04/12/2025

Thursday Week 1 Advent

As I begin my day with thoughts of prayer, I am a totally blank screen both before my eyes and behind the bone of the skull that encloses the brain within which these thoughts have their beginning.

Thinking about prayer, however, is not prayer. 

I believe that making the conscious effort to respond to WORD as revealed in the Scriptures is the utmost  human beings can do to prepare themselves for the final revelation that our deaths bring to each one of us.

Isaiah knows that all prayer has its origin in WORD who is Christ the Lord in whom "we have to trust for ever". Christ is himself the rock that is the foundation we all have to "put on", in the words of St Paul,  to become the Church where the New Holy Family can flourish in every generation after "Woman behold your son, son behold your mother" announces the birth of  the Church of Love.

Today Jesus warns his disciples, and each one of us who is now living, that recognising him for what he is, "Lord of All," is only the beginning of the way to the kingdom. 

He also warns me directly that even though I am pleased with these words that are still coming out of my finger tips and think that I am praying, if I do not do as he does, proving it by my love of neighbour, and love of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT then I am surely the foolish man for whom the sand of his own being can never become a replacement for the Rock of God.

Dear Lord help me to truly respond to the Love with which you reach out to the whole world. Help me to know that the spittle of the bystanders and their jeers, the nails driven through your hands, the spear thrust into your side are still a reality in your eternity and that you still undergo them as a result of my sins the weight of which you know that I have never truly understood. As we prepare with Mary for your Nativity help us to know, love and serve as did she in the Holy Family and still does in the Church of Love, the New Holy Family that you became man in order to create. Amen

 03/12/2025

Wednesday First week of Advent

One of the reasons that I took my personal decision not to have a funeral ceremony at the end of my life was my experience of attending many at which even the words of "The Lord's Prayer" were unknown to most of the congregation.

It was not always so for there was a time at the beginning of my life when the words of today's psalm " The Lord is my Shepherd" were as familiar as the national anthem to the people of the UK.

The Christianity of the first half of the twentieth century in England was, however, a faith that had been fractured for centuries and was dominated by our personal/familial allegiance to the "Faith of our Fathers" which we all knew to be the "One true Faith" and we had been for centuries ready to fight to prove it.

T.S. Elliot was certainly not applying his " Not with a bang but whimper" to the Christianity he was to personally embrace two years after responding to the emptiness of life without the support of God in his "The Hollow Men", but one hundred years later it is as true for the demise of God in our lives as the words with which Jesus predicted his creation of the Church "Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church".

Today I know that I am not present within a physical community dedicated to living according to the will of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. I am the only  human being present at this keyboard and thus "alone" but by striving to be true to her created image and likeness, my soul in reaching out to Our Father joins the New Holy Family, the Church of Love the truly "natural" home for my being that is Godlike Spirit.

In the Gospel today Jesus provides his chosen people with yet another sign. Nothing is impossible to God. When we are with God there is always "something greater here" for instructing his disciples and feeding their followers on the mountain is total, eternity, power, beauty, truth, and love incarnate in the son of Mary.

God's self-abasement in the stable may whimper, in the garden his humanity pleads and remains steadfast but on the cross he suffers, bleeds and dies to bring  to conclusion the loving revelation of His will to give us the capacity to become part of His Love.

 

 2/12/2025

Tuesday Week 2 Advent

Yesterday the Gospel Reading taken from St Matthew emphasised that the authority of Jesus was first recognised by a Gentile, a Roman pagan who made an analogy with his own military rank.

It is true, however, that the WORD, is first revealed to the Jews of the Old Testament . 

In today's reading from the New Testament, Luke, Jesus rejoices, he is the Holy Spirit, thanking the Father for revealing IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT as God to be accepted without quibble by the  innocence of the "Abba" with which he raises his human mind and soul to God,

The Fathers of  Resurrection Faith proclaimed by the Apostles had soon found in the Old Testament the premonitions that the Prophets had had about how IAMIAM would bring "Adam" back to the perfection he had lost in the Garden.

Today we are treated to the exuberant lyrical anticipatory joy of Isaiah that is  supported by the psalm. 

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb.

and the leopard lie down with the young goat

and the calf and the lion and fattened calf together;

and a little child shall lead them.

These are beautiful images of peace but we know that they are not images of reality for the "little child", whose birth we are now awaiting, will lead us by first accepting the unimaginable pain of our sins and making it crystal clear that he is the way, truth and life that we are to embrace if we are going to truly know, love and serve.

We must join with him in willingly carrying our cross on our way, never seeking to avoid the stark reality, the truth of death, and thus create a unique life that is a reflection of the Love that has created us to become able to share with all beings  the limitless expanse of Love that also burst out of human hearts that are true.

 01/12/2025

Monday Week 1 of Advent

Yesterday my total conviction, at long last, that all prayer, awareness and thinking about God should, if it is to accept the guidance of SON, Jesus of Nazareth, become the child-like loving trust that he displayed in his "Daddy".

I have often struggled with how to "love" God with my human heart. For decades of my life I have listened to Paul "Faith, Hope but above all Charity" but there has never been that jump, the skip of joy in my heart, that is characteristic of my human love when I try to raise my mind and heart to "Our Father".

The stark command "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with thy whole heart and mind" has never been absent from my awareness of being but has never inspired the certainty that is the  warmth of the affection that is my response when meeting family, friends and especially dogs.

IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT creates out of LOVE. Each creature, molecule, atom, particle of matter is a product of his LOVE. It is the boundless Joy which is his whole being.

I think that the whole point of his Incarnation is for us to be able to accept that we can do no more with our lives than respond to his Joy in Being, i.e. our lives, His Creation with the same Joy that is his Love living in our hearts. 

We must not go after things that are too great. St Francis knew that our "sentimental" love of the babe in the crib was a reflection of the vastness beyond all understanding of  IAMFTHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and that our love of inferior creatures, animals,  was indirect love of their creator.

As I join the Church in preparation for the Nativity of Our Lord I hope that I can become  satisfied that there is nothing "mere" about the sentimentality of my love and joy at Christmastide, and  that it is the same LOVE with which we love our earthly fathers, families and friends that God, the source of all Good, requires us to return to him for that is the limit of our human nature we can do no more than be true to our humanity.

My own dad often used to say "The more I think of human nature the more I love my dog" I don't know whom he was quoting but I do know what he meant.

 30/11/2025

Sunday Week 1 Advent

There must have been millions of people like me who have come to the end of their lives knowing that they are still searching for the peace of mind that no matter how they try still remains out of their grasp.

My consciousness is never at rest but is always bombarding itself with memories, imaginings and simultaneously aware of the physical reality of the present moment. 

In my case, at this moment, reality is awareness of the sincerity with which I am trying to draw close to "Our Father" and also aware that it is in my little "i" that I can come closest to IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and that it is thus that myself can displace my God and become Sin.

Jesus told us that he did not come to bring peace to the world. There was no need for him to bring the "sword of war" mankind had already done that. What was the "sword" that he did bring? It was also light, a sheer all penetrating, invisible, laser direct from Love, IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, into the insignificance, but thus "deified", of each human soul, "iam". 

Each one of us has to grasp the Sword that is our consciousness of being and guided by the scriptures live the life that is and comes from Jesus, which is also the way and the truth. The natural reality for our souls is the Love that knows each one of us. God is total reality way beyond anything that has or has ever had material existence

Jesus taught us that "Our Father" is not a Supreme Supernatural Being, an abstract idea completely beyond human intelligence, but that he is "Abba", "Daddy" and it is thus that he has to be loved and trusted by his little children.

Today we, this eightieth Jesus Generation are again beginning the preparation that was the ninth month of Mary's pregnancy. It is only mothers who can truly know the physical presence and growth of another being within their own bodies. 

Mary had fully accepted God's choice of her to begin the concluding narrative of his assurance that he and his love for us are complete reality and thirty three later she was also to accept the role of  Mother of all mankind.

"Woman behold your son, son behold your mother"

Dear Lord, help me today to avoid all that does not conform to your will and thus remain ready for your personal call to me or your promised return to this world. May my prayers join those of Mary and all the saints that the sins of mankind living and dead be wiped out and that your Mercy soon become All in All.

 29/11/2025

Saturday Week 34 Ordinary Time

Today Jesus gives a direct warning to his disciples about letting ourselves become held in the embrace of bodily dissipation, deluded by the confusion of drunkenness or enslaved by the material cares of this world.

At that time his disciples were mostly from among the "poor" of Israel although some of the "high and mighty", "rich and powerful" and "learned and clever" were also attracted by his "signs" and stayed to be captivated by his "wisdom". All of this social mixture of followers, however, were expecting him to deliver some sort of New Order  from the political status quo that was the "Pax Roma" in which they reluctantly lived in those days.

Jesus, however, was calling all of the individual souls alive then and now to become holy because he is holy. This is the only way that our Holy Mother the Church could have become what Our Lord had intended when he stated his intention to found her on Peter, at the Gentile shrine of Pan in Northern Galilee.

Today I know that "dissipation" is not confined to the public lives of the "rich and famous". 

It was the scandal of child abuse that first opened my eyes to the lack of integrity in the heart of the Church and that this dishonesty is not, in fact, a new phenomenon but has existed for centuries. I have also always known how "lust" can so easily rule my every waking moment. Personal poverty is not a guarantor of freedom from sin.

Today I also know that 40 years ago I was dragged into the clarity of sobriety by the Love of God working through the shared experience, strength and hopes of the caring strangers of AA and become thus able to strive to respond to Jesus' call to become holy.

But at this very moment, I am still entangled in the things of this world. I am enraged by the failures of the football team that I support. Captivated by the posturings of political commentators and unbelievably devasted by bureaucratic failures that have little importance except in my mind.

When we first became the "Jesus Generation" many of us were sure that the resurrected physical body of Christ, Jesus of Nazareth would soon return from the unseen spiritual heaven of the Father to rule "an everlasting kingdom where all dominions would serve and obey him". Until that time we would be supported by the Paraclete.

Two thousand generations later, we are still the "Jesus Generation",  and nothing has changed. St Paul and the other Apostles and Evangelists formulated Resurrection Faith and John and Mary knew then that it was in mutual care for each other that the will to love of the Father was manifest. 

Peter's Church soon began to ignore "My kingdom is not of this world" and the holiness that can be found within it is the result of individual spiritual effort and adherence to John and Mary's Spiritual Church of Love, "Woman behold your Son, Son behold your mother" rather than to the Institution that was long ago captured  and still remains within the "this" worldliness that is the emptiness of Mammon.

 26/11/2025

Thursday Week 34 Ordinary Time

The writer/writers of the Book of Daniel were singing to the Lord. Their Canticle has been part of the Christian Liturgy for centuries but the writers of Daniel knew that they were not compiling a historical record of events that had truly happened during the reign of Darius. 

Sometimes I too feel an upwelling of feeling that I can only call Joy but it is really something that is way beyond my ability to give words to and can only find its voice in the ancient, psalms and hymns recorded in Scripture.

"Blessed be God for ever".

The Evangelists from whose memories and close associations with Our Lord and/or his Apostles was composed the Gospels were trying to present a factual account of the human life lived in his own creation by IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT in the person of Son, by the Eternal Resurrection Christ the Lord.

We, therefore, have to believe all that is recorded in the Bible. By that I mean that I cannot pick and choose. I have to accept with equal force "I am gentle and humble of  heart and my yoke is easy" and "I come not to bring peace but the sword". The Parable of the Minas and the Good Samaritan are both teachings of the Lord.

Today in the Gospel we read a statement made by Jesus about the future of Jerusalem, the Liturgical Heart of his Chosen People. It is a prophecy which St Luke was one of the many disciples to see fulfilled in their lifetimes.

I have lived during equally devasting times. Christian civilisation was unable to resist the evil that had arisen in its heart and the industrialised slaughter of Non-Europeans happened within the nations of the somewhat Christian but now Enlightened, in human eyes, to Godlessness, Gentiles.

Two thousand years after the words spoken in today's Gospel and after the Resurrection of Jesus completes God's revelation, mankind is still not listening to "Our Father" and Jerusalem is again "trampled underfoot" but not by Gentiles.

The Jews who again control Jerusalem have still not got beyond the strictures of personal delight in their own beings that Jesus condemned in them. 

The Church founded on St Peter has never fully grasped that the words of the Lord which she studies every day do, in fact, mean what they say. 

How could the Byzantine Emperors claim to rule Church and State as would have Christ? How could Pope after Pope wear  a triple crown in the full knowledge of Jesus' declaration before Pilate? How could Reformers claim that material worldly success was proof of God's favour.

I do not know what Jesus means by the "Age of the Gentiles" but it must include these days when mankind, Jew and Gentile, refuses to listen for the Word of God and tells us by their deeds that it is Mammon that is "All in All". 

They are but a repetition of all that has ever been created  by Godless humanity  and desperately require the return of Our Saviour for even though we have often abandoned Our Father he has never abandoned us. 

Since the return of Jesus to His and Our Father, every generation has been able and we too still can  choose to live in the Church of Love that has never been excluded from the Church founded on St Peter but has always existed for those with Resurrection Faith  in the words spoken to Mary and John, by her dying son.

"Woman behold your Son, son behold your mother."

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