06/04/2025

Fifth Sunday of Lent

I have read somewhere that some of the "learned and the clever" do not accept the authenticity of this morning's Gospel.

I have always loved this story of how the "learned and the clever" of Temple religion reacted to Jesus' challenge. When I spot the "mote" in someone else's eye and begin to condemn that person the message of this story always reminds me that I am responsible for my own soul, as are each of us. Each of us is a unique child of the Father and known as such.

This story is only contained in John's Gospel. I always have felt relief in that the enemies of Jesus could acknowledge some of the Truth that he taught and so would be disappointed if there were not an element of historical accuracy in the passage.

I have to know the Gospels of the New Testament as factual accounts by eye-witnesses of the days when SON shared in our humanity to be able to become the perfect sinless Jesus, true man and true God. I cannot pick and choose the ideas, images that those texts create and I retain in my mind.

I do know nothing about textual criticism but reluctantly have to agree that my image of the critics of Our Lord slinking shamefacedly away, silenced by his words does not agree with the historical facts that Jesus was rejected by those who had become enmeshed in ritual, law and casuistry. The psychology of this story leads us into a mass conversion rather than the reality of an execution.

Silence is never a characteristic of the "learned and the clever." Our own "Pharisees" are never short of a riposte nor were those of Jesus' time on Earth. IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT is found only in the truth of each moment we experience in our present lives. Scripture is the record and guide that leads us through the Passion and Death onwards to the Resurrection that is the Truth that is and comes from God.

 05/04/2025

Saturday Fifth Week of Lent

Today in John's Gospel the Chief Priests and Pharisees are trying to respond to the disturbance caused in the Temple by the anger of crowds of disputants. Some think that they have made the scriptural and hence final argument against Jesus. 

He comes from Galilee.

Nicodemus who had previously and personally investigated Jesus' proclamation of the "Kingdom of God" was able to ensure that God's purpose was fulfilled by persuading his colleagues that a public trial of Jesus should take place. The execution of Jesus should be seen to be a proper legal event in the eyes of the World's secular authorities as well as in the eyes of IAMIAM who was being blasphemed by "yet another "Maverick from Galilee of the Nations".

Jesus will die.

Jesus has now been set-up  by his opponents  to die but in so doing  he accepts Father's will and becomes our "saving-victim". He will have to steel himself against the helplessness that fear causes to weaken our human being. The child Isaac knew this fear. Many of us have lived with this fear. Some have experienced it only momentarily but no-one has been able to tell us what dying really feels like.

Jesus is "true man" without any weakness resulting from sin, however, and can calm the human panic that, in my case, overwhelms completely in the face of real fear. He is also SON of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and is in the process of allowing himself, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, to know how it is for a human being to live and die.

We can all know the when, where, why and how of our own lives. We are all in the process of that unique experience at this moment. We can all use our intelligences to know something of the when, where and why of Jesus'  life on Earth but the "how" can only be revealed to our souls little by little as we try to do his will during our lifetimes in our personal Galilee of the Nations where we thank Our Father that we have one Guiding Light that we can trust for it guides us to its own eternal source.

 04/04/2025

Today the gospel reading tells us that Jesus went alone to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. He did not, however, hide himself in any way and was recognised by some of the congregation in the Temple when he was preaching to them.

"His hour had not yet come".

God is aware of all the potential human outcomes that ensue in the Time of this world. All the actual outcomes, however, are met as a result of human decision either personal or collective. We all are able to know what is happening right now and what has happened in the past but not what will happen in the future.

Did Jesus have to be true God to know that  "His hour had not yet come."?

The Jesus of the Gospels is truly man. He is, however, a very special man. There is not a trace of sin in his being. The only other sinless human being is Mary his mother. We treat his miracles as evidence of his being "True God" but they could be evidence of the "True Man" whose Faith, he tells us, if it were complete, could move mountains. 

We can be sure that if Adam had not sinned we would have a totally different human existence than we do now. We do not know how the "Divine Image and Likeness" would have turned out if Adam had not damaged creation. 

We do know, however, that after the passion and death of SON/Jesus was resurrected in the same body which had been crucified and laid in the tomb but which was not restricted by the same physical limitations as it was before.

We have all been created to choose the way, truth and life that is prepared for us by IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and we are made able to make the right choice by knowing, loving and serving in this world. 

 03/04/2025

Yesterday I did not acknowledge as I usually do that I had read and accepted as the Truth that comes from God the human words with which Jesus spoke his explanation of himself and which were recorded in his Gospel by St. John.

Our Father knows all the difficulties that I have made for myself and others during my sinful life.

He also knows that I am now, at the end of this life, trying to follow his teaching and Law in both the words and the spirit that he made them as a Father joyfully welcoming back all repentant sinners, as Saviour Son in the Perfect Sacrifice to destroy the evil that still dominates our world, and Holy Spirit distributing the sevenfold free gifts of Faith and Love that IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT offers to all of us who turn to him in sincerity.

The latter part of St John's long life were spent as a son given into the care of Mary. There is nothing more than "Woman behold your son, son behold your mother" that we know about that "New Holy Family" created on Calvary.

In today's Gospel, Jesus says directly to the "Jews," the Temple Institution that had grown from the Word received by Moses, "I know that you do not have the love of God within you". There have been many times in the 2000 year history of the Institution founded on St Peter when the same condemnation could have been made to those who were supposed to be the Spiritual leaders of the Kingdom not of this world.

We know that Jesus has promised to be with us until the end of time. 

In these days there is a secular Israel but still consisting of Jews, still stiff-necked, still land-clearing by war, ethnic cleansing, and the killing of its rightful owners. There is a weakened Church very much of this world even to the extent of being influenced by the human norms of  Society rather than challenging them to show the way, truth and life which is the mission you entrusted to the Apostles.

We can all ask "Where is the promised presence of Our Lord?" in this historical reality of our times and yet I know that there is truly a spiritual body of Christ of which we can all become parts for that is the "Church of Love" that can be found by devotedly searching for and praying with the joyful community of Saints who, led by Mary, pray in the timeless presence of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT that we on Earth become aware of our sins and sincerely seek forgiveness as do our brothers and sisters in Purgatory. 

It is for this that Jesus came into the world and made it possible for us too to become sanctified by his grace won in "bitter pain" on Calvary.

Dear Lord guide my heart onto the right paths that it is the sole purpose of my being to find and which have been eternally opened by You, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

 01/04/2025

As we follow the Church's scriptural preparation for the liturgical celebration of the culmination of the presence of Son, IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, the Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, in this same material universe that we know today we have to continually assess our own reactions to the teaching and miracles that marked the three year period of Jesus' public ministry.

As True Man, Jesus is the only sure guide to understanding what it means to be alive in our bodily beings, there is nothing about being a living body that he does not experience. But there is something greater than body here.

As true God he has a crystal clear concept of literally everything. He knows that I am struggling to grasp my fuzziness of thought within which there can be found some true faith. But there is something greater than faith here.

As Our Father, he has only love for us so he is often disappointed by our individual failures and not  impressed at all by the progress we have made by use of the material of creation to understand how thoughts can be turned into solid matter by using the physical laws that he created in the Beginning. But there is something greater than science here

As Our Saviour, Jesus  has shown us how to defeat temptation. We have to find through prayer the way, truth and life, The free gift that is Holy Spirit reaches out to us as Person to person. He knows our names. But there is something much greater than "we are" here.

As the Acceptable Sacrifice Jesus has freely accepted the monstrosity that is death on the cross. This was a real event in time but with an eternal effect. The saving grace created for Eternity during the last three days Jesus was with us as True Man and True God is distributed by the Holy Spirit.  There is no "but" here.

We can know nothing greater than this except, perhaps, that it was all done to eliminate the evil that we continue to manufacture by our sins. This is indeed a wonder.

Our lives in time give us the opportunity to choose to join IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT in this world by following the way, truth and life that received its final revelation 2000 years ago in Jerusalem in preparation for the New Creation that will be the promised end of time.

 31/03/2025

There are some people who can understand the timelines of all four of the Gospels. Well, they can understand Scripture better than I do. They can find in it the very words of Christ and also the additions not made by the Evangelists themselves.

The comment "(For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honour in his own home town)" seems to be ill-placed as it is made according to this morning's Gospel Reading on leaving a Samaritan town on his way into Galilee.

The revelation made through Isaiah has still not materialised in the real-time that is the reality in which we live every moment of our lives on earth. We have had the whole of God's purpose for creation revealed to us but just as the time and place of the Incarnation was revealed only as it happened  so will what we know as the Eschaton, be known only by the event itself.

It will happen and we should hold it in our minds and live each day as if it were the last for there are as many personal "last days" as there are persons. Let us hope that that personal last day, if it does precede the Eschaton, find us prepared and aware that by coming to the end of our biological lives we are not ending our beings. 

Our being is God's image and likeness which is not of this world but which will be used by our Creator, FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, as part of the new creation, a heaven and earth in which our sins will not be remembered for "Jerusalem will be a joy, and its people gladness".

 30/03/2025

In the Old Testament God is revealing his will for a whole community. The Israelites were saved from Egypt, educated and chastised in the desert and entered the Promised Land as the one nation which was to reveal that IAMIAM is the only God by his achievements through them.

That is a very brief summary of the centuries that had passed before the Incarnation and the direct face to face teaching of Jesus to his Apostles, disciples and to all who had ears to listen.

Jesus still speaks to the multitudes, now millions, as individuals. He tells the paralytic to take up his bed and walk. He tells Peter that he will have the responsibility to bear the weight of what he has witnessed during the past three years. 

He tells each one of us that we need not be afraid even though we are sinners for he is always ready to forgive and welcome us back with open arms.

The father who welcomes back the prodigal is "Our Father" and so we pray as taught by Jesus to him who is 

                                                Our Father not confined by time or space. 

                             FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, is a totally perfect three-in-one glory beyond  our wildest imaginings. 

We know that we are to see him "all-in-all" and for this kingdom we long.. 

We are free individuals and can thus choose to obey his will and come closer to His perfect holiness. We can also refuse.

We ask to be supported in this life on Earth to enable us to aim to be the image and likeness of His being in our personal lives, our souls. 

We acknowledge our sinfulness and pray for a share in the Mercy of Calvary. 

We ask to be able to discern and avoid the temptations of materialism and thus be safe from the evil of this world's addiction to Mammon