16/02/2026

The collection of the first/second century texts that we know as the New Testament was not finalised until the fourth century after the Resurrection.

Scholars are still able to study actual texts, fragments of texts and references made by other writers to try to understand what our forefathers in Faith had received as "Good News" from the Apostles, the friends of Jesus.

Not only the identification of the writer of this morning's first reading, James as "Brother of the Lord, but also the text itself has always been controversial. Over the centuries many scholars have supported their lives in this world by engaging in the discussions about "James" himself and his teaching. 

Jesus was the Rabbi of the 12 and they in turn with Paul, who was uniquely selected by Jesus to convert the Gentiles, have become the teachers who confirm that the Law has been completed by the events, Incarnate Life, Death and Resurrection that they themselves have witnessed and that these events are the reality that is itself the long-awaited  Messianic Promise.

When confronted by the Pharisees, Jesus sighs in exasperation. Theologians teach that IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT is impassable, totally beyond anything like our human emotions but he has revealed by his Incarnation that his Chosen People needed to be redirected as they had substituted their own ways for those revealed through Moses and the Prophets. Jesus' sigh reveals the loving exasperation that our sins create for Our Father.

We have been blessed beyond all imaginings by the Resurrection but just as the Jews distorted the Law of the Old Covenant, we and our Churches have mostly failed to avoid entanglement in the material complications of this world. 

Not all of Jesus contempories were able to break free from the conditioning of their History and created many justifications to refuse to believe even when they witnessed or heard about his "signs". Even the destruction of the Temple and their national home was not enough to convince their children that there had been a reset by God of his Covenant with them. Nor should these purely worldly events have had more influence than the Pure Word, Jesus of Nazareth Himself who lived, died and was resurrected to save not only Israel but also the whole world.

The immensity of God is totally beyond our comprehension but we all live because we are known and loved by him. As with Jesus, even with us, however "there is something greater here" since we are all completely as free in the limits of our humanity as is IAMFTHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. Our life, our soul is "image and likeness".

God is not responsible for the misery that living in this world is for millions of us. We are each one of us created to live according to the revealed will of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and thus avoid creating evil during our lives. Our Father knows everything even to the extent of knowing how every sin has grown from and is thus linked to  Adam's. He knows every possible answer to the "What if I had ?" questions we all can ask about our past and how we choose potential deeds to become real-time events, sinful or otherwise.

Only God knows whether or not he will have to have another "reset" to improve how we know, love and serve Him in this world. We can be sure, however, that there will be an end of time when God will become ALL in ALL but until that happens even though we are surrounded by the triumph of evil in this world we can be sure that the New Holy Family he created on Calvary is always the  place of safety for our souls as we prepare them for either personal death or the return of Our Lord. Deo gratias! Amen

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

 15/02/2026

"In those days", i.e. less than 25 years after the Resurrection.

St Paul together with all the Apostles and first disciples has become aware that the Resurrection is the final revelation of how we can access God's free gifts to live lives in conformity to his will.

Today we read from his first letter to the Corinthians and note that he is repeating Jesus' declaration before Pilate. "My kingdom is not of this world" when he tells them "Among the mature we do impart wisdom though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away".

Up until Jesus stopped him on the road to Damascus; stopped and blinded him with the light of the same glory that had also been revealed to Moses, Paul had been a prayerful Pharisee who was devoted to the Law. 

He had delighted in the matchless intellectual purity  that was worshipped with unquestioning trust in IAMIAM, absolutely undivided, source of all being and ruler of heaven and earth. Heaven could be seen in the sun and stars that always followed the same orbits and on earth a Jew could be rewarded  to the extent he followed the Law that had been revealed to Moses. God loved the Jews and they loved him.

After his Christophany, the matchless way in which St Paul lived out his missionary life and the teaching we still revere in his letters show us that he recognised that in the human life of Jesus Christ, IAMIAM had revealed himself to be IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and he, Paul, himself opened his heart to become a truly  sinless vessel, a living temple for the Holy Spirit.

All human wisdom which does not include the sincere belief that Jesus is the Son of God is bound to pass away and achieve nothing. The Incarnation has to be welcomed by all mankind. It is the perfect foundation on which each one of us can construct the lifetime of righteousness that can become the living prayer of a soul sincerely devoted to Our Father and thus ready to be welcomed into the Eternal Moment when we become part of :

What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man imagined, 

what things God has prepared for those who love him.

 14/02/2026

Everything that is real in life, everything that never changes was present in the  real-time of 2000 years ago.

The Lord, Paul and Barnabas whom we read or hear about in today's liturgy were flesh and blood, living beings. With Jesus there is always "something greater here" but Paul and Barnabas were exactly the same as we are today. We know that in "those days" there was an ongoing  great re-set of the relationship between mankind and God, but they were men as we are actually living the change that we can only, as did Mary, ponder in our hearts.

The City where they were teaching was already an ancient settlement when they arrived there. It had been occupied by many cultures all of which had left physical traces of their presence that can still be seen and excavated. 

It is still a real place in the reality of this world as it is in the present day and has experienced all the changes that have been accomplished by the 80/100 generations that have lived there since the Good News was brought to them by Paul and Barnabas.

We all are real in the time of this world and the reality of the roads walked by Jesus and his disciples, the buildings in which they lived are still real but they have the reality of ruins, they are the "dust", as we will become, from which they were made.

Together with Paul and Barnabas, we have been taught by Jesus that the physical reality we know as life in "this world" is not the only gift we receive from Our Father nor is it the most important one.

We all of us have in our being the unseen reality that is our soul, unseen image and likeness created by the Eternal Love that is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT which we are able to preserve in holiness for in his Mercy Jesus has not only created his Priestly Church to distribute Sacramental Grace but also enabled us to join Him in His New Holy Family with Mary, John and all the saints, His Mystical Body, Church of Love, into the protection of which we have all been individually invited by our Saviour who knows each one of us better than we know ourselves.

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

 13/02/2026

During the first years after the Resurrection those Jews who had known Jesus, witnessed miracles of healing and been captivated by his person and his teaching had increasingly had to face up to the fact that they his own people had participated in the crucifixion of Jesus.

Apostles had had to face up to the fact that they had abandoned him after his arrest in the garden. St Peter had got to accept that he had actually denied any knowledge of the Son of God. St Paul could never forget that he had participated in the first persecution of the infant Church.

In those first years they must have been vessels filled  with the Holy Spirit for the only thing that they did was pray and preach and wait for the return. 

They were, however, very concerned about how to welcome "the whole world" to whom they had been ordered to proclaim the Good News. The religion of the Old Testament was very much about exclusivity. It was racist and the Jews who stoned Stephen in Jerusalem really did feel that they were doing God's will. That is why Saul could stand by while Stephen was brutally killed.  

Jesus forgave his executioners as did Stephen. But both deaths occurred at the hands of their brothers.

The Faith that was growing during the time the Gospels, Acts and Letters were being written had to reconcile itself to the disappointment that Jesus had not returned and also had to explain to Jews and Gentiles how they could live as free beings within a creation that had been visited and lived in by True God and True Man who had offered and allowed himself to become a sacrificial victim to atone for sin and yet they knew, even after the Resurrection, themselves still to be sinful.

God knows that I am trying each day to respond after two millennia to the same situation that the Apostles faced after the Ascension of the Lord. 

• They had unequivocal proof that there was life after death. 

 12/02/2026

Until the Incarnation it is true that God revealed himself only to the Jews.

They did not fulfill their side of the Covenant.

God inspired many prophets who had very limited success in turning his beloved back to him.

The Gentiles developed many civilizations and cultures that did not know God. 

Jesus first preached to the "children" of His Father.

We who try to live a Christian Life in the Post-Christian Culture that dominates the whole world even those parts that have never been Christian are shocked by any form of racial or cultural arrogance when we encounter it. 

Nazi Germany's efforts to completely destroy the Jews are so impossibly evil to accept as done by humans that excuses are clutched at by those who cannot accept that all Worldly Evil has been created by mankind.

The descendants of freed African Slaves in the USA are still suffering from the residue of the disgusting segregation that was the "norm" in the "Land of the Free" until only 50 years ago.

Moslem colleagues have never been abashed to look into my face and say "You'll go to Hell, John".

I am upset by Jesus' words to the Sidonian woman just as I am upset by thoughts of the millions of people who have not been guided by IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

I remember how upset was St Paul at the thought of his own race's refusal of to accept the love of God. He offered to become "damned" in their place if this would atone for their sin.

I have to thank God for his saving grace and pray that my faith in the New Holy Family can be shared by the whole world of humanity and am sure that if I can be obedient to the revealed loving will of Our Father so can all peoples of the world.

"Blessed are they who observe what is just

Who at all times do what is right."

 11/02/2026

Solomon and Jesus both have God's favour. Jesus, of course, is by far the greater but until the actuality of his Resurrection only Mary, Theotokos, mother whom he shared with John and us from the cross, knew the holy mystery of the Incarnation. 

"Immaculate Conception" was heard by the shepherd girl at Lourdes, spoken by "Our Lady". This was one of the ways that the appearance of "Our Lady of Lourdes" was verified by the Church for how could St Bernadette who was basically illiterate at the time of the apparitions have heard of the theological dogma that had not been defined until 4 years prior to her meeting with Our Lady. 

This  non-scriptural  doctrine that Mary was prepared from her very conception as the sinless source of the humanity of the Incarnation and is thus the  the only other than Jesus still human bodied (and thus able to enter our earthly reality) soul present with the souls of all the Saints in the never changing Joy of being with IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT.

Nothing is impossible to God and so it is possible for the Church to confirm that what are decried by many as mindless superstitions are in fact real events. I cannot deny, however, that over the last two millennia there has been much manipulation of the humble people of God by false prophets and evil prelates.

I am still trying to become one of the humble people of God. I try to read and contemplate the significance of the Mass Readings for each day. God and I know how it is still so very easy for me to sin and lose sight of my primary purpose to know, love and serve Him, but I am always renewed in my struggle when I remember the words spoken by her barely living Son to Mary and John as IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT died in human agony on Calvary.

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

 09/02/2026

Dear Lord, you know what it is that  I want to ask you. 

My words cannot come close to the disappointment that I feel knowing that the intense joyful Faith of the people of Solomon in this morning's first reading fades and has to go through many generations of failure and renewal before your INCARNATION resets our relationship with you.

Even in the first year of his public life Jesus becomes a figure that is recognised by "multitudes" who seek him out for his power to cure the sick. Many more multitudes have sought him out over the centuries that have passed since those days and yet we still live in this world as if we have never known your guidance.

We have somehow  missed the meaning of the message of the angel accepted by Mary for the world in which I live  is far from what you revealed to be possible by your real presence in creation. 

Help me to overcome the gloom created by worldly events which overshadows even the hope that I have in your words to Mary and John.

I know that I am responsible for my own soul but you Lord died so that we all might live. My prayer is thus first for me but the "me" who implores your mercy is part of a family, a Church, a nation and a World and one of the billions of "Holy Souls", living in this world and also in Purgatory who  completely recognise that they are sinners and completely dependent on you. Lord have Mercy.