18/04/2025

Good Friday

The disciples did sleep in the garden, but for Jesus there was no rest. He had to face the reality of sin personified by the hatred of his accusers and the "Crucify him" of the chosen people, sons of Abraham. My sin and also all the sins of mankind were present to "True man and True God" and he knew that the Loving creative purpose of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPPIRIT could only be restored by the shedding of his blood and the agony of the true death of the true man.

Our all powerful God always chooses that we should live holy lives of worship, thanks giving and praise. Love can only be generated by the free-willed response of the "other" but human sin always refuses to accept and return love. 

The death of Jesus is God's revelation to us of the power of our sin and of the depths of the Love that we deface by not knowing, loving and serving.

The Cross of Jesus tells that there is an infinity of Grace for us to call on in the avoidance of sin and that when we fail we have no need of self-crippling remorse, viz St Peter, for as we truly seek pardon we return to Jesus the only gift that is in our power to give. We all are free and can choose to accept forgiveness and thus become part of the unseen IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT'S universe of the eternal spirit.

For this we were created and for this we have come into the world. We too have to choose to bear witness to the greatness of our creator and know that the help of our so great a saviour has to be sought if we are to fulfill the will of God during our lifetimes.

 17/04/2025

Maundy Thursday 

We are now at the beginning of the events which are the conclusion of God's participation in human life exactly as it is experienced by each one of us.

The farewell meal and institution of the  Blessed Sacrament, Jesus' (IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT) forever presence in his Church, took place in the Upper Room. Jesus was the only one who knew the unique significance of his words. 

With "This is my body" a new way of being is created. He creates his Sacramental Presence, "I will be with you until the end of time", even before the events that seal the revelation that has happened over the 33 years he has spent as true man.

It must have taken some time for the Divine Reality of their Resurrected, "I call you friends", Rabbi to be absorbed into the disciples' consciousness and for the cosmic significance of the last meal they had shared together to become a liturgical event.

In today's letter to the Corinthians, written less that 30 years after Jesus had "returned to his Father" St Paul is quite clear in his instructions for how the nascent communities of "Christians" should worship together and share with each other the love that they had all received as they came to understand the great Love that Our Father had lavished on all his people.

The Great Love that is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT still maintains the whole cosmic order that we experience in human life. We were to have the support of the Sacraments to help us to be part of this order of holiness. I do not doubt any of the teaching of Jesus "True Man and True God" but just as, "The Jews" of Jesus time on earth had failed to maintain holiness that was their side of the covenant and had thus required the Incarnation's Atoning Passion to set it right for us to be able to live according to God's Word, so it is that the Institutional Church has never acted as if it believed Jesus' publicly uttered "My kingdom is not of this World".

Three crowns are three too many for the successors of St Peter. Peter denied Christ 3 times as  Jesus warned at today's meal. His Patrimony is rather his tears of remorse than the territorial claims of so many of the Popes, his use of violence against the enemies of Christ was instantly condemned by Jesus' healing the wounded soldier rather than accepted as an act justified as self defence or resistance to evil.

Where are we able to find the Church founded on St Peter? I hope that it is the New Holy Family, "the Church of Love", "Woman behold your son, son behold your mother" that will be the Real Presence until the end of time. The History of the Petrine Institution affords too many examples of direct disobedience of the Word of God for it to be able to purify the Temple which responded to the Incarnation by the crucifying of Jesus Son of God and Son of Mary.

 16/04/2025

The only way to truly follow the way, truth and light to the state of being that is holiness is by hearing the Word of God and conforming ourselves to all that it contains. I have often thought that to be an impossible task of which I was incapable. 

The Old Testament Prophets all struggled to uphold the faith with IAMIAM and honour the treaty into which they and their forbearers had been invited by God's promise. 

All the prophets proclaimed to their own communities and to the whole world that they were safe in their obedience to the  guidance of the "Good Shepherd" for the "Lord our God helps me, who will declare me guilty?"

I know that I cannot hold God in my mind. I can, however, recognise/respond to his revelations made throughout the history of mankind. I can be sure that 2000 years ago his indivisible being was incarnate as the only SON and God reveals himself as IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

Over the next three days we meditate on the real-time events of 2000 years ago.

I have often asked "Why was it then that Jesus was born?". Faith can offer no other answer than because that is when it happened. The texts of the Bible have to be accepted by his "image and likeness" as the evidence of God's will working in Time.

Anger is a human emotion that we have attributed to God. God has always known that His creation is "good". He made it to be holy. The Incarnation is not a response made in anger at the failure of his people to keep their side of his covenant but a renewal in time of the source of the Love that is his Being and the Source of creation.

The events of the next three days had all the elements in real-time that fascinate us today as do novels, films and TV dramas. "But there is something greater here". 

The New Testament accounts to which we will listen and read have the one element that all human fiction is lacking. They are the Truth which comes from God. They are the way the Truth and the life. They are the Truth that is guaranteed, "My Word will stand until the end of time."

Dear Lord, help me to come closer to faith-filled acceptance of Your Word, true repentance for my sins and hope that I will be able to show to my dear ones that there is nothing that is more important in our lives than knowing, loving and serving for you are the Love that can fill our hearts with joy as we stand in sorrow with the three Marys and John at the foot of your cross. Amen

 15/04/2025

Tuesday in Holy Week

It is a long time since I had to go out to go to work. I am, thus, able to focus on the Mass-Readings for each day of Holy Week and stay synchronised with the liturgical rhythm of  the Roman Church..

But, I am also afraid to commit myself to the intensity of prayer that becomes total isolation from the things of this world. On each of these days the whole of the Liturgy immerses us in the real events that happened in Jerusalem 2000 years ago. That is always the sole purpose of any Mass. 

"Do this in memory of me". 

Holy Week, however, is for me the leaven that is the Grace of the Holy Spirit, recognised and accepted by the sinner that I am, that can defeat all the recognised sinfulness of my being and protect my soul from the apparently innocent self-centredness that blocks me and the other disciples from "spending one hour" with Jesus who as true-man actually, in real-time, needed the support of his friends for whom, as True-God  he had decided to bridge the inconceivable void that there is between the flesh of creation and the Evergreatness of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

In the above "second paragraph" there is the keyword "afraid". God knows that I would truly be afraid to step into the void which seems to separate me from IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT if not for an inner voice. I thank God, therefore, for this inner voice that assures me that the bridge between us and the Father has not been made by any of the high priests, scribes or Pharisees but  is the Eternal Love that was revealed in Palestine 2000 years ago.

It is the truly infallible way, truth and life that is the Resurrection and the only Pontifex Maximus, IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT who is responding to each one of us who prays with the spirit of a child to "Our Father". My God reaches out me.

How could I refuse such Love?

 14/04/2025

Monday in Holy Week

I am sitting here two thousand years after the last events that are recorded in the Scriptures. I believe that Jesus is Lord and that he has the words of eternal life.

The Jewish people who were the first to have the reality of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and his creation revealed to them were also the first to know the Incarnation  and to walk with Jesus in the land of the living. They also were participants in the events of the three days for which we are still preparing.

They had for centuries been expecting a renewal of their nation which had been gifted by God with prophets whose one message had always been to worship God by accepting his word and being obedient to his commandments. Jesus had commissioned his disciples to continue with this same message when he had sent them out to preach, "The kingdom of God is at hand".

We cannot experience the level of despair felt by the Apostles/Disciples when their hoped for "Great Leader" was taken from them to become a target for human contempt and hatred. We do know the outcome, however as did those first disciples some of whom were converted scribes and Pharisees. 

In the first years after the Resurrection they tried to accommodate in their understanding the teaching of Jesus, the events of that final Passover and the New Life that had been witnessed by some of them. They, as do we, believed in the Resurrection even if they had only the words of witnesses but they were still Sons of Abraham so searched their Histories of Salvation to reconcile the disconnect between the anticipated Glory of the Messiah son of David and the dirty, bloodied corpse dead on a cross, of the actual Messiah, the Son of God.

That is why the Church founded on Peter has kept the facts of Jesus' life on Earth alive in the hearts of true believers who accept all that has been approved in the Scriptures and Celebrated in the Public Liturgy, as complete "Truth" unmodified by human opinion.

Life, Faith, Hope and Love can be completely intertwined in our innermost being which has only this chance to respond positively to the arms stretched wide on the cross. Those arms of Jesus son of Mary, and SON of God are open to bring the whole of Creation that is the work and joy of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, who is forever greater than anything we can possibly imagine, into the new creation where he will be ALLINALL.

How could we refuse such Love?

 13/04/2025

All the events recorded in today's New Testament readings are the Truth as remembered by their authors or the Apostles who informed them. Although not exactly the same, these narratives written by men are also supported in their truthfulness by the Holy Spirit.

All human life comes to an end and it was no different for the "true man" SON of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. Jesus lived a real life and suffered an atrocious death at the hands of those who either did not know what they were doing or who were sure that they were protecting God from blasphemy.

Many relished the sight of the blood shed by Jesus, his helpless nakedness, and death agonies, (today's perverts are not a new human phenomenon), but most of the witnesses of this event were normal human beings who were as easily misled into sinfulness as we are today. 

For my own part I know that it is probable that I would have enjoyed joining in the welcoming party given to Jesus 2000 years ago and truly meant the Hosannas that we all proclaimed. All the actors in these dramas that comprise Holy Week were at that time living human beings. They had lived their lives aware that "The Lord" watched over them, but were still every much sinners as we are today.

Since this day 2000 years ago millions of us have lived righteous or sinful lives. Those who condemned the Saviour to death were a necessary part of the mystery of atonement only which IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT can truly understand. 

I also know that it is probable that I would have been part of the lynch mob screaming for the death penalty. Most of His disciples were to flee from the garden and in Peter's case even denied all knowledge of Him. Our Loving Father, however, did not then and has never since then abandoned any one of us who has turned to him asking forgiveness of our Sin.

We can do this in full confidence that Jesus during His suffering  has created the infinite mercy that we can receive not because we deserve it but because our God is full of mercy and compassion, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love.

 12/04/2025

In the St John's Gospel that we have been reading each morning, there has not yet been the narrative of the raising of Lazarus. 

This morning's translation gives the impression of being set in the Temple. "Many of the Jews who had come with Mary and seen what Jesus did, believed in him."

In other translations "with" is "come to visit" which now places us at the scene of the "raising of Lazarus".

Before I had noticed that discrepancy I had been at a loss as to how to continue my morning devotion.

Scholastic textual criticism has contributed billions of hours to the religious culture that is also part of the Earth that will fade away. Studying the "word" is not the same as living by it. The descendants of the Pharisees are still practising the stream of faith that finds fulfillment in increasing the stock of human knowledge but appear to have hearts that are still closed to the second commandment.

Each morning that I try to pray with the Mass Readings brings my soul into the presence of Our Father in communion with all others who are seen and completely known by IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. Noticing the problem of "with" led me back to the only thing of which I can be sure. 

Although many saw the resuscitated Lazarus, whose body had begun to corrupt in the Tomb, they still saw Jesus as a human problem to be solved and not as the Eternal Event he has always been and has to be accepted as such in this world.

The Resurrection, total perfection of human, mind body and soul also failed to break through the armour of self-satisfaction that still keeps many of the millions of my contemporaries from the everlasting Love that will surround us if we avoid the things of this World and make the right choice for ourselves. "Heaven and Earth will pass away but my Word will stand."