30/03/2022

The Lord is God our Father and full of compassion. He is the Son, Jesus, who is now, then and in all eternity one with the Father. He is the Holy Spirit who is always with the Father and with the Son and with both.

John's reporting of Jesus' words makes it clear that Jesus is identical to the Father; they share the same wills and everything that the man Jesus says is from the Father;is in fact the Father's for the Son is the Father.

The mystery of God's being is not penetrable by any man's intelligence. It is right for me to try to worship worthily the glory of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. "Worthily" means to use all that I am and have in an attempt to "know" God. I am given strict guidance on how to "serve and love" but "knowing" is an open heart ready to be filled by the Holy Spirit. My freedom allows me to be ready but my capacity has been limited by my being, known only to Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Dear Lord you know everything about the billions of souls you have created; you are the Father of all mankind. You even know the dreams present in my brain during sleep. Let me try to be with you each moment of wakefulness. Let me serve and love you in the freedom that you give to me and every individual who has ever lived. Let Mary and all the saints plead for us for the forgiveness won by Jesus in the garden and on the cross.

 29/03/2022

Water is so important to life that it becomes an image of God. The first reading is Ezekiel's vision of the stream of living water flowing out of the Holy of Holies and filling the whole world with the goodness of creation. It is God's love for his people. It is the living water that Jesus offered to the Samaritan woman.

Many are waiting for the movement of the waters in the Sheep pool but the sick need help to get to it to find healing. The man sick for 38 years had in fact outlived his helpers and couldn't make it to the pool. Jesus cures him even though it is the Sabbath and Jesus knows that this will cause him some trouble with "the keepers of the Jewish conscience" particularly with the Pharisees. How far is the Sheep Pool from the Temple? It must be less than a Sabbath Journey as Jesus meets the same man in the Temple on the same day and tells him the reality which is God's message to us all. Sin no more.

St John tells us that it is this and similar  "profanations" of the Sabbath that is the cause of the "Jews"increasing enmity towards Jesus.

Dear Lord today let me live in your Love knowing that all that is good is brought to us by You the Holy Spirit working through Father and Son. May Mary and the Saints continue to plead for us faced with the difficulties and sins of this world to make us ready to be welcomed into the world to come.

 28/03/2022

The promises revealed by Isaiah are made real by the Incarnation and the presence of the Son in  Palestine 2000 years ago. Jesus was doubtful of the faith to be found in Galilee but returned to continue the proclamation of the Kingdom of God as prophesised by Isaiah.

The miracles performed by Jesus are certainly witnesses to his personal power. They are not signs of his divinity as God could work similarly through anybody. The sign of his divinity was to come later for the Jews. It was the sign of Jonah.

The Historical event, the Resurrection, was witnessed by no man but was proclaimed by the chosen ones; the ones who had deserted Jesus when most needed. God's plans are unfathomable. The Word, Son, Jesus is crucified and resurrected in God's freedom, Eternity. Our God is one in three, a mystery we can worship but not understand. For this we are created by the Love that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit; we are created to use our human freedom to know, love serve. Jesus is the supreme example of this way of being human.

Dear Lord, the second miracle at Cana brought healing to one family and they believed. Your resurrection brings healing to the whole world but we do not believe. Let me this day offer true sincerity from my heart; true worship of your greatness and complete trust in your providence. Thy will be done.

 27/03/2022

I have always felt closer to the son who stayed at home and worked than to the prodigal who couldn't accept the results of his own sinful folly. My sense of justice is offended in the same way by the payment to the labourers who worked only 1 hour being the same as to those who had slogged it out through the heat of the day.

Both parables teach us that Our Father in Heaven is ready to forgive all of us no matter when in our lives we turn to him. In fact I see that God treats me in the way that he chooses and I  have to disregard the way he treats others for we have to know God as only we ( billions of individuals) can know him.

The Church is Christ's body on earth and in heaven. It is "the new creation"  that is the "News" proclaimed by St Paul. We all have the possibility of complete reconciliation with Father, Son and Holy Spirit as the Son has taken on our sins, he is completely faultless, and during the "The Three Days" of passion and death he makes physical and spiritual atonement for the whole world; the power of God is directed on the world, in human time, totally in the mercy of Love.

In knowing this I become human and in serving I do my little bit to attain the loving that can be returned to our Dad in heaven.

Dear Lord help all of us to know holiness for it is you who are holy. Nothing can be except through you so there is nothing to my credit. My prayers are the start of this day but will they be with me at the end?. Help those who are known to me and stop the lunacy of man which is the work of Satan whom you defeated on your cross of loving agony.

 26/03/2022

Jesus makes it clear to us that we need to be completely honest with ourselves. How many of us who read and hear the Gospel of today, will picture himself as the Pharisee. When I compare myself, the self that is to be found in the "hidden room"to the Son,  Jesus, and to Jesus' words I know that I can beat the most cynical of Pharisees. I know that I have been full of sins condemned by the Word and yet hypocritically acknowledged the Sacrament and  received the Body and Blood of Christ sacrilegiously. I can condemn the pride that I see in others but am in my hidden room snarling with jealousy.

I read the mass readings everyday and write about them but can spend more time thinking about the style and checking the spelling than absorbing the teachings. Men are slaughtering their own humanity in numerous conflicts. I can condemn, but the hateful thoughts in my mind  and words on my lips, even in the "hidden room" are also a cause of pain and suffering to Jesus Our Saviour on the cross.

The only reqirement to avoid sin is to be honest with love and avoid  taking on the appearance of humility with the pride in self that self destructs. It is not the "beating of the breast" in public that Jesus praises but the  condition of that Love that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit within our hearts; in our hidden rooms.

Dear Lord today let thy will be done in the world that you have created; let your Love come into the individual souls of all of us that we may cooperate in your will for all the peoples of the world. Show your mercy to those whose suffering is known to me and to all the world.

 25/03/2023

Exactly 9 months before Christmas the Church celebrates the Annunciation of the conception of Jesus who from this day is in the world experiencing the same bodily development that has been undergone by all of us but not remembered as our embryonic brains were not fuly grown during those first months of life. This experience is also known by all mammals. Jesus is truly a human being with the important exception, sinlessness; his developing body is part of Mary's who has also not known sin. 

This mystery of the Incarnation is a humility on the part of God, whom we are shown to be Father Son and Holy Spirit, that is totally out of love for his creation and particularly for his own image and likeness which we all are. I cannot fully grasp the significance of what I write for I am but a sinful man, less than dust of God's Universe.

Scripture records some of God's dealings with humanity. All of these dealings are guidance and then forgiveness. Guidance to show us the way to live and then forgiveness for our failings. Gabriel greets Mary and also reveals that Elizabeth is also pregnant and the two together enable us to say:

Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.

Dear Lord let my words not be a presumption but a sincere belief that will rule my being and behaviour. Guide my prayers and thought let me have a modicum of your infinite humility saying : Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen

 24/03/2022

"Here is a generation that will not listen to the voice of the Lord its God nor take correction. Sincerity is no more it has vanished from their mouths".

The words of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah are as applicable today as when they were spoken to the Jews of old.I am living in a generation that is so secure in its self-esteem that it cannot entertain the view that there is anything wrong about it. Every day I see many users of the internet who despise the Church and all that she preaches.

The Church has faults but it is still Christ's foundation on St Peter. The attacks on the Church are in fact directed aginst God. We have to build up a wall of prayer that will protect us from the "Stronger man". Jesus is not saying that might is right but that we have to be vigilent to remain in the Kingdom. 

I cannot undestand how it has come to pass that most of my family do not serve God. I too have lived through the great social changes that have happened as technology has created the "Global Village".

My awarenes of life tells me that my consciousness is one of billions in the world and that we will all die. Only God  can tell me what happens then and God has revealed himself first through Jews and then through Jesus, the Son and man. I feel that we have at least  as great a need of God physically present with us as in the first Century. Come Lord Jesus come and save us from the devil's work that is proliferating throughout your creation.

Dear Father, Son and Holy Spirit receive my prayers and let humanity know that human freedom must not be misused. Mary and the Saints support my prayers and let every one of us know that if we choose Jesus then the evils of the world will pass away for our sins will be forgiven.