30/04/2026

The places mentioned in today's mass readings are still there although much changed in appearance. I have lived through much of the acceleration that characterizes most  of those changes in modern times

When I first visited Cyprus more than fifty years ago the site of St Paul's scourging was pretty dominant in Lower Paphos, but now it is lost within the "developments" of Jet-age" tourism.

Perga too is an Archaeological attraction site in the tourist destination that is Antalya in modern Turkiye. Psidian Antioch can still be found in the Isparta Province also in Turkiye. Jerusalem is not named but is the place where all the events of the Gospel took place. It too is much changed.

All the things of this "world" are subject to "time" which we "know" but never see. St Paul speaks to the Synagogue of Perga about the history he and all God's "Chosen People" share and all is well until he begins to proclaim the Resurrection as the visible sign of the Reset of Salvation that Jesus, God Incarnate had recently completed in Jerusalem.

I am writing this 2000 years after the events and know that I am a sinful man, certainly an executioner of Christ but also "a lost sheep" that IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT, the GOOD SHEPHERD, never gives up on and it is always from Scripture that I will receive "rod and staff" to guide me.

On the night before he was betrayed Jesus took bread and broke it to become a new way of being, the Sacrament of HIMSELF that would be entrusted to his friends in this world to be the guardians thereof. He founded his Church on Peter but before so doing he told us all that we should never put our own self before any other person, He lived selflessly and so must we. 

St Paul could remind his listeners that IAMIAM had directly supported his people Israel many times over many centuries. At his trial before Pilate Jesus declared "My kingdom is not of this world". 

This tells us that after the Resurrection it is only in our souls, our being that is not of this world, that IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT reveals his purpose for mankind and that there is no longer a "\This Worldly Chosen People". 

The "Things of this world," are not part of the Kingdom of God revealed by INCARNATE SON in the Roman Province of Palestine 2000 years ago.

To live according to the Will of the Father, it is each individual that has to cherish  the WORD, Jesus, who teaches us how to live a life of service and prayer by humbly "washing the feet of others" and being  open to the SPIRIT, the Love that is revealed as the New Holy Family, the Church of Love, in the mission of mutual care entrusted to Mary and John on Calvary.

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

 

 

 29/04/2026

The physical Light that we do not see but is essential for us to see is not the LIGHT that we can acknowledge as coming from God  to empower our response to the Loving Mercy within which we have our beings.

We are not compelled by any inbuilt restraint to react to the the presence of God. Our being, "our very souls" are not encoded as are our bodies but the Love that is IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT has shared with us some of the freedom that is part of his limitless Loving Being in the Paternal Joy that becomes the Wonder to which each one of us ,"image and likeness", can respond  but not replicate during our time in  "this world".

The bodily animal, Mankind, has never  been able to overcome the Sin with which he first contaminated creation by the misuse of the Divine Gift of freedom but there have always been individuals who thanks to the willingness with which they have accepted in their Souls the loving embrace Our Father proffers to us all, have managed to live in the LIGHT throughout their lives in this world.

Today we honour the memory of such a one. Those who lived in her generation were subject to a scandalously divided Institutional Church that had for generations been ignoring "My kingdom is not of this world" but  the ever undivided Church of Love, New Holy Family ensures that  the LIGHT and LOVE of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT is always available to those who pray  to join St Catherine to be forever at home in the never-ending peace of HE who is "lowly and gentle of heart".

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

 28/04/2026

In today's reading from St John's Gospel, Jesus is teaching/disputing with "the Jews". 

In the Gospel of St John "the Jews" does not mean the same as "multitude", ordinary people of Palestine, but is used by St John to denote the learned and the clever, priests, lawyers and pharisees.

He is writing about an event that took place at least 20 years before the dispersal/growth of the Apostolic Church recorded in the first of today's mass readings.

I am reading about them more than 2000 years after both events. I am not reading a newspaper, novel or history book because with the Scriptures "there something more that  is here" and I am trying to respond to the "more" that is  WORD as did St Peter, "Where should I go, you Lord have the words of eternal life?"

There is nothing more important that any human being can do today and any day than raise his mind and heart to God.

Jesus is not capable of telling us anything but TRUTH. Today he is not an ethicist teaching in the Athenian Stoa or Rabbi in a synagogue but the Son of God  answering direct question posed by Hebrew Professors. He is the pure unrefractable "Light of the World" infusing with grace all who seek him with their whole mind, heart and soul.

‘I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.’

God knows who I am and forgives all of his children but we have to do more than just "listen" to his words. Our true being is witnessed only by our deeds and I know that I often fail "to know, love and serve in this world". I can never lose hope for "eternal life", however, for the Mercy of Our Father is boundless and I know even in my sinfulness that I am the receiver of unfathomable grace in the Church of Love, the Mystical Body of Christ, the New Holy Family,  a final promise of Our Lord sealed in the horror of his death on Calvary.

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

 

 27/04/2026

Monday Easter Week 4

We are still in the process that began in the Portico of Solomon and the Upper Room. 

Two thousand years later, each one of is having to come to terms of how to live in this world and simultaneously be true to our belief in our mystical awareness of Jesus as Son of God.

Today's version of the Church founded on St Peter and the New Holy Family consists only of we who are the blessed "who have not seen" whereas the Church of Peter John and Mary had known Jesus as friend and human son and their testimony was that of the blessed who had believed what their interpretation of their personal experiences had revealed to them.

We have also accrued generation after generation much that keeps us from the Living Fire that "brought a sword from heaven". 

In today's first reading Peter has to defeat "anti-gentilism" which is the attitude to non-Jews that Jews acquired at birth and reinforced on a daily basis by their use of Scripture. He was not completely successful.

God knows that the Jewish people have often suffered as many Christians have blamed them for the way IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT has brought about in the life, death and resurrection of the Jesus, the Incarnation, the reset of salvation that is  repentance that leads to life. 

Our Father has only ever forgiven his executioners and makes it quite clear in today's Gospel that it is only by HE, HIMSELF fulfilling the will of his own BEING, FATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT that our human sinfulness can be brought back to the purity created in the garden.

It is through the grace of God that Peter was able to obtain the acceptance by the Jews for his Gentile converts. At that time that seemed like an impossibility, 

Today, (2026) in another completely impossible this worldly situation we have to pray that the original "Chosen People" can come to the self awareness that enables them to understand that they who slaughter are not the victims even in this world and that the purported quote from one of the first defenders of Zionist Israel, "We can never forgive the Palestinians for making us kill their children" spits into the face of He who is truly God.

 

 26/04/2026

I have to face up to my own weaknesses this morning. For some days, I have missed recording my morning reflections on the daily Mass Readings that have become the "personal signs" by which I choose to reveal what is always present even though clouded over in my heart and soul.

In the first reading Peter and the other ten Apostles are praying in the temple with a favourable congregation who are inspired to both listen to and seek guidance from these Proclaimers of the Resurrection. 

God knows that I too sometimes cooperate faithfully with HIS WORD but at others I am entirely taken up by the things of this world and allow my being to lose touch with Our Father whom I know to be "The Good Shepherd" and who is, indeed, much greater than that image of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT'S tender love for us his aimlessly wandering sheep.

In fact all of us are totally hopeless without our Shepherd for we are all in much more danger than we would be if we were simply "aimlessly" wandering. 

Even though Jesus by his life death and resurrection has created for us access to the Free Gift from IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT that enables us to live righteously in this world and created a spiritual home, the Church of Love, the New Holy Family many of us however, often choose to follow the ways to self glorification created by generations of mankind and thus filled "this world" with the false Glory that is the work of Mammon and is as corruptible as our own flesh. 

We must never lose sight of the reset of Creation that God enabled 2000 years ago in Palestine, Incarnation who is Christ the Lord, son of God and Son of Mary who is eternally

 The bread of Life.

 The light of the World

The gate of the sheepfold

The good shepherd.

The resurrection and the life

The way, the truth and the life.

The true vine

 22/04/2026

In the northern temperate latitudes of this world, Spring is bringing the usual promises of the good things that are to come. Everywhere trees and shrubs are blossoming and spring flowers are dying back to give way to the more luxuriant growth of summer.

In the Liturgy of the Church it is still Eastertide and in the Mass Readings we share the experiences of the Apostolic Church. St Luke records the first deeds of his friend St Paul who had made his first appearance in the story of our faith, the history of our Church, as the approver of the execution of St Stephen, "the blasphemer". In today's first reading. he has become much more than a bystander at a stoning but is actively harassing the followers of the the "Way".

All the worshippers in the Portico of Solomon and Upper Room are still Jews although divided linguistically and it is as apostate Jews, "blasphemers" they undergo the first persecution by the Orthodox Pharisees and Sadducees.

I have always been aware that the Church of Christ has often been unfaithful to his example and teaching when entangled within the things of this world. It seems that the "Christians" in Palestine did not participate in the Jewish Revolt that resulted in the destruction of the Temple. As a persecuted "blaspheming" minority they had fled to Pella across the Jordan before or during the original disturbances.

Christianity was so named first of all in Antioch and it was in Asia Minor and in Egyptian Alexandria that the Faith first grew and was codified and as the Church grew in temporal power so did she often depart as had  "Jewish Tempalism" before her, from the shared foundational Ten Commandments,  and the radical quintessential "turn the other cheek", "love your neighbour as yourself" "Father forgive them for they know not what they do" that characterises the revolutionary reset of Salvation completed by the final blood sacrifice made by the Son of God on Calvary.

Jesus taught us that we are all brothers/sisters and that claiming for ourselves moral virtues or privileges from our temporal parentage is as great a sin as the racism that condemns others for not being as we are.

Anti-Semitism and any form of Racism is a great sin and adds to the power of evil in this world but it is no greater a sin than the refusal to believe the words of IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT and know that it is each one of us  who by sinning adds to the pain of the atonement won for us on Calvary.

For this is the will of my Father,

that everyone who looks on the Son

and believes in him

should have eternal life,

and I will raise him up on the last day.’

 

 21/04/2025

Today Jesus tells us that HEISBREADFROMHEAVEN. His interlocuters had asked for the bread from heaven that had fed their forefathers in the desert, the "manna" on which they had survived during their learning period under the guidance of Moses.

Some of those who "in those times" demanded signs could become the first believers who worshipped with and learnt from the Apostles and some could be those who actually stoned Stephen.

We are their descendants in faith and can acknowledge how within our own beings we too can demand signs. We look for signs of Eternity in the events of this world. There have been many reports of "Eucharistic Miracles" throughout the centuries. 

Years ago I was impressed by Pascal's thought that the continued existence of the Jews could be considered as sign for the existence of God. It may be false but it is not a stupid idea. 

It is sure that Jesus taught that God does not have favourites and each of us has the ability to accept the gifts that we are given as proportionate to our needs and more importantly we have the freedom to choose to live in our own beings with the good of others as our first principal. 

This is how Jesus lived and died and in today's Gospel the first Martyr Stephen emphasises this Christlike living and dying for  others "Lord do not hold this sin against them". Jesus definitely taught us that believers are his own family but before us Israelites who had been guided by God's prophets  became the instruments through whom the perfect sacrifice was made.

I know that on Calvary there were two sinless truly human beings but one freely offered himself in atonement for all Sin. Even the accusers and executioners of Christ can be forgiven. 

We must not condemn anyone for the circumstances of their birth. God does not have favourites. "Go out and teach all nations" means that believers have the obligation to spread  the Good News by their way of life, becoming living Gospels and by their words. Our race and nation is totally of this world and has nothing to do with the Kingdom of God.

We are all known by IAMFATHERSONHOLYSPIRIT as his frequently wayward children but who can all return to him when we ask:

‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?’

 Jesus answered them,

‘This is the work of God,

that you believe in him whom he has sent.

for it was on Calvary that he created his Spiritual Church of Love the New Holy Family in which as brothers and sisters, we can all follow the Way, Truth and Life.

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