31/05/2024 

You know what I am trying to do each morning when I start up this computer and read the mass readings for the day. You know that my soul wants to be free of the sin which has marred my being. You know this already but all of us also have to declare this with our humanity, living body and mind and soul. 

I am an event in your creation as are all the created souls who have ever lived and so there is nothing that is possible for me to be that is ever unknown by you but unfolds for me in time according to my choices.

The meeting of Mary with Elizabeth is a huge event that is a direct result of your Love for mankind. The Old Testament came to an end there in the hill-country of Judea and the Final Revelation, The New Testament, was recognised by the completion of the Old even though both were unborn.

There have been since that meeting billions of events that should have given Glory to You, The meeting of the cousins took place because the people on whom you lavished your Love had failed to achieve the holiness for which they were created.

There have in your Church been millions of brilliant human minds that have honestly tried to expound on the Holiness of your Being. As those "great ones" approached their deaths their faculties faded away and they became as helplessly dependant on their carers as were You and John in the wombs of your mothers. 

Humility is a virtue because it is the reality of our human weakness which we share with all mammals and with which you shared your Glory with us in your incarnation as the perfect homo sapiens.

Dear Lord, I am getting able to hold a thought but there is always something lacking. I am not Balthasar or St Thomas but do my best to show to myself how being a Christian is the sole purpose of my life. I do know that I can be sustained by the love of Mary and all the Saints who are the heavenly channels for your grace in the mystical body that is your Church of Love. May I become totally open to your grace and avoid all that separates me from holiness. Let your grace be acknowledged by all my careless family and let your clergy really become "alter Christus". I make this prayer to and through Father, Son and Holy Spirit. May my soul and the souls of the faithful departed rest in the Peace that  is so desperately needed in our world.  Amen 

 30/05/2024

I do not have an intimate knowledge of either New or Old Testaments. I am always aware of the main points of the story of salvation that are pointed out by the Church and the theology that I have read. If  somebody were, before today, to have asked me the source of "You are new born and like babies you should be hungry for nothing  but milk" I am sure I would not have answered, "St Peter". Of course, St Peter was the head of a family before he has appointed to be the foundation of the Church and must have known something about babies.

It is easy to see the "lack of spiritual honesty" in others. There have always been clergy among us who denounce the sin that secretly rules their own lives. I know that I have rarely been consistent in my own search for holiness. 

St Peter also tells us that we are a "royal priesthood" a "a consecrated nation set apart". Whoever the author of the letter attributed to St Peter might be, it is certain that he is a Jew aware of IAMIAM's covenant with the first "People of God".

In his incarnate life God teaches us that his first Chosen People have lost their unique relationship with him and although he is bringing forgiveness to them as a free gift, they hand him over to Pagans so that they can feel free of guilt for his death. Today their descendants are slaughtering as they themselves have also been slaughtered in times since then.

The same Mammon that crushed Temple Worship has never ceased to be preferred by many descendants of first century Jews and Christians who lived when God "visited his people". I feel that we have to ask ourselves in all seriousness whether or not our "Church" has became as blind as was Bartimaeus. We all certainly need to return to the "Faith" in "The Kingdom of God" that gave him sight. The day of reckoning is surely coming and we all need to purge ourselves of selfish passions. We can only do that if we choose to live spiritual lives in the light of Christ.

Dear Lord, these days in which I am living are very much like the days you walked in Palestine. Selfishness by individuals and groups has reached the point where it has so filled our beings with material goods, pleasures, that there is no room for you the way, the truth and the light. May Mary and all the Saints give hope to us sinners that your grace will bring about the change that we need to make in our beings so that Jesus can know that we truly understand the wonders of your Love. Help us by your Grace to keep our hearts open to receive whatever you choose to reveal to us. Amen

 29/05/2024

In the Gospel reading for today we are accompanying Jesus on his final visit to Jerusalem. Jesus is in front of the group of us. We are not sure of what is going to happen. Jesus now speaks to the Apostles, the group of 12 whom he has already chosen for some special task. We are not happy to become the unchosen ones but we are still mesmerized by the teaching and person of Jesus and wait for their private meeting to conclude.

In the meeting Jesus announces the reason that he is choosing to go to Jerusalem at this time. The Apostles do not really take in the cruel reality of Jesus' words to the extent that James and John try to gain an advantage over their colleagues and ask Jesus for a special favour. The other ten are as indignant about this as we are that we have not been chosen to attend the private meeting.

In the Epistle, Peter is preaching some years after the Resurrection. The events of which he has been a part are still fresh in his mind. Where there was a daze there is now clarity. The words which none of them had completely understood had become the reality which it was his joy to proclaim to the whole world. 

His friend Jesus whom he had deserted had proved himself to be the Resurrected Christ who brings the total forgiveness of God to all the world, even to those who deny him in some way. In that forgiveness we can find the purity that allows us to live in Love as the true brothers we are created to be. We are all freed from the shackles we create for our selves by selfish jealousy for we are all equally able to accept the unifying Love that is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

"For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many."

Dear Lord, as I typed the above I was sure that I was open to your guidance and to the Truth that you brought to Earth in your Incarnate Word. I can be saved from my sins because I can open my heart to receive the strength that is your grace. Even your foundation on St Peter may wither like the beauty of the flowers but the prayers of the Love that stayed with you to the end of your human life in Mary and her friends and in John her new son will remain with the Word until the end of time. Help me to also remain in your love till death the inevitable end of my life brings me to judgement. May your Mercy be upon me and all other sinners living and dead. Amen

 28/05/2024

In the first reading for today we hear some of Peter's preaching, his obedience to "Go out and teach all nations". We are all unique beings and "our minds" are how we know that we are individuals with a personal perception of reality. Peter tells us to free our minds of encumbrances, clear out our brains of unnecessary memories and present activities to allow our souls to become "Holy", a human person focussed on God.

Peter knows that Jesus is the complete revelation that begins in the Old Testament. He is the living "Word of God". The light of eternity here on Earth. He is the "New Song" of today's psalm. He is the new life of the Resurrection. Peter also knows that he has had his sins forgiven by his "friend", the Messiah.

During the three years that Peter had left everything and followed him, Jesus had had some occasions to reprimand him. Peter had never been slow at coming forward and it is in answer to Peter's question that Jesus makes the problematic, for me, answer of today's Gospel.

The "rich young man" had gone sorrowfully away because he was a man of "great wealth" who couldn't bring himself to convert his "holdings" into cash to distribute among the poor. Jesus in today's Gospel seems to speak contrary to what he had said then in that he tells the disciples that what they give up in "this world" will be repaid in "this world" without detriment to "eternal life".

Dear Lord, help me to understand the meaning of the words heard by the Apostles and  reported  by Mark. You know that I am sincerely trying to bring my life into the order that only comes from  doing your will. I can only do this consistently in these minutes of prayer before I begin my day. The sinless Mary from the moment she heard Gabriel's message to the moment she was taken deathlessly from this world knew as no other mortal soul has done your gracious goodness and lives immortally to share with all your saints in the Unseen Church of Love that saves our souls on earth and in purgatory from our sins. 

 27/05/2024

In England, this day is the feast of St Augustine of Canterbury. He is remembered as the missionary who first brought the Good News to the British Isles. 

The history of Christianity in the British Isles, however,  is much more complex than that. The "English" whom he first converted were in fact Jutes whose origin is in Jutland whereas the competing Angles although immortalised in the "Not Angles, but Angels" attributed to  Pope Gregory, who had commissioned St Augustine's mission, belong to the Germanic tribe whose name morphs into "England". But the Celtic Church began in the 2nd Century and was not St Jude martyred at Caistor on the Roman frontier with the North Sea? It is a veritable can of worms that is opened by St Augustine's credentials to be the founder of the English Roman Catholic Church. 

St Paul is always very much concerned for the constancy of the churches that he founded and coupled with this he insists that his own integrity is to be the model for us the first converts to follow. 

The dawning of the new day is as it were a new birth for all of us and we can all become the first recipients of the Good News announced by Mary Magdalen and proclaimed by the Apostles and St Paul.

First of all we become aware of ourselves and thank God that we are still alive. We search our consciousness to remind ourselves of what tasks we have before us and our consciences to pray for grace to avoid the sins of "yesterday".

Jesus is the "Good Shepherd" and "St Paul" is the created image and likeness of the shepherd who would lay down his life to protect his flock. He is always aware, as am I, that no one can hide from the Lord. 

The entire history of each created being, each particle that forms the Universe is known to Our Father.  He knows my sins, my fluent yet empty words, my cupidity, my lusts, my self-centered greed are all known and can be forgiven by the reality of the grace which we can all access by repentance and trust in Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Dear Lord, help me to avoid sin today. Help me to be ready for the death that I will have to face as an individual unique being, aware only of my sins but with the confidence that even I can be forgiven. Help me to seek out "Truth" and avoid all traces of greed. Let me become what you have created me to be and let me overcome all my self-centered consciousness to be aware only of the Glory of you the Ever-Greater. May Mary who has no personal knowledge of the power of sin but witnessed the pain with which you died to save the world from its power, continue to lead all the saints in the prayer that can bring forgiveness to all sinners and may Father, Son and Holy Spirit bring renewal to the Institution founded on Peter to become your Mystical Body on earth.  May she become what you intended her to be and not the failing human institution, a prisoner of Mammon, that she did,very quickly, become. Amen.

 26/05/2024

I am one being out of the billions of mankind whose bodies have been begotten as are all mammals. My soul is the eternal life that is the unseen being, the image and likeness of God, that reveals itself in the awareness of this moment that it is able to become what the Creator intended us all to be.

My mind is the interface between my body and my soul and it is in this region of my individual being that the freedom that allows us to choose to eat the fruit of the "tree" or to follow the revelation of his will made by the Father, that the "my-event", myself and my will in time, becomes part of the reality that is human history.

The mind of man is such a wonderful thing that each of us can become captivated by ourselves and then try to share this self-wonder. The more-gifted can display their wonder to the rest of mankind and can become leaders, artists, gods, for themselves and others to follow even to a useless death. 

The Jesus who died in human ignominy was deserted by all but a handful of followers. They were totally devastated by the apparent futility of the time that they had been avid listeners and followers of the man condemned to death by Pilate. But on the third day afterwards, the Resurrection culminates the most important 33 years of History.

Dear Lord, I thank you for the wonder of my being and for Your Grace which enables me to know my place in the vastness of your material creation and my place before you the Ever-greater Love that envelopes all that exists. You have not created us to be "artificial mini-gods" but to choose to be your loving children who know, love, and serve The Father, Son and Holy Spirit and today we especially are in awe before you The Trinity. The Immaculate, the other two Maries and John overcame their own grief and fear to remain to that bitter end on Calvary so that the empty corpse could be treated with human dignity after the death that is the source of the Resurrection and Eternal life for all of us who choose to be faithful to Our Father. Amen

 25/05/2024

The first reading reminds us how to live a Spiritual life on earth. Prayer must feed our integrity, be our constant companion and we can thus, through the grace of God, live lives of innocence as did the children welcomed with tenderness by the Lord in the Gospel.

I know that even though I was Baptized my own childhood was not sinless and that I still live the same life, a mixture of faith and failure, today as an octogenarian as I did then. I try to pray each day guided by the readings from scripture chosen to be the mass readings for the day.

Today the life that was St Bede's is truly celebrated in the scriptures that he loved and the prayer that was his guide. His monastery at Jarrow was hundreds of miles from Rome and it is a tribute to the "Church", the light of the Dark Ages, that this remote outpost was able to nurture such a scholar and saint. He is credited with creating the calendar based on the birth of Christ, hence A.D. and B.C.

The worldliness, that has corrupted Jesus' foundation on St. Peter and was soon to create in Rome the unbearable reality of sinfulness, that was the mark of the papacy at the end of the first millennium, was well in progress, but St Bede was able to remain true to the teaching of the Scriptures.

Our God is truly merciful and can forgive all our sins if we confess them before witnesses with true repentance. Elsewhere he also said that there is an unforgiveable sin. Institutional "coverup" for clerics who have sexually abused little children must come very close to this but many of those living men are still "Bishops" of the Church and do not come close to the integral holiness that would strengthen them to confess and depart into sinless obscurity.

Dear Lord you know what is in my mind as I remember the sins of my youth. I couldn't control my body in any way. I could have damned my soul in many ways but was always ready to return to You usually as a result of the fear of Hell. These days that begin in prayer are the reason that I wake up from sleep. Your Infinite Grace is available to all of us and when we turn away from our pride we can be sure that your loving crucified arms are stretched out to receive us as the children whom you love with tenderness. You, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are beyond all our emotions but in the Incarnation you know us as we really are,  so are pleased when sinners try to realign themselves with your will. May Mary and all the Saints continue both in their praise of your Glory and prayerful support for the heart of the Church and transformation of the Institution into the true Body of Christ on earth. Amen