12/05/2025

Sometimes I start the day in a dried out condition that has to have a stimulus to get it going. The deer of the Psalm knows exactly what it needs and is immediately active in its search for the water needed to reactivate its heart. "Heart" reminds me of the old translation of today's Psalm in which the "deer" was "hart".

The website that I am using to find the Mass Readings for the day tells me that it is using a "new translation" of the liturgical texts. "Hart" was replaced by "deer" long ago but when I read in this morning's gospel 

"All who came before me are thieves and robbers but the sheep did not listen to them", 

I was alerted with my ears pricked and tensed as would be the hart/deer on hearing an unfamiliar noise while it was drinking.

The machine I am using enables me to instantly explore doubts/discrepancies as I become aware of them so I pull-up the Douay-Rheims translation of the same text. 

"All others, as many as have come, are thieves and robbers: and the sheep heard them not".

It seems to me that both English sentences carry the same meaning which could be interpreted as a condemnation of all the prophets who had fulfilled the word of God as revealed in the Old Testament.

To live by "every word that comes from the  mouth of God" we have to be consistent and pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit who is both the source and meaning of the "hard sayings" of Jesus and the reality of my body and soul the creation of the Father, IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

St John reports that Jesus' listeners did not fully understand the analogy so he had to repeat himself. I have to say that I don't think verses 1-5 are difficult to grasp, but I need a lot more help than even St Thomas Aquinas can give to grasp v. 8. which really does sound like a condemnation of Old Testament religion even though it was revealed by IAMIAM.

 11/05//2025

During the last 3 centuries of the Old Testament some of the Jews, monotheists in a pagan world, had resisted the Hellenization of the Middle-East which had followed and sometimes preceded the conquests of Alexander. Even before the destruction of the Temple there were probably more Jews in Alexandria than in Jerusalem.

Jesus and all the Apostles were born into beginnings of the Pax Romana which was forced onto the world by the military might of the Roman Legions. It is another historical fact that there many more Jews living outside of Palestine than within it and the  Roman roads which had followed the Roman Legions made it quite easy for Paul and his companions to spread the "Good News" throughout the world.

Paul must have known Hebrew but the texts with which Jesus, he and all the Apostles were familiar were taken from the Greek translation known as the Septuagint. The Liturgy of early church used Greek and Aramaic and the gospel was directed at all Jews in Palestine and of the Synagogues which existed all over the world where there were not only Jews but also Gentiles searching for the Truth.

The historically latest works of the Old Testament e.g. Wisdom/Maccabees display a non-Jewish bias i.e. towards events and behaviour and are thus rejected by the Rabbis who at that same time were also rejecting Jesus and his Church .

The last work of our New Testament is a defiance of what our Faith can be if it becomes more of a philosophy than the fire of our living God burning within us. 

There is nothing "speculative" about the Good Friday when Jesus, true God and true Man, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, Begotten not made. of one being with the Father, through whom all things were made pressed the torn flesh of his back to the wood of the Cross and stretched out his arms for us to pierce his hands with our sins, the crudely made iron nails that would hold him up to be scorned by those for whom he had only love.

With Jesus there is always  "something greater here", St John's Apocalypse tries to capture and portray that Spiritual  "Greater" in words and images at which we can bow in wonder.

 10/05/2025

In today's psalm we sing "I will offer a thanksgiving sacrifice, I will call on the name of the Lord." 

The first of today's readings has St Peter nurturing the infant Church outside of Jerusalem. Just as did Jesus he "performs"  miracles of healing and today Dorcas returns to life as had done Lazarus and the son of the Widow of Nain.

The sophisticates of Athens guffawed when Paul told them of the miracles performed by Jesus and of our own Resurrection Faith.

"This is a hard saying who can listen to this" were the doubts raised in the Synagogue at Capernaum by Jesus' statement of his own Sacramental being, flesh and blood and Divine origin. "After this many turned back and no longer walked with him". 

There is never anything pseudo or hesitant about the faith of St Peter. Even in his failures he is forthright and today  "To whom shall we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and come to know that you are the Holy One of God" is St Peter at his best.

His answer is a lovely statement of the belief that I hope I hold in my heart. St Peter's subsequent history of denial, forgiveness and heroic death gives me the confidence to proclaim my own faith in this humble way each morning and place all my hope in "The Lord".

The death of Dorcas and her return to life is an important event in the Church that was still an extension of Jesus' first priority to complete the revelation by Law and Covenant made throughout the Old Testament.

The return to this life of an apparently lifeless corpse is still even in these days of medical advancement a pretty major event but was, as in the case of Lazarus, "in those days" a real attention grabber.

I am not at all a "sophisticate of Athens" but read the readings of this morning's mass as a man who has some of the teaching of Two Thousand years of Church History as part of my consciousness. Lazarus was brought back into the world in which Jesus was still his incarnate self and would thus have been able to be present during the events that were to be the salvation of the whole world.

If Dorcas had been completely dead, would she have had anything for which to thank if brought back to this world? 

 09/05/2025

"In those days" are  three words that take us back to the time when Jesus was a living memory in the minds of many of "the holy ones" who had gathered together to prepare themselves for his imminent return.

They were so sure that they were the witnesses chosen by God to welcome Our Saviour back into the material world that they had divested themselves of their worldly goods and for some time lived together as one family.

They were becoming the "New Israel" living in this world but set aside by God to be the "remnant" wherein the "Son of Man" would find the Faith, Hope and Charity he had created by the Incarnation flourishing despite all the obstacles raised against it by the world, flesh and devil.

The Apostolic Church knew that it had to bear witness to the reality of Jesus' life, death and resurrection and strove hard to understand the new revelations made by this reality. The Early Church knew "My kingdom is not of this world" but soon began the institutional processes that have opened her to the corruption from within that proves itself to be more powerful than the total of external assaults made upon her.

"In these days" we have a new successor to St Peter. We all pray that he can live a holy life and be an example of the holiness that each individual has to attain by following the "Way" as did the Apostles in the Portico of Solomon. 

It would be a true witness to sincerity if  he could follow the example of one, who has enabled me to sit here and record my thoughts and prayers, and give away all the physical wealth accrued by the Church  as it is reported that Bill Gates is about to do.

 08/05/2025

The New Testament episode "Philip and the Ethiopian" takes very little of my time to read. 

The longest episodes of the New Testament are, as they should be, the Nativity Narratives and the accounts of Holy Week and the events that were witnessed after the Resurrection.

The "chariot" brings to my mind Assyrian and Egyptian reliefs of the war chariot that, even then, had been in use for thousands of years. Pharoah's army that had pursued Moses would have included chariots along with the "horse and rider that were flung into the sea." 

The eunuch, however, was seated and asked Philip to join him so he must have been riding in some type of carriage but not one of the war-chariots that I imagined.

In his public life Jesus had spent three years in preparing his newly chosen 12 sons of Israel for their mission to make IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT'S completed revelation of his Love for mankind known to the whole world. 

The whole of the Old Testament is a collection of real-time events that are episodic preparations for the  "something greater than Moses here " in the time of Our Lord. The Eunuch is studying scripture and as do all of us he needs help. 

His conversion takes only a matter of minutes. As I wrote that it occurred to me that it is only for minutes that I too ever devote my total being to Our Father.

Dear Lord, help me to be true to you, help me to know, love and serve sincerely and let me never forget that my prayers are linked with those of Our Lady and all the saints asking that my sins and those of all the world, together with the Holy Souls share in the grace of forgiveness that never ceases to pour out from the Resurrection of you the crucified "True Man" on Calvary.

 07/05/2025

St Stephen was put to death because of his "blasphemy", basically because he had believed and proclaimed the Resurrection. All the Apostles had had to come to terms in their own minds with the significance of their experience of the previous three years.

As Jews they all shared in the believe that IAMIAM is the only one God and that the scriptures recorded his dealings with them and their forefathers. They knew how to be "human" for scripture revealed the "Law" by which they should live.

How much they were guided  to follow Jesus as "Messiah" is a matter for conjecture as there was never anything "political" about Jesus' message; except for "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's" and "My kingdom is not of this world". He always speaks to each individual and not to a Religious or Political class.

There is no conjecture, however about the reactions to Jesus of Nazareth by Scribes, priests, Pharisees/Sadducees. That " class" had  united in a common "politico-ecclesiastical establishment front and, disagreements put to one side, united by panic, they agreed to kill Jesus. (Where was Gamaliel on the morning of Good Friday?).

At his appearance before the Sanhedrin Stephen proclaimed "Behold I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God". This vision has nothing to do with this world devoted as it is to the Mammon of  material.

St Stephen was stoned because the Holy Spirit revealed through him that there is spiritual life continuing after death and that to inherit it we have to remain steadfast in love both for IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and also, as were Jesus and Stephen, for all other men. "Forgive them for they know not what they do."

 06/05/2025

There is only a stark polarisation between St Stephen and the leaders of the Temple.  With Jesus there is always only a "yes or no". There is no possibility of negotiation with the Love of God which wants all of us to be saved. 

God does listen to our pleadings for Mercy as he did to Abraham. We have to show that we are completely sincere and really do recognise our own guilt. God never lies. He has always revealed his being and he himself has chosen that we the apex of the material life which he has created should be free to accept or reject him as Our Father.

The Life, Death and Resurrection of the Incarnation  can become the "Jesus event" and thus the subject matter of Theology, Philosophy, Meditation. Billions of words have been written and thus enlightened or confused those who read them.

The same Life, Death and Resurrection is the only source of the Mercy which we can refuse to acknowledge or strive to understand as God's final revelation. The being IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT is impossible for us to comprehend but we can try to understand how the Scriptures are our guide through the dilemmas which confront us in this world.

We, however, have to make the choice for ourselves. We either stand with Stephen and behold the kingdom that is not of this world or with the Priests and "grind our teeth at him". We cannot try to keep a foot in each camp, however, for to do that  splits us into two. neither half of which constitutes a person who can accept the grace to know, love and serve which flows out as Jesus dies on the cross.

There is nothing "yes or no" about the Crucifixion. It is God's "yes" to us and demands the "yes" of each of our total beings in return if we are to become the complete personal being created as image and likeness by IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.