31st Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)

Thirty-first Sunday (Year B)

(Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Hebrews 7: 23-28; Mark 12: 28-34)

Catholics and Christians generally today are not wholly at ease with those supremely important words of Our Lord:

The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'      

They are not wholly at ease with those words because, broadly speaking, though they recognize their unquestionable character, being perfectly clear and simple; and also their indisputable authority, being Our Lord’s direct answer to a question of absolutely supreme importance in Israel and for the salvation of mankind; nevertheless, they are not at ease with them because they quite clearly expect, call for, and even demand, that we not only agree with them but that we sincerely and seriously work at them:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'

As sincere Christians and -- as many would humbly say of themselves -- ‘ordinary human beings’, they want to engage in good actions, actions which do good and promote what is good: actions that -- as far as possible – prevent and counter,  thwart and redress, evil, both for the good of individuals and the benefit of society.  Intentions not, indeed, always possible or even realistic, but nevertheless mysteriously comforting and satisfying: ‘I tried my best’; ‘I did what I could’.

A commitment to personal prayer, on the other hand, they are inclined to regard as being wasteful of time in which opportunities for important good works are lost for ever.  Indeed, when provoked in some degree, they even seem to have and to cherish at the back of their minds, so to speak, the secret conviction that what they consider to be overmuch prayer is a somewhat selfish and reprehensible exercise, nothing better than physical laziness or spiritual vanity and self-seeking:

Mary sat beside the Lord at His feet, listening to Him speak.  Martha, burdened with much serving, came to Him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?  Tell her to help me!’  (Luke 10:39s.)

In the letter to the Hebrews from which our second reading was taken we find frequent mention of the words ‘High Priest’ in relation to Jesus:

Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to Him who appointed Him.

Now the office of High Priest was supremely important for the Chosen People because, as we are told in the letter to the Hebrews (5:1), he was their uniquely appointed and acknowledged representative before God; and since Israel had only become the Chosen People -- and an independent nation -- by the gift and grace of God, Israel’s continued national existence and prosperity as God’s Chosen People, was seen to depend upon her right relationship with the God Who had made her His own:

Every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. 

As you know, that right relationship did not endure, Israel sinned against her God and was ultimately punished, being destroyed as an independent nation and superseded as God’s Chosen People; and that fatal fragility of Israel in her relationship with God had been mirrored or manifested in the very person of the High Priest, for again, the letter to the Hebrews in our second reading, told us that:

The law appoints as high priests men who have weakness.

However, the author then immediately goes on to add, that, for the future, that situation would be remedied by God’s oath:

The Lord has sworn and will not change His mind…  You are a priest forever;

an oath which came after the law:

appoint(ing) the Son who has been perfected forever. 

He was perfected because, as Son, He was completely one with God the Father in His divine nature; and perfected forever in His humanity through His Passion and  Death on the Cross followed by His glorious Resurrection, whereby He now lives in human flesh at the right hand of the Father, continually interceding for us through all ages.  He is the perfect High Priest because He loves the Father supremely as the only-begotten Son, and because He was, as man, made perfect by the love with which He bore, for our sake, His personally unmerited and immeasurable sufferings.

It was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. (Hebrews 2:10)

Love and obedience before God the Father is the supreme key to the perfection of the incarnate Son as our High Priest, and the whole of Jesus’ life on earth was one of continuous union of love in mind, heart, soul and will, with His Father for our salvation.  He was, He is, the perfect, and our sublime, High Priest.

The High Priest in Jerusalem offered bloody sacrifices before God on strictly limited ceremonial occasions in the Temple; but most of the time he was occupied in political negotiations and dealings with the Roman occupying force.  Jesus made no deals with those in power, neither with the Romans, the Herodians, nor with the Temple authorities; He ‘negotiated’ exclusively with His heavenly Father by means of total and most loving obedience together with constant and most intimate prayer, all culminating in the one sublime sacrifice offered by the Son on Calvary and accepted by the Father in the glory of the ‘third day’.

In that way the supreme importance of prayer to God was established for all ages among the new People of God.  And since, as St. Peter tells us, the new People of God are a priestly people being members of the Body of Him Who is the High Priest of our confession, we too are consecrated first and foremost to prayerful union with the Father expressed in the words of Our Lord we began with:

The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'      

As a man endowed with a divine mission and given little time by His fearful and unscrupulous enemies, Jesus deliberately sacrificed countless opportunities to do external good works: people were looking for Him and He moved on, frequently avoiding the crowds; He imposed silence both on devils who would fearfully reveal His true majesty and on many former-sufferers grateful to Him for their cure.  Generally speaking, He had to be sought out by those who looked for healing and, when found, needed to be convinced of, and persuaded by, their faith.  On the other hand, however, Jesus was, at all times and in all circumstances, communing with His Father, and He emphasised this personal and private relationship by often seeking solitude, in order to give Himself more urgently in prayer -- both avid and humble --  to His Father.

We can, therefore, surely recognize how wrong it is to think that Christianity is, first and foremost, concerned with doing worldly, physical, visible, good to people; wrong, because our aim has to be one with Jesus’ proclaimed destiny:

(giving) glory to God in the highest and (bringing) peace toward men of goodwill.

Peace with God, that is, oneness with God that leads to eternal life; the salvation that God the Father wills to confer on all mankind in response to the intercession of Jesus, our heavenly High Priest, together with that of His priestly people here below.

Influenced by the world around them, many people want tangible success in their practice of religion: they want to be seen, or at least to see themselves, achieving something; and, often enough, they find prayer, which produces no immediate or tangible results, difficult and unrewarding; and this lack of “success” easily brings with it a certain distaste for what is regarded as the “nothingness”, the “dryness”, the “uselessness” of prayer.  This reaction is, of course, the result and sign of a deep rooted selfishness common to us all in one form or another, for prayer is first of all God centred: it is homage to, appreciation and praise of, God; it is not something entered into for our own immediate satisfaction and pleasure, indeed, it is a most important step in the practice, demanded of us by Jesus, of dying, with Him, to ones-self.   And since Jesus not only died to self but also rose again to glory in God, where that native selfishness is done to death by a sincere and persevering approach and response to God in prayer, that prayer is indeed able to develop into a supreme delighting in God. 

Jesus intercedes before His Father as the only-begotten, beloved, Son, as we heard:

He is always able to save those who approach God through Him, since He lives forever to make intercession for them.

Here, you will I trust, notice, that the second commandment mentioned by Our Lord has not been forgotten:

You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

The fact is, People of God, that it is impossible to love the Father in spirit and in truth and then to fail to love one’s neighbour.  Modern Catholics and Christians need to learn anew how to appreciate the supreme importance and power of prayer, and the true value and ‘quality’ of work inspired, sustained, and fulfilled by prayer to God, for such prayer rightly gives all glory to God whose wisdom alone secretly and subtly guides and enables the worker, while His mercy graciously and appropriately prepares the recipient, all in accordance with the angels’ song (Luke 2:14):

Glory to God in the highest and peace toward men of goodwill.  

Those who side-step the difficulties of prayer and concentrate on the perceptible rewards of good works, are not only trying to put the cart before the horse and, consequently, sometimes finding themselves blundering where angels fear to tread, but they can also easily harm themselves by slipping into the trap of vain glory either by seeking human appreciation for, and approval of, their labours, or else by imagining that they themselves are doing the works on which they set such store.

True prayer, however, often involves the painful awareness of our own emptiness and need of God, only occasionally being sweetened by a passing experience of God’s great goodness.  Nevertheless, for the disciple of Jesus, aridity and difficulty in time devoted to prayer -- especially in prayer of praise and thanksgiving – can gradually result in a joy and inspiration, a peace and strength, that show themselves, secretly indeed, but yet convincingly enough: as though the One Who would not endanger our prayer with open favours, does not hesitate to comfort and confirm us mysteriously by a certain awareness or secret sense of His presence in ordinary circumstances as well as in moments of personal suffering and special striving:

He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to  him.

If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him.   (John 14:21, 23)

All Saints 2012

 ALL SAINTS     2012                                     

 (Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12)

Today we are celebrating all the saints, all those, that is, who -- known and unknown -- are beloved of God and share in His eternal blessedness by a supremely fulfilling gift of God that can never be lost or taken away, for He is almighty and His will is eternal.  Let us now, therefore, look at those blessed ones we are celebrating and also look closely at the way Jesus traces out for all who would share with them in like blessedness. 

You heard in that first reading something of the glory of heaven:

After this I had a vision of a great multitude which no one could count,  from every nation, race, people, and tongue.  They stood before the throne and before the Lamb … They cried out with a loud voice: "Salvation comes from our God who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb!"

No racism, no sexism, no privileged groups there, but people from all nations and all times; all of them standing as one before the throne of God with the Lamb their Lord and Saviour, and praising God for the victory He has won for them:

Amen! Blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, honour, power and might, be to our God forever and ever.  Amen.

It is there, People of God, we, as disciples of Jesus, aspire to go when this, our earthly pilgrimage, is ended.  Don’t think: “I can’t imagine me enjoying an eternity of nothing else but that”, for the only way to appreciate something of heavenly joy is to recall some special moment when you felt yourself both supremely delighted and uplifted: how time then passed by unnoticed and so, so, quickly, as you later realized!  Now the happiness, the blessedness of Heaven is something of that nature: totally overwhelming, uplifting and ecstatic joy that obliterates time!   Such recollections should help you realise that in heaven there can be no such thing as weariness or boredom, for heavenly joy and blessedness is an eternal instant of total ecstasy which has its origin in the vision of the infinite beauty, goodness and glory, of God Himself.

That blessedness, moreover, is not exclusively reserved for heaven; for those who come to some appreciation of the beauty of God’s truth and awareness of His goodness to all who believe in the name of Jesus, can begin to experience something of that blessedness even here on earth, as St. John tells us:

Behold what love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Yet so we are!  The reason the world does not know us, is that it did not know Him.  Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed.  We do know that when it is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.  Everyone who has this hope based on Him makes himself pure, as He is pure.

We who believe in the only Son of God who died for our sins and rose again, we who hope in the promises of Him Who is now seated at the right hand of power, are thereby being purified as He is pure, and being blessed with a beginning of the eternal blessedness which is His.  And as, through prayer and faithfulness in the way of Jesus, we deepen our hope, we come to appreciate -- and perhaps even, at times, imagine we experience -- something of that heavenly joy so intimately bound up with the gift and treasure which is our faith.

If, then, you would grow in that foretaste of beatitude, if you would know more of the heavenly joy to which we are all called as Christians, turn your attention now with me to the Gospel and try to understand better the way through life Jesus has marked out for His disciples.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, Blessed are those who mourn, Blessed are the meek, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, Blessed are the merciful, Blessed are the pure in heart, Blessed are the peacemakers, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

There we have the virtues of the one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed out of all the tribes of Israel as mentioned in the first reading, a wonderful compendium of what is best in the Old Testament: the truest fruits of the Law, the inspirations of prophets, and the meditations of sages; all, indeed, finding expression in the ecstasies of the Psalmists, and leading up to and preparing for that which would be the fulfilment and crown of all that had gone before.  As Jesus said (Matt 5:17):     

I did not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets but to fulfil them.

Now, however, since with Jesus the time of fulfilment has indeed come, instead of simply recalling the disciplines of the Law and the experiences of the prophets, which had gradually prepared a people for the Lord over the course of Old Testament times, Jesus goes one immeasurable step further: revealing Himself as God in flesh and the supreme glory of the disciples standing around Him:

Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you, and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of Me.

It is as if He was saying: such, indeed, were the virtues of the OT, but now, for you who are my disciples, your true title to heavenly glory is that you are My disciples.  It is no longer enough to say that you are among the gentle, the poor in spirit, the merciful, for you who listen to Me and who follow Me, are all of that and more: you are My true disciples and that will be your sovereign passport for heaven and title to glory.

Yes, People of God, I am sure that you will appreciate that, in heaven, it is not possible that the meekness, the gentleness, of any of the blessed could be admirable before the God of all holiness.  He is pleased to see such virtues of gentleness, humility, patience, mercifulness, or whatever, but being Himself all-holy, He therefore, most necessarily, sees also the limitations of our virtues, and He loves them best as anticipations of Jesus’ grace, preparations for Him.  However, the fact that someone has personally recognized His incarnate Word in Jesus, that someone has loved and served -- in Jesus -- His beloved and only-begotten Son Personally, that does indeed evoke the Father’s love, for to love His Son supremely here on earth is the summit and culmination of all virtue, including and surpassing all that has gone before, in His eyes.   You who are parents will understand.

Perhaps we can picture it best if we think of a sculptor.  God chose His material, the People of God, the nation of Israel, and through the Law and the Prophets He formed -- as does a sculptor with his chisel -- this block ('stiff-necked people' the prophets called them) gradually into some likeness of the Christ who was to come.  This work, however, was always done from the outside, so to speak, just as the chisel of the artist always chips away from the outside.  When Jesus the Christ -- the Son of God made flesh -- came, however, He gave His divine word to His disciples, to take root in their mind and heart and His example to inspire them.  He finally gave His human life for them, and then, having risen from the dead in the power of the Spirit of God, He ascended to the right hand of His Father, from where He sent His own most Holy Spirit to be with His disciples, making them into one Body, His Body, His Church.  The Holy Spirit was given to remain with His Church, guiding her into all truth and protecting her from the snares of the enemy, and in that continuing task the Spirit works from the inside, in the minds and hearts of the disciples, constantly forming them into a living likeness of Christ, their Lord and Saviour, for the Father:

Among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood, crying out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.  But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.        (Matt 11:11; Jn.7:37s.)

People of God, the glory of our calling, and, indeed, the joy of all the blessed in heaven lies in the fact that, as living members and living likenesses (not plaster-cast copies) of the Son, we are destined to share in His glory, and rejoice in the Father’s love:

You are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God -- and righteousness and sanctification and redemption -- that, as it is written, "He who glories, let him glory in the Lord."  (1 Cor. 1:30-31)

In our first reading we heard questions being asked about the blessed in heaven:

Who are these wearing white robes, and where did they come from?

In answer to the first question "who are these wearing white robes?" we can recall that we heard St. John tell us:

Everyone who has this hope based on Him makes himself pure, as He is pure.

So we know now why the blessed are dressed in white robes: they are disciples who, in Jesus and by His Spirit, have purified themselves as He is pure.

But what about that second question, "where did these people come from?"  Here we must bear in mind what Jesus has already told us:

Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you, and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of Me.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven.

That is where those dressed in white have come from; as the elder in heaven said:

These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

Today we have great reason to celebrate: as disciples of Jesus we have already been given a share in heavenly life and blessedness, and we can experience some measure of that blessedness if we purify ourselves, as St. John told us, by trying to walk ever more faithfully in the way of Jesus, and to appreciate ever more deeply the beauty of His truth.  The final washing of our robes, however, will only be brought about through suffering with and for Jesus, as indeed so many of our Catholic and Christian brethren throughout the world are now suffering , as God wills for each and every one of us in our life.

Even here -- such is the blessedness already given us -- we can, in some degree, come to rejoice in our sufferings for Jesus as the apostle Paul assures us:

Just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.  (2 Corinthians 1:5; Romans 8:18)

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B) 2012

Thirtieth Sunday (Year B)

(Jeremiah 31:7-9; Hebrews 5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52)

God’s Chosen People had been banished from their homeland because they had, over many generations, become alienated from the Lord their God by their sinful behaviour.   The Promised Land had been God’s gift to them, but, when they turned away from Him, dishonouring rather than glorifying His holy Name, they lost first His favour and finally the gift with which He had so bountifully endowed them.

Now, in our first reading today from the prophet Jeremiah, God is showing that mercy to His People for which many prophets -- together with holy men and women still to be found among the sinful people -- had long been praying: He is returning His gift, bringing them back to their Promised Land, and thereby inviting them to return to Him with their whole mind and heart.  This physical returning  home was to be an opportunity for them -- back in God’s land -- to hopefully prove themselves more worthy to be God’s Chosen and privileged People.

This physical return was hard, very hard indeed, leading over desert and stony ways: food and drink being necessarily in short supply since, after having had to pay the prices asked for them, they were then obliged to carry those supplies on their own backs as well as on the backs of the few animals they possessed.  Moreover, backs for carrying were not plentiful since they were returning with some treasured possessions, and, above all, they were carrying infants and nurslings; moreover, there were many who could not carry anything at all being either blind, lame, sick, too old, or else heavily pregnant.  For all these reasons food and drink had to be strictly limited for a journey that was long, over territory that was difficult, and under conditions of great heat during the day and penetrating cold at night.

Those difficulties, however, were not the only nor the greatest ones encountered by the returning exiles; for, although the physical trials of that trek back to Israel were great, nevertheless, it was a journey completed in a period of months; whereas on arrival in their homeland once more, there would be many and greater difficulties concerning rebuilding and restoration which would take years to resolve.

Above all, however, the very greatest challenge facing them would be from their own wayward hearts and minds, for they still had to return to the Lord their God in spirit and in truth.  The physical return home was indeed their great opportunity, but a truly successful return would not to be accomplished without years of social endeavour, and even more years of private, soul-searching, obedience and heart-felt prayer, all finding fitting expression in reverent and sincere public worship in the Temple.

With weeping they shall come, and with consolations/supplications I will lead them back.

That is the experience, even today, of many who, for whatever reason, leave Mother Church, and then are led, by the great mercy of God, to return to the fold: their absence has changed them, and, during that absence, Mother Church herself has changed, inevitably, since she is a living Church surrounded by, and responding to, a world in flux.  And even though such changes might, perhaps, only have been slight, nevertheless, they are not imperceptible to those sensitized by trial, with the result that some aspects of Church life may seem less familiar, less homely, than before, whilst other changes might even seem to strike an alien note to, or disturbing chord with, the hopes of those returning wanderers.

However, changes in ones’ self and changes in the Church are not the only sources of difficulties for exiles returning home; their return can be made more difficult and trying by one thing that changes most reluctantly, human nature: their own human nature and that of others.

And here we must notice the wisdom and the beauty of the Gospel account: for we are not told either that Jesus rebuked ‘the rebukers’, or that Bartimaeus took any notice of them:

As Jesus was leaving Jericho with His disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus -- a blind man, the son of Timaeus -- sat by the roadside begging.  On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”  And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent.  But he kept calling all the more, “Son of David, have pity on me!”

It was between Bartimaeus and Jesus and that is how it remained.

It is easy for those ‘returning from exile’ to allow themselves to be too aware of, or subject to, the attitude of ‘onlookers’.  On the one hand their own nervousness may make them touchy, or their self-love bolster itself with a whiff of pride more easily than admit a trace of noticeable contrition; and on the other hand, while a small minority might be critical, most -- though wanting be welcoming and helpful -- may not always know how best to show their understanding and sympathy, or simply let their own loving acceptance speak – without their words -- for itself.

Now it is undeniably the case that all of us, even those who have never been separated from Mother Church, are exiles returning to their Father, because all of us have experienced that sense of alienation from God which either personal sin, or the surrounding -- ever-threatening and secretly-encroaching -- worldliness inevitably bring with them.

Moreover, we have before us a totally new and unimaginable promise and prospect, for we are now called to prepare ourselves, or rather, to allow ourselves to be prepared for, not simply a return to the natural condition of Adam -- originally the friend of God -- but to the supernatural condition of children of the heavenly Father, through sharing, by the Spirit, in the eternal glory of Jesus, the only-begotten Son of God.   We have to make a journey not like that of the Israelites of old, simply across perhaps unknown, though most certainly not unfamiliar, territory to a land we had once wandered and worked before losing, but one into totally strange and unknown ‘territory’ because it is supernatural and heavenly, one which our imagination finds impossible to foreshadow, one with which it cannot, In any way, familiarise us.  We can aspire to undertake such a journey only out of love for, and confidence in, Jesus; moreover, it is one we can actually make only in the power of His Spirit.

We were told in the second reading:

Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.   No one takes this honour upon himself but only when called by God.

Jesus, our Brother, offered His gifts to the Father for us, since all of us had been exiled from the Father by sin.  Only infinite love -- the love that Jesus alone could offer -- could wipe out the insult of sin and fittingly respond to that heavenly invitation.    But if Jesus was to give, express, divine love in and through His human body it could only be by His bursting the limitations of that body, committing it to His Father’s supreme glory.  His human love for the Father entailed the ultimate price: His crucified Body and Blood poured out.  In that way He won for all of us exiles that first gift of the Spirit, that original inspiration, to start us out on the way back to our Father in Mother Church.  Thanks to the supreme prayer of Jesus and His ‘Sacrifice of Self’ on Calvary -- the sacrifice made available and effective for all ages in Mother Church’s continuous offering of Holy Mass -- we too can gain a hearing  when we pray, as His disciples, Lord have mercy on me.

Having, in the name of Jesus, gained a hearing, and having begun our return in Him and with Him to the Father, we have to persevere throughout a long, and at times difficult, journey, overcoming -- as did those returning exiles in the first reading -- trials from both without and within ourselves.  Thanks be to God, in Mother Church, at Holy Mass, all of us who are, to whatever degree, alienated from the Father by our sinfulness, can draw near and call out to Jesus as did Bartimeus on hearing the noise of the crowd, because Jesus at Holy Mass is so close at hand and so ready to hear our cries and answer us, as He did so long ago:

"What do you want Me to do for you?" The blind man replied to Him, "Master, I want to see!"  

What would you have asked for in such a situation, People of God?  What do you, in fact, ask of Jesus at Holy Mass?  Each of us is making his or her own journey to the Father, and each and every one of us has his or her own difficulties to overcome; but whatever our needs and whatever the request we might ask of Jesus, let us remember and learn from what we are told about Bartimeus, for Scripture says that:

Many rebuked him, telling him to be silent; but he kept calling out all the more, "Son of David, have pity on me!"

People of God, in our present situation under a positively secular-minded and anti-religious government there is much opposition and ridicule both public and in private for those who would serve God and conscience first and foremost.  Whatever opposition you may encounter, whatever the difficulties and disappointments you may experience, keep your hopes firmly fixed on Jesus, like Bartimeus, and pray that despite all, through all, you might be enabled to hear and see well enough to follow the Spirit of Jesus ever more closely along His way that leads ultimately into the presence of the Father.

We are now surrounded by people who profess themselves satisfied by what they think they know, and assert themselves able to do all things necessary to sufficiently advance their own purposes and achieve their own goals; their wise ones acknowledge no truth beyond their own ken, their mighty ones, no realms beyond the reach of their abilities.  Consequently, they cannot understand, and indeed tend to dismiss or despise, those of us who -- as Christians -- look to Jesus to give us, by His Spirit, insight to recognize what is true, strength to walk along His way towards its attainment, and ultimately to enjoy its fulfilment in His Father’s Kingdom.

This process, in alien surroundings, of becoming one with Jesus in love for the Father and the service of our fellows, is never-ending while we are still on earth; and it is one that can only be accomplished in us, through us, and for us, thanks to the Holy Spirit -- the Personal bond of love between the Father and the Son -- bequeathed to us in Mother Church by Jesus.  He is the Spirit whereby the love and the truth of Jesus are sublimely active and effective in overcoming the sin of the world; the Spirit whereby Jesus is able to comfort all who look to Him for salvation and cry to Him with focussed love and confidence, using like words to those He addessed to Bartimaeus:

            Go, carry on, your way; your faith and My Spirit will save y