12/05/2026

Tuesday Week 6 Easter

 I was once entangled, when diving, in an abandoned fishing net well below the surface and completely out of air. I was terrified but at the same time resigned to my own death.

My memory cannot reproduce the emotions of that moment but I can remember the real-time of the event itself and both the certainty and acceptance that I had met my end.

The events experienced by Paul and Silas in the first reading are treated as an intervention into this world by God, a miracle. I do not know how I was saved from what I had accepted as certain death in the Red Sea but if it was an intervention by God, a miracle, it was not revealed as such.

I know that I was praying and I remember a fleeting mind picture of myself as Jesus on the cross suspended between the light of the surface and the entanglements of the depths.

In the Gospels Jesus is always speaking to our souls. Today he tells us that "he has to" complete the will of the Father. The "Incarnation" leaves this world but "Holy Spirit" takes his place and thus God remains with us but does not limit our freedom other than by the laws of physical nature which we are still free to understand and manipulate.

The Holy Spirit condemns the denial of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT that governs the sinful norms of this world, the unrighteousness that devalues prayer, and convicts all who put the things of this world before those of heaven, of refusing the free gift of salvation revealed in the Resurrection of SON, who died hanging between heaven and earth to create the free gift of Sacramental Salvation in the Church founded on St Peter and our place of spiritual safety in the Church of Love, the New Holy Family which is truly "not of this world".

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

 11/05/2026

I am certain that the spiritual announcement made to the teenager Mary marks the moment in human time when her "Fiat" enabled WORD that has always been "God with God" to take on her created human flesh to begin his presence in the evolutionary top-level mammalian animal real-time as do all of us who become "true-men" as God creates our souls.

We have to recognise this initiating moment of the Incarnation and as did Mary never lose sight of it as we too "ponder within our hearts" "what this could mean as she was a virgin".

In today's Gospel John remembers that Jesus had warned the Disciples that when they came to pass on what they would come to learn about him they would be driven out of the Synagogue and thus unable to keep the Sabbath holy with their fellow Jews.

But by the time John came to write his memoirs, however,  his experiences had revealed that he and all his friends and converts had become "Christians" and that he and his generation had been blessed by the presence of Jesus, true God and True Man.

The very sayings of Jesus in the Gospels and the response of the Apostles and Evangelists to them are for all generations the record of how we are to respond to the ever-changing reality of life in this world. Old Testament Jewish Law has been reset and The Father has spoken, The Son has shown and The Helper continues to be and help us do the work of both.

We are in the eyes of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, much more capable than I feel myself to be. for he trusted a teenager to make the right response when "the Angel of the Lord appeared unto Mary and she conceived by the Holy Ghost".

‘I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me. But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.’

 

 

 10/05/2026

Week 5 Eastertide

Opponents of Christianity always complain that there is too much emphasis on sexual morality and not enough on preventing violence. 

Our age is still full of both sexual immorality and war,

The "this world" which has become the reality that it is in 2026 cannot become "the Kingdom" for it has never accepted that the Ten Commandments revealed to Moses are absolute and  cannot be avoided by human casuistry.

"Thou shalt not kill" is only reinforced by Jesus to become "Turn the other cheek" and finalised on Calvary by "Father forgive them, they know not what they do". 

It is only well-intentioned men who can create the "this worldly" concept of a "Just War" which has not only allowed us to defend ourselves against aggression but also justified our aggression by the concept of "self-defence" informed by "the best form of defence is attack".

At the present moment we are witnessing how much the ingenuity of mankind is being wasted in warfare and how there is no war without hatred of our neighbour.

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

I know that it is easy for me to sit here and type what many would call platitudes, but it is a fact that God conceived SON in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit thus saying "IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT" and that JESUSSON revealed that he is the "First fruits of  a new creation" and that he  founded both the Church on St Peter and a New Holy Family with Mary and John to confirm that the Holy Spirit would never leave us alone even though I would say that the historical facts of the post-Apostolic ages  prove that his revelations have been more ignored than put into practice.

There are many Christian nationalists but is it even possible for there to be Christian Nation?

 09/05/2026

Saturday Week 5 Easter.

In today's first reading we continue on their mission with Paul and Barnabas and also learn that St Luke is an eye-witness of some these "deeds" that he records.

The preaching that I have heard and read in my lifetime has had Scripture as either its subject or its support.

Jesus had ordered the first missionaries, both "the 12" and "the 72", to proclaim that "the kingdom of God was at hand" and when they did so their sincerity was supported to the extent that they themselves were amazed and exultant by the spiritual gifts that they displayed.

By the time Paul and Barnabas were ready to begin their mission into  Europe, however, Christian preaching had expanded to include not only the  "Good News" but also the deliberations and decisions that the Apostles and elders had arrived at by pondering in their hearts the events that they were experiencing. 

Today, 09/05/2026 it seems to me that in order to be taken out of this world as was the first Church I need to pray that I can become able to "Cry out with joy to the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before him, singing for joy" and thus truly experience  the nearness of  "The Kingdom of God is nigh" rather than "know" about God in the cold light of soulless brainpower as would the manmade artifact, Artificial Intelligence or any other media storage system.

 08/05/2026

Friday Easter Week 5

When Jesus sent his disciples on their first missions their message was "The kingdom of God is at hand". They returned to Jesus amazed at their own success but we have no more details about the outcomes other than they cured the sick and drove out evil spirits. 

The first generation of Christians, however, created the New Testament. The Gospels, the Letters and one Apocalypse are the outcomes of their personal experiences and responses to the Resurrection. The Risen Lord had spoken to some of them but most of the first believers were in the same category of holiness as are we "blessed are those who have not seen and yet still believe". 

Judas Barsabbas and Silas carried a letter to vouch for their identity but the authority that guaranteed their sincerity was The Holy Spirit which seems to have been recognisable not only by our forefathers in faith but also by contemporary charlatans who sought to purchase and profit from it.

Simon Magus witnessed the outcome that resulted when the Apostles "laid hands" on those newly baptised only in the name of Jesus and tried to buy the ability to access that Great Mystery for himself. Jesus had previously told the first missionary disciples to take back their "peace" if it did not rest on those to whom it was directed.

I have no problem in learning that God is Threeinone FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and am totally relaxed in my belief that is built on the Apostles Creed. I do know that the "charismatics" experience something in their worship that frightens me for its outcomes are too similar to those which can be witnessed wherever groups of people commit to the mass hysteria produced by shared enthusiasm.

Dear Lord, help me to become able to know what is  the "discernment of spirits" and recognise when it is the Holy Spirit that fills my heart with the fire of your Love for you know how easily for me it is to be led into temptation by my own thoughts, imagination and sentimental emotion. Amen

 07/05/2026

Thursday Week 5 Easter

My judgement is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God.

Today St James summarises what he and those who have taken part in the discussion about what part the pre-Incarnation revelations to the Hebrews should play in the Good News/Resurrection revelations that Jesus had commanded them to preach inclusively to the "whole world", have decided about "The Law of Moses".

Therefore my judgement is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.

I am looking at those words two thousand years later. My opinions have been informed by the Gospels and by reading the opinions of  learned scholars and Theologians, but St James, St Peter were themselves Jews who had known the INCARNATION as their Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth.

I know that our relationship with God underwent a complete reset, a re-creation (Jesus himself told us that he came to fulfill the original Law not to change it) when "The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary and she conceived by the Holy Ghost", but I don't know how much of what is our New Testament was truly understood in the same way that I do, by those who had shared in the real-time of the events recorded therein.

In the real-time of today "this world" is again very much concerned with what is happening in the Middle-East. The Jews "who still proclaim Moses, by reading him every Sabbath in the synagogues" are again at the centre of history and again manipulating the most powerful of the rulers of this world as they did with Pilate in Jerusalem two thousand years ago.

The continuing human suffering being perpetrated in Palestine by them and at their behest amongst their neighbours reveals to us all that we have never truly accepted the final revelation made in the real-time of this Universe by the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus. We have not accepted the grace to completely renounce sin that was created as God suffered death for us on Calvary.

We are all capable of knowing that we are individual beings and that we are each free to make choices. Jesus was a willing participant in his own Crucifixion to reveal that the defeat of humanly created evil requires something greater than created being and that if to prevent sin we had had our freedom removed  (remember that God is all-powerful) we would no longer be the image and likeness of the Love by which we are both created and re-created by forgiveness of sin.

We who cannot return ourselves to the nothing of pre-creation for we have been created and are loved to choose to fulfill the intentions of Our Father, have had it revealed to us how we are to live in this world to avoid adding to the humanly created evil which has been evident in all previous generations and in my lifetime has revealed itself in war, concentration camps, holocaust, fire-storms, atom bomb, ethnic cleansing, racism, clerical abuse, religious persecution and all the personal sins of which I have been guilty and am still capable. 

Today I pray that we can all receive the Word as did both Jew and Gentile in today's Acts and thus be delivered from the evil of our own making. Amen

 06/05/2026

Wednesday Easter Week 5

"Abide" is a lovely word which speaks volumes of the peaceful continuity and the tranquility that comes from knowing we have been graced by the presence of God. At Emmaus the disciples recognised the source of the burning in their hearts when the stranger whom they had invited "to abide a while" was "breaking  bread".

I spend most of my time during the "these days" of 2026 following the events that are the domain of the "ruler of this world". The only good that it does for me is to keep on reminding me that "My kingdom is not of this world" and that I am a minor mortal being sharing with millions of others in a transitory reality which I am able to know because within me has been created in "image and likeness" an immortal soul able to know, love and serve.

Today the events of this world now and for the preceding 2000 years tell me that Jesus  declared fundamental TRUTH before Pilate. There has never been a place for HIM to rest his head in any of the kingdoms of this world. Those who claim to be doing His will in warfare press the thorns of his crown  further into his skull.

When we engross ourselves in the the things of this world we begin the process whereby our "true being" is choked off from the abiding presence of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT. We are wheat choosing to grow in darnel.

There is nothing that we can do to give "Greater Glory to God" in this life than opening our hearts to accept the mercy that is the blood flowing from his side and avoiding what are the often disguised "things of this world" with which we fill our beings until the very last moment of our lives.

If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch, and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.’