26/20/2025

We all know that we are unique beings in a Universe that is vast beyond our comprehension.

In the first mass-reading for today Moses is inspired to proclaim that to be known by God is the envy of all who have not been favoured in the same way as have the Israelites. They are known and cherished by IAMIAM to the extent that they are having the rules for living holy lives revealed even as Moses speaks to them.

The historical nations who will dispute the territorial claims of the interloping Jews will not have the support of IAMIAM who will demonstrate through the Jews that he is the only God. All the others who were worshiped are only human names of the non-existent products of the imaginations of the "non-chosen" people.

The Jews, however, prove themselves to be incapable of compliance with the essence of what is revealed to them and become just as other Middle-East nations, pawns in the human power struggles between the great Empires that grew out of the fertility of the lands watered by the Nile and Tigres/Euphrates.

Moses was something greater than all Mesopotamian and Egyptian Emperors but the great civilizations of the Middle-East did not become the vassals of IAMIAM or the Temple in Jerusalem. It was the pagan "gods" of Greece and Rome that devoured the Temples of the Middle East.

As we read the scriptures we always have to remember that it is the whole of the Bible that is speaking to us. Jesus' "there is something greater than Moses here" was triggered in my mind by today's  confirmation of the place that "The Law of Moses" must play in our lives.

There is nothing greater that we can do during our lives than know and obey the Lord. We have had the final revelation made to us and yet our world is getting farther and farther away from the will of God for his people. The Jews who had had the first revelations made to them had lost the spiritual link to the Eternity of IAMIAM, who reveals through Jesus that he is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, that was symbolised by the Law and Temple. 

 Jesus has filtered out and purified by his blood the accretions that we use to  block out his grace. He has made the "once for all" sacrifice but the institutional churches, just as the Jews, have not been able to separate themselves from the things of this world and the result is, although spread throughout the whole world, a Christianity whose teaching is largely ignored. 

Jesus declared before all the "chosen people" and directly to all worldly power in the person of Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. "My kingdom is not of this world". There has never been a time since then when we have acted in "our times" as if we believed him.

 25/03/2025

The Annunciation

In moments of awareness of my sinfulness I have wondered, asked God, why it was that I have been born.

Today I can understand that in so doing I was challenging God. I was blaming Him for creating me to be sinful. This sinner can now only thank God for the opportunity to confess his sins and do penance for them.

There is no need to ask why the sinless Mary was born. She is essential to creation for the Incarnation is the Word who is with God in the beginning and is God. She is the sinlessly created source of the human body that is needed for IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT to become "True Man", from fertilized egg to the tomb, and she is totally sinless; she is the spotless womb wherein Jesus was laid; she is Theotokos. 

She was also a teenager.

Her sinless human perfection could respond to the Angel by "How can this be?". The Incarnation is a human biological event that was accepted by Mary. God really become "True Man".

Of course, I am "gob-smacked". How else can anyone react to the wonder that is the historical fact of the conception and gestation of  "True God" as are not only all humans but also all mammals? It is to be a revealed mystery great enough to last a life-time of prayer that should need to know nothing more. 

I was also a teenager. 

I am a sinful man, a being who is self-aware but who wants to live a life as "God-aware" as was Mary and Jesus. I live in my time and although willing to say with Mary "Be it done unto me according to thy word" each passing moment is so filled by awareness of the World and of the sinfulness that I can add to it that I am always having  to make a personal act of will to turn my consciousness back to Our Father, his heavenly holiness, and my obligation to do His will on Earth.

Dear Lord, you know what I need to do to live according to thy will. Help me to share the grace that protected your mother all of her life and let the carapace of sin that has kept your grace from my heart be broken and reformed as the "St Patrick's breastplate" celebrated by the Church earlier this month. Our Lady is present with you in heaven and leads angels and saints in that eternal "now" of praise, thanks and petition that becomes the loving forgiveness so needed by sinners both on Earth and in Purgatory.

 24/03/2025

Monday 3rd Week of Lent

I don't think that the introductory title given to today's Gospel by the website I use to find the daily mass-readings is really appropriate.

Jesus, like Elijah and Elisha, is not sent only to the Jews.

Jesus himself affirms the opposite about "Elijah and Elisha" in the parable of the vineyard. St Paul's "God does not have favourites" is not borne out by the history of salvation as recorded in the Old Testament. IAMIAM does not reveal his name before the Incarnation in any of the civilisations or religious practises that co-existed with Egypt and Mesopotamia  in other parts of the world

Jesus the Resurrection is an historical fact as true as the life and death of my own parents. That God favoured the Jews is also an historical fact of the same weight and cannot be magicked away. It has to be faced head on.

The Chosen People, as such, are an essential part of God's creation and are, in fact, given the most important human roles in revealing the IAMIAM, Son and Holy Spirit of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, the Trinity of persons that is one God. Theotodox is not a Chinese teenager. The crowd that bayed for the death of God were not Persians.

 "Woman" the other Marys and John who waited with the crucified Jesus on his cross for his death pangs to overcome him were also Jews and chosen to become the New Holy Family which is the Church of Love that will be with us until the end of time.  "Woman behold your son, son behold your mother".

The Mystical Body of Christ is welcoming to all who choose to make God the centre of their lives and strive to avoid in this world anything that is displeasing to Our Father. He has sealed with the Resurrection the revelation of the "Being" who is our Creator God, Our Alpha and Omega, ever faithful and all loving, the Good News, that has to be preached to all nations including those who reject him face to face.

 23/03/2025

Moses can see the flames but not the fire. He hears words, sounds created in real time to convey meaning, but does not see the source. This is a "real-time" encounter with IAMIAM.

On and after the third day the the women, the Apostles and disciples lose sight of Jesus as they recognise him. The encounters with the Resurrection recorded in the New Testament are all revelations initiated by the risen Lord. These are "real-time" encounters with IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

In the "human real-time" of two thousand years ago the then materially present pre-resurrection Son, Jesus, true man and true God is asked to comment on the view point that IAMIAM can be seen to be acting in the events of this world.

It is pointed out to him that some Galileans had been slaughtered  in the Temple by the Romans, He says to us that this is an act of evil perpetrated by human will. The victims were blameless. God is not responsible for the evil actions done by man.

Jesus adds another example. A tower under construction in Siloam collapsed and killed 18 of the workers. This was a result of an innocent human error, no malice was involved. Jesus affirms again that this event is not God's response to the sinfulness of the men involved.

St Paul tells the Corinthians that the "real-time" events that record in the Old Testament the interactions between IAMIAM and His people are to be understood by them as instructions to be followed for they are living in the "final age". 

God's revelation of the LOVE that is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT has been completed. The real-time presence of God events of the Old Testament were examples to the then contemporary  Israelites and instructions to us The life of Jesus of Nazareth, his teaching, his Resurrection have completed the instructions that we need to follow to become "Children of God". We are part of the  final age that is still continuing and are responsible for all worldly events even those we attribute to God..

We have to remain "aware" at all times. St Paul reminds us that "Anyone who thinks that he stands, take heed lest he fall". Jesus' warning, however, is much more to the point "Unless you repent you will all likewise perish". 

Jesus whose Love for mankind we celebrate during this preparatory season is also Justice and is always fair in his response to our deeds and to our prayers. The gate to his sheepfold always opens to receive souls that yearn for him and his protection from the harm we self inflict and also inflict on others. We are the ones who thus create evil in our world.

 22/03/2025

Second Saturday of Lent

My first thought as I scanned through the familiar "Prodigal Son" was that the Jews are the eldest son, recipients of God's revelation of himself, but that the "Prodigal Son" himself is certainly not Jesus.

I "scanned" the Gospel not only because it is familiar but because I had been captivated by the beauty of the first reading and of the psalm.

I have often wondered what had displeased IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT so much about his "Chosen Ones"  that he had had to purge their guilt by himself becoming man to enable the "Perfect Sacrifice for the Forgiveness of sin" to be made.

How is it possible that the prayer that glorifies and submits to IAMIAM with such deep-hearted fervour in the Old Testament "You will show faithfulness to Jacob, and steadfast love to Abraham, as you have sworn to our fathers from days of old" can have become unacceptable to the Loving Father of all mankind?

In the Gospel parable Jesus is telling us that we have to pray that we can become as ready as he is to forgive not only the evil created by our own sins but also that of the whole world so that His Love can grow in fertile souls that have been washed clean in the water of Baptism and fed with his Body and Blood.

We are only responsible for our own deeds. Each one of us is the "Prodigal Son" who by returning to Our Father fills His heart with joy for we have shown that we believe and take full responsibility for our sins which are so great that they have to be borne by the tortured, derided and dead Incarnate Son on Calvary to attain the infinity of Mercy that is their only absolution. 

Sin and its results has to be destroyed. The Jews couldn't do this on their own. Neither can we. It can only be done by True Man on the cross for he is also the infinite mystery of True God Infinitely forgiving those who turn to him. When we turn to him with faith and sincerity we can all be sure that we will be welcomed back into his arms with Loving Joy and much more than a "fatted calf".

 21/03/2021

When we read scripture we have to face what has been received and recorded as a reality that is still the loving guidance from IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, as valid for today as it was when first it was received.

Today's reading explains how Moses found himself to be in Egypt. The original sin of Adam and Eve is still corrupting mankind, even though IAMIAM has made a covenant with Abraham, and thus their jealousy unites his great-grandsons in a plot to get rid of Joseph who is the delight of his father, Jacob, and likely to become heir to the "promise".

The Psalmist has contemplated the scrolls that are the Pentateuch and his wonder at the Glory of God and his revelations to Moses bursts forth in a paen of praise with which I can identify the burning in my own heart, but do not have the poetic ability to express for myself.

All those who heard Jesus' loving guidance would have known that there was "meaning" at the heart of his parables. At that moment 2000 years ago it is doubtful that his listeners could have understood the full import of today's tale of mankind corrupted by greed for the wealth of this world.

The "learned and the clever", however, knew exactly what Jesus meant. Some of them would have accepted that Jesus' words were the "Truth that comes from God" but most fell into the category of "scribes and pharisees" who are the only people Jesus warned even to point of condemnation.

Two thousand years of hindsight means that from the point of comprehension this parable is an easy "plot" in which the various elements of the "drama" are quite obvious and are repeatedly watched on TV in various formats with different actors.

"There is something greater here", however, as it is the Incarnate Son who is speaking to the whole of time and place, to the whole of humanity and the whole Truth about himself, the promised land and we the people to whom IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT has completed his revelation of being and purpose.

        

 20/03/2025

Thursday Second week of Lent

Each day I have to bring myself into the practice of knowing that I am in the presence of the Lord. I have to know that I can and should respond to IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT's awareness of me. I have been created to do this.

Many people would tell me that I am "kidding myself" when I make myself respond to the revelations made in the Old and New Testaments. My faith is in God who has created each one of us to use our freedom to come to the blessed joy that he knows in the perfection of his own being.

I seem to have been driven out of the community of the People of God. I am not the only one. In the very first years of the Church there were more than one of the converts who could not accept the sharing of personal wealth that was the commonwealth led by James in Jerusalem.

I am "Alone but Known" and trying to become a tree planted by the living water that sprang, mingled with blood, from the side of Our Saviour. I can never forget my sins. I always know that my heart is a deceitful thing. It can always excuse my faults so I have always to pray to Our Father remembering that he knows all my thoughts and deeds.

Dear Lord, help me to stand with the three Marys and John at the foot of your cross knowing that the horror you are undergoing is the river of true life that washes away the sins of the world, my sins. It is truly the river of life seen by Ezekiel to be flowing from the temple and is there to be drunk from for all who recognise that life without worship of you leads into the "parched places of the wilderness, an uninhabited salt land" to which there is no end. Amen