after Constantine's acceptance of Christianity that was the battleground where the dogmas and structures that have become Theology were first tackled by human reason.

Our Faith is based on the interventions and revelations made by God that are recorded in the Scriptures. Our acceptance and understanding of them is a matter for the human rationality which is part of our "image and likeness".

Neither of today's saints were ambitious for personal renown. Both wanted to live a life of prayer as monks and grow in the Love of God. 

They could not, however, ignore the way in which so many Bishops of their day had "lost the plot" and wanted to deny that Jesus was "True man and True God" as defined by the Council at Nicaea called by Constantine largely to counter the Arian controversy that broke the unity of Eastern Orthodoxy many years before the Protestant Reformation did the same for the Roman Church.

Jesus' foundation on St Peter has always faced conflict from without and within. St Paul argued fiercely with St Peter and with Judaizers. Jesus himself was the first victim of persecution resulting from religion instigating the state to take action against its opponents.

One of the strange facts of history is that Constantine's nephew Julian who is remembered by  the soubriquet, "the Apostate" given to him by St Basil's brother, another St Gregory but this time of Nyasa, studied at the same time in the same Athenian "schools"  as did today's saints. 

The trio Basil, Gregory and Julian were personally acquainted . The Saints received the same education and conditioning as did the "paganizer" and persecutor of Christianity but with diametrically opposed results.

Dear Lord, you know that I am interested in Church History as a human who wants to understand his heritage. I hope that I am sincere in the beliefs as formulated at Nicaea. I also pray that my heart is sincerely seeking for the meaning of the many words that have survived from the past and that "true God from true God, true man from true man, begotten not made, of One Being with the Father" are not only words to be remembered but are the Truth that has been revealed through the Scriptures from the time of Abraham until your Ascension into the timeless eternal Beginning which you are with the Father and Holy Spirit in the Glory that we can only adore in silent wonder and pray that we can become acceptable to you as we seek pardon for our trespasses and show by our deeds that we have only loving forgiveness for those who trespass against us. Maranatha, Lord. May Our Lord Jesus soon return. Amen.

01/01/2025

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.

I could be jealous of Mary's immaculate conception but how can any one of us know the pains that it must have brought to her? She is the Church Triumphant in person but that triumph is also the result of the pains she shared with her son.  Her pains are not visible but the "sword  thrust" predicted by Simeon is part of the mystery of the atonement made for us on Calvary. 

The apostles and disciples who first knew Mary as the mother of their friend Jesus and with whom they met the  Resurrected Lord and experienced the Spiritual Conversion of  Pentecost do not have a lot to say about her but they knew  that her "Yes" to her role in God's plan was essential for the Spiritual Revolution that can bring all souls to Salvation.

Forgive me Lord for not appreciating the devotion of your mother and her place in the events of salvation that she witnessed and shared. It is not only joy that The Mother of Our God treasures in her heart. She must be the only human who comes close to feeling in her very being the pain and  affront to holiness that is the sin of the world; the sin that I have so often embraced during the course of my life.

May my soul and the souls of all mankind be open to receive the grace that Mary's "yes" on behalf of us all  continues to pour out over all the world. We too have to agree "Let it  be done to me according to thy word" as did she if we are to use our freedom in the way that you have revealed is the holiness for which you have created us to strive.