22/01/2022

The reading from the "Hebrews" in today's mass presents us with an event in Jerusalem about which there can only be speculation.

Melchizedek is presented as an ever-living being about whom nothing is known except his name and his entry into Jewish/Christian consciousness as an "eternal high-priest" who was known to IAMIAM and thus become a legitimate receiver of the tithe which Abraham wanted to make as a thanks-giving offering for the benefits he continued to receive from his Father in Heaven.

For us the Holiness of the Holy Land primarily rests in the life, death, resurrection there of Jesus but for the Jews of Jesus' day the very soil of the Holy Land was holy and had always been so even before Abraham had first taken possession.

In the Synagogue this morning Jesus, who is becoming well-known, is aware that all eyes are upon him; that priests and scribes are looking for ammunition to fire accusations at him; that he is in the process of becoming the final Revelation of human relationship with IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT that will be recorded for posterity in the Gospels; that he will be challenged by those adversaries who will become the politicoreligious clique that will organise his death.

As true man Jesus was both angered and saddened by their trickery. As SON of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT he knew that what was happening to and through him would bring forgiveness to all generations of mankind. 

He also knew that many of us would lose sight of his divine revelation just had his fellow country men for whom he was going to become the first fruits of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT'S final revelation, the Resurrection.

 

 21/01/2024

The psalmist is able to sing out his praise to IAMIAM in words that come directly from his heart and is thus able to inspire us who not only hear but also listen and cherish them.

We have only to open our eyes and we can see the wonders of our material world in the light that is because God ordered it "to be".

We are the bodies of which we are aware because our total beings are the work of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

We can become "Saints" when we  order our lives to justify God's trust in us to be able to become his "image and likeness".

In the Letter to the Hebrews today the first believers are encouraged to continue to serve "the Saints". The first saints were not canonised souls as is today's St. Agnes and the many other names that fill out the Ecclesiastical Calendar.

Those Saints then and today are the living, breathing and eating human beings the neighbours whom by loving as our selves we begin to follow in the footsteps of the Resurrection, the way of life that leads to the personal holiness that is the intended image and likeness of our creator.

Thou shalt love the Lord our God with all thy might and all thy strength and your neighbour as your self.

Dear Lord, help me to continue to find in your scriptures for each daily mass the confirmation of faith, the trust in hope for forgiveness and the love for you and all humanity that becomes the individual holiness that defeats the evil that is disfiguring the world. Let me be so aligned with your saints that my prayers can be united with Mary, Angels and all the saints and my soul thus become, although useless on its own, somewhat an of "image and likeness" so that I can ask for your Mercy for me my family, and all sinners on Earth and in Purgatory. Help me to truly know that without your trust in me I can do nothing on my own.  I make this prayer in the name of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT your revelation of your being preserved in the scriptures. Amen

 20/01/2025

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews knows Jesus to be the supreme perfection of the High Priesthood. The Temple priests of his day were responsible for the Temple Rites. They act as intermediaries between the people and IAMIAM.

They slaughter the animal sacrifices and use the blood and burnt flesh to sanctify themselves and the people.

All around them in the Nations, the heathen were doing the same thing to appease the life-less objects of their own creation that they called gods.

Jesus knew that his people Jew, Greek and we their descendants could not live our lives dependent on our own freedom alone. He knew that we would get ourselves lost in the material wonderland of his creation and that we needed to understand more of his being than had his chosen people who had lost sight of him in their absorption into the joys of their own intelligence and beings in this world.

In the Annunciation to Mary he reveals himself to be IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and it is to confirm this that Jesus lives his life of loving example completely for us by becoming the completion of all blood sacrifices and teaches us that we can become holy as he is by focussing on our inner-beings, our souls and their worship of him.

The Church he founded on Peter soon became as wrapped up in its own self as its predecessors the Jews had ever been and also became just as tangled up in this world as Israel had also always been.

Although we have to doubt the legalistic priesthood of  all the Christian Churches (by their deeds you shall know them) we can rest in the arms of our Saviour outstretched to embrace the whole world as he utters his last words to Mary and John. This is the kingdom that is not of this world, the completely spiritual "New Holy Family", Jesus' Church of Love which will be with us till the end of time.

19.01/2025

God's revelation to Isaiah becomes beautiful literature as he tries to deliver it in his own words to God's people, Israel.

St Paul has been blasted by God into an unquestioning Faith that after getting approval from the other Apostles he walked and sailed around the Empire bringing the Good News to the whole world.

Jesus begins his public life by responding to his mother's unspoken request at a wedding feast in an obscure location in Palestine.

What about us? 

Do we in 2025 also fail to become the image and likeness, that was God's revealed intention for the Children of Abraham finalised by the Resurrection, as did his original chosen ones.

God's answer to that failure by his first chosen-ones is the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection.

Has our Institutional Church ever truly lived up to the preaching that it first heard from the Apostles and was codified in the Scriptures for that is all we late-comers have that we can implicitly trust with our souls.

We all as individuals have to live by the Scriptures because IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT has in the Resurrection completed his revelation of how we can, each one of us, do his will and become ever closer to his image and likeness thus becoming a new song to be sung to the Lord as we  bless his Holy Name in chorus with David

Jesus sealed his promise to be with us always by his words from the cross to Mary and John on Calvary.

We all can become his creative intention for each of us only by completely aligning our wills with His.

 18/01/2024

I really do not need the work of any philosopher to be sure of my own existence. I am sure of the reality of my own "being". I am sure therefore I am. 

A theologian of our times teaches that the new born baby knows that it's "being" is not in the loneliness of solitude by experiencing the certainty of its mother's love that is her smile. We become more and more sure of our being as we grow nurtured by love.

Every child deserves to have that human/mammalian first experience of life but the unacceptable truth is that there are many who do not. Man's selfish inhumanity to man has scoffed at the Love of  IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT by ensuring that unwanted babies were killed by the ancient crime of  of "exposing" them to the elements or the modern evil that is the misuse of our freedom manifest in the slogan "My Body My Choice".

As we grow older we can come to the understanding that our human being is reality because each of us is in the care of the Divine Love that has been incarnated in Jesus "Son of God, the High Priest who has passed through the heavens and has been tempted in every way as we are but remained without sin".

His Love is for all of us sinners and just alike, but we can refuse to accept it and make our choice for our finite selves, and the material world and  thus bolstering up the power of evil. Each generation  follows on to become as evil or more so than its predecessor. A process that can only be stopped when each one of us truly renounces, devil, world and flesh by becoming what Our Father intended us to be.

This is completely revealed by the prophets and finalised by the Son in his incarnation. He only ever condemned the self-centered religious attitudes of Scribes and Pharisees and basically told us all, when answering to all worldly power personified by Pilate and the Chief Priests to focus on our personal faith as the Kingdom of God is not of this World.

 Jerusalem cannot be "buildeth" here no matter how green and pleasant the land.

Dear Lord, you know that this is the 84th anniversary of my birth and that through this long life of mine there are many times that I have rejected you in my sinfulness. I know my own sin and seek the forgiveness of which I have only ever momentarily despaired. At the start of my life bombs were falling all around and the greatest of all inhumanities to man was treating your "chosen people" as a product to industrialistly  harvest there from anything that was valuable in this world and then destroy what was left. On your cross you atoned for all sin but we have failed in the use of that Grace just as did those to whom you made the first revelations through the prophets of the chosen ones. I know that for me too it is true that there are none of the sins of this world that I could not have avoided without your grace. May my future life become a thanksgiving for your grace and plea that we all can avail ourselves of the abundance of your mercy and avoid our sins for which we have no excuse and are more than guilty in refusing your grace and choosing in our freedom to give up the Eternal Joy that is the end of this life when we return to Our Father the Love that he has lavished on us.

 

 17/01/2025

In the Gospel for today, there may have been some non-Jews who crowded out the house where Jesus had stayed the night but the presence of the Scribes makes this very unlikely. 

Scribes, Pharisees and Priests claimed to be the only ones who could interpret the Scriptures and ensure that the "Law", the Jewish way of life, was not infringed by any of the Jews who as Israel were the representatives of the Glory and Holiness of IAMIAM on Earth. In fact they were the reason for creation. They remained a dedicated opposition to the Good News and are still the Rabbis of the Synagogues where the Scriptures are read and prayed upto this very day.

We can be sure in that familiar scene at Capernaum, the four friends lowering the paralytic through the roof to get near to Jesus, that there was a great commotion caused by this very deed. We cannot, however, imagine the shocked horror that was the response of the Scribes to the "Son, your sins are forgiven you". That response could only come out of the totally closed circuit minds of those secure in both promise and practice.

The vast majority of the first Christians were Jews. 

It was, however, very difficult for them to adjust their closed mindsets to the Resurrection, the event that had caused them to have to accept the evidence of his divinity that the Son of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT had created in their lifetimes by his life, death and Resurrection.

The believer, who was the writer of the "Letter to the Hebrews", was desperate that all Jews who had been guided by the Scriptures, who knew "the deeds of the Lord" should share in the Good News that God's creation can now be known in its completeness  "from the foundation of the Earth".  

The "today" that is the "now", the ever-changing moment known by each of us throughout history still offers the "promise" of entering "his rest". We are all free to  interpret this promise found in the Old and New Testaments as we will, but I am sure that it is not to be found in the "Law" of the Scribes and Pharisees, which even in Jesus' day was a vast conglomeration of the Scribes' own making and occupied their attention to the extent that Scripture had become secondary to Scribal interpretation thereof.

The reaction of the crowd to the events that they had witnessed in the commonplace surroundings of that house in Capernaum, "We have never seen anything like it!" and they Glorified God, can be our reaction to every word that comes from the mouth of God. 

For them it was an instantaneous, a  spontaneous recognition of "God" in their midst. We, as with everything about Life, have to work at it and maybe we regret that we have not joined St Anthony in recognition that our souls, paradoxically, have to know IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT one to one if we are to enter the Spiritual Community, the Body of Christ that increases as we decrease.

Dear Lord, on this day that completes my 84th year I have to pray that I am ready to welcome the Mercy that is needed to complete my conversion to You. I know that each of us has to avail himself of the pardon which is your free gift to all sinners on Earth and in Purgatory but your mother and disciples are forever present in the New Holy Family created out of Love for us at the time of your "true death" as true man on Calvary. May my prayers become one with theirs as I strive to thank and glorify you Our Father by doing only your will on Earth as it is done by the spiritual community  of Saints and Angels in the Mystical Body of Christ, Son of FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. Amen.

 16/01/2025

Both first and second readings for today are still taken from the New Testament. The Psalm is King David doing then pretty much as I am today.

We both are (in his case were) souls embodied in the material reality that is the creation into which we have been born. Neither of us asked for life but both of us were born with the free will that is part of human being in order to fulfill the Love that is intrinsic to the supreme being of Our Father. 

We both are/were guided by the experiences of those who have preceded us in life on Earth.

Our bodies are the result of the creative process that we can recognise as evolution and have the same physical boundaries and instincts as do all mammals. For David the Universe of stars was visible in the days of zero light-pollution as the incredibly magnificent canopy of heaven which captivated the minds of many of David's neighbours. Astrology, which for us is a joke, was a serious enough error to be forbidden to the Chosen People.

I have often wondered why it is that IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT has had to go to the extent of the "Incarnation" with its pain and indescribable suffering to direct mankind out of the Jewish way of responding to his care of his Chosen People.

David's lifetime was particularly spectacular and he was also a devoted servant of God with "faults". I am much less spectacular but I too am aware of "faults" and with David I too can seek pardon. During his life-time Jesus knew the psalms and sang them in the Temple and Synagogue. His presence on Earth was in response to the "hardening" of Jewish hearts that taken place first of all in the wanderings through Sinai and were still manifest in the Chosen People"

The disasters that befell the descendants of Abraham were always interpreted by them as deserved punishment for "backsliding". The revelation of IAMIAM, the Old Testament, however contains only a small percentage of the rules that the Scribes and Priests,(not Our Father) demanded should be followed. The Jewish people were never condemned by Jesus but the self-absorbed righteous scribes and priests, who after the destruction of the Temple became the Rabbis, certainly were and with obvious reason.

Jesus at his execution forgave those who hammered the nails through his hands and feet on the basis of their unknowing that the man Jesus is the Son of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. The slaughterers of Palestinians in Gaza as I write these words know exactly what they are doing and they are also ready to tell IAMIAM that he is mistaken in that he has always expected them to do His will on Earth. 

This is the "fault"  away from which, Jesus is the only way, truth and light. My Saviour liveth! Alleluia! Come Lord Jesus Come.

Dear Lord, help me to live always in your presence aware of my sinfulness and never forget how puny I am without your care. I ask for one thing only that I may live within my own being aware of your love and never forgetting the price you paid with your very self to break all humanity free from the pride in being that leads all of us into the disobedience that became the Original Sin of our first parents. May I also be aware in prayer that there are millions of us who are hopeless without your grace to break our carapace of sin. May my prayers be joined with the prayers of Mary, David and all the saints that your chosen people reverse their centuries of "stiff-necked pride" and realise that the wisdom of the Nazarene Carpenter is immeasurably greater than the total output of all the Rabbis who have already or will ever live. Amen