A VERY PERSONAL GOD.

Heavenly Father, your Son Jesus built his Church on a Community of believers who would share One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism.  Help us gather round that Son who cannot part from us and as Head of the Church draws us to Himself in the most beautiful Sacrament of the Eucharist giving us the strength to carry you message of hope and love to the whole world.

But you are more than just our leader. for our parish Church is a Holy Place as Mount Horeb was once a Holy Place when you told Moses to take off his shoes before the burning bush.    The presence in our parish churches is your Son Jesus, a very human Son, who remains in the Tabernacle, the tent and meeting place with the Lord, waiting there for us as individuals to call on him.   He wants to be our friend, to talk to us about our lives and hopes, to listen to our stories, but most of all to help and advise us in times of trouble.   "Come you who are wearied  and have heavy burdens and I will give you rest"    

Let us respond by resolving to visit Jesus in this Holy Place and in the quiet and solitude open up our hearts to Him.   Let our parish church never be empty but filled with the friends of Jesus.

Faith can never be about just 'me' or 'we' for the God who leads us in our battle is not just a leader but a very personal God,     Help us accept this awesome thing, that God was Made Man and lives among us in our local Church, our Holy Place.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Translation of Luke 1: 28 in the Latin Vulgate by St Jerome.

.......et ingressus angelus ad eam dixit have gratia plena Dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus..... If indeed we are to have a Year of the Bible and indeed praise St Jerome, as indeed he deserves to be praised, for translating the texts approved by the Church into Latin, the language of the Mass, then surely we should check what the Latin says according to St Jerome before we rush into translating into other languages.    In this case translating  from the Gospel of Luke, St Jerome wrote the above, which translates  "..and entering the angel said to her 'Hail full of grace the Lord is with you and blessed are you among women".   Now you do not have to be a scholar to realise that this means much more than 'highly favoured'.   So why I ask myself does the translation we read in our Catholic Church at the gospel read 'highly favoured' rather than 'full of grace'  Why is this important?   Because if she was born 'full of grace' t
Read more

FAIR AS THE MOON, BRIGHT AS THE SUN, TERRIBLE AS AN ARMY SET IN BATTLE ARRAY

'Who is she that comes forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in battle array'. The above quote will be familiar to only a few Catholics today,   It was once on the lips of members of the Legion of Mary which was present in many parishes.    Fair as the moon and bright as the sun certainly describes Our Lady of Fatima but who exactly is meant by 'terrible as an army set in battle array?'   Certainly Our Lady appeared to ask us to pray for the conversion of sinners many of who were going to Hell for their sins as forewarned by her Son Jesus when he preachedHis Gospel.  Often we are trying and feel we are succeeding in living good lives when suddenly everything goes wrong  Like St Paul we often do the things we do not want to do rather than those that we want to do.   It is because we are involved in a war between Good and Evil and we are the children of Mary that the red Dragon wishes to devour in Revelations 12    We
Read more

The meaning of 'virgo Immaculata'

Image
As you will see from the stained glass window the name given to the image is Virgo Immaculata.   Mary was the virgin who remained sinless and spotless.  Yes she would have been tempted by Satan, but as the image shows she kept close to God in prayer and all the wiles of Satan, the forbidden fruit he offered, depictdd by the apple, ended up stuck in his throat while the right foot of Mary crushed his head. "I will put enmity between Thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed", God tole the serpent in Genesis   Satan was no match for Jesus who was God made Man but he had overcome a mere mortal before in Eve, What a triumph it would have been to destroy she whom Jesus loved above al others - his mother.   But Mary kept close to Jesus and to God, the new Eve, and mother of the new children that the death of Jesus brought into being.    And as Revelations 12 tells us having failed to destroy the birth of Jesus Satan  went after her other children - us.       When
Read more