SECTION 1 CHAPTER 1 JUBILEE MEANS JOY

WHO WILL BREAK THE CYCLE OF DESTRUCTION?

CHAPTER 3 OUR PART IN THE REDEMPTION OF HUMANITY The new age The passion, death and resurrection of Jesus is the central event in human history. It was the moment when all history turned round. The age of human disfunction is doomed, and the age of the humanity living in the Spirit of God has begun. At the Last Supper, Jesus emphasised to his people, who dreaded losing him, that he had to depart from them physically and go back to the Father so that he could return among us spiritually. They would know him in a more immediate way – in their hearts. Now we know him in that same way. This equips us for the next stage of redemption. [If you want to read more about the primary necessity of knowing Jesus, CLICK HERE to access Chapter 2 of our book 'A MESSAGE FOR ITS OWN TIME' . Once Jesus had broken the power of all sin, it would be the time for us to play our part as his sisters and brothers, the children of God who reclaim the wholeness and restoration of humanity. Our Father had created us to be like him in all his splendour of righteous activity. Now that we were redeemed, he would not diminish the dignity he had bestowed on us by denying humanity the right to retrace the crazy steps that we have taken away from his love. For that to happen we needed to relate to him in a more mature way. We need to join in his very life, by letting the Spirit reveal Jesus to our hearts so that we can know him and relate to him personally. Jesus had drawn all of us into himself to redeem us. Now it was time for us to draw Jesus into ourselves to complete the redemption. The final age in the story of humanity began – the restoration of all things in Christ with our full participation. Jesus called this process his “Kingdom”. The functioning of the Kingdom In the Trinity there are three absolutely individual persons. At the same time they are one: they live and move and have their being within each other in the mystery of infinite and immaculate love. The Kingdom of God functions in a similar way. Each human being is required to individually take up their role, and, at the same time, they become united in a mysterious communion formed by the Holy Spirit. God revealed this new two-fold dynamic when the Spirit descended at Pentecost: All those who gathered to hear the apostles heard in their own individual languages the one message spoken by the apostles in Aramaic. God was beginning to replace our hopeless division with his gift of unity. We are told that on that day about 3000 people “ were added to their numbers” (Acts 2: 41). The process they went through was “ to repent, be baptised in the name of Jesus” , and “receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2: 38). This was a two-way process. Each had to turn away (Repent) from their previous orientation and give their trust to Jesus; then the Holy Spirit would come to them to empower them to live in communion sharing the life of Jesus. We are being formed into the Mystical Body of Jesus The Holy Spirit had formed the physical body of Jesus in the womb of Mary. He is now forming the spiritual (mystical) body of Jesus in the womb of the world. He is drawing mankind together into one mature humanity. This process was first given the name, “the Gathering” using the Greek word “ekklesia”. The English term for it is “Church”. Jesus said that the Church is like a tiny mustard seed which grows into the biggest bush where all the birds of the air find a home. The Church is growing and developing through time. As the mustard tree sends its tap root burrowing deep down into the nourishing earth, the tap root of the Church is people burrowing down into intimacy with Jesus. Just as Jesus called his apostles individually, he calls us individually to know him. The more we grow in his friendship and are inspired by him, the more we mature into who we individually really are, and the renewal of the face of the earth advances. It is a process which is developing over time. We should not be surprised if some of the development seems slow; the Spirit works deep on the interior of humanity, not superficially. God writes straight with crooked lines We should not be surprised if there are parts of his work which seem as yet incomplete, because the breath of the Spirit acts through human brokenness. All genuine Christians are sinners who will constantly get things wrong. Our work will always be imperfect, but God accepts our efforts when we try our best, and uses them as stones in the building of perfect humanity. Anybody looking for perfection in the Church is bound to be disappointed, but if we look at the Church over time and its influence on the development of humanity, we will see the steady progress that God is directing using very unfinished persons. They will also find a continuous flowering of heroic holiness. The frequency of its occurrences are unequalled outside of the Church – proof that here is the epicentre of God’s activity in the universe. The spectrum of how people are connected to Jesus We have to see a spectrum of how people are connected to Jesus. At one end, there are the people of good will that the angels sang of at Christmas, who do not know Jesus personally, yet, in pursuing goodness as they perceive it, they are in a hidden way uniting themselves to him. They will recognise him when the time comes for the scales to fall from their eyes. At the other end of the spectrum there are the great saints who shone with divine life. The spectrum is never static, always developing as the Spirit, who blows where he wills, is intricately fashioning the new humanity. [If you want to read more about Jesus being the only way to the Father, CLICK HERE to access Chapter 12 of our book 'A MESSAGE FOR ITS OWN TIME ]

The Church is the deep, strong current moving through history by which God is drawing all mankind into the Trinity. It is his gradual process of healing humanity. Just as he focused his redemptive activity on Israel in the Old Covenant in order to prepare a people advanced in faith, he has been focusing his redemptive activity mostly on the old Roman/Greek world for the first 1500 years of the New Covenant. In and through the Church he has been drawing out of the heart of fallen humanity its deepest pathologies to begin their healing. The sense in which I use the word "pathology" is that of a deep brokenness or disease weakening a body. The ones referred to here are some of those that have been growing in humanity since and because of original sin. All are still active today, but God has been breaking their power through the saints and members of the Church in successive centuries. This process is not because the redemption of humanity by Christ on the cross was deficient. Through his sacrifice, Christ broke the grip of all sin, but he will not apply his healing remedy without the full cooperation of his brothers and sisters. He draws us into the act of salvation because he wants us to achieve our full stature, as the children of God for whom fallen frustrated creation has been longing. St Paul expresses this great honour in Colossians 1:24: “In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church”. St Peter, in 1 Peter 4:13, expresses it like this: “Rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed”. I will try to illustrate this process here. Pathology number 1 - the conviction that God is distant and will not come close to us. Although it was human beings who shut God out at the Fall, their consequent inability to know him grew into a convinction that it is impossible to be close to him. This was radically challenged by the coming of the Son of God, Jesus, as a real human being. In the first three centuries after Jesus, many Christians had a problem believing that it really was God who had come close to us. But great saints and Fathers of the Church bore the pain and strain of believing in the great mystery of the incarnation, until the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) was held to counteract the many heresies going around about the nature of Jesus. It declared that Jesus was both God and man. It is where we get the Nicene Creed which we often recite in Mass. The overwhelming, but erroneous conviction that God can never come close to us has been radically weakened. Many people still feel it, but it is more easily dealt with. Pathology number 2 - we are so broken that we cannot become part of God. The early Church Fathers, once the controversy of the union of divine and human natures in Jesus had been settled (Nicaea), quickly gave voice to a sense that was very strong in the Church, that Mary the Mother of Jesus had a unique role in the process of human salvation. This teaching was a logical consequence of the revelation of Jesus’ two natures, and also the abiding deeply felt experience of Mary’s spiritual presence among us, assisting Christ in the process of salvation. At the Council of Ephesus (431) the Church declared that Mary is the “Mother of God”. At the Second Council of Constantinople (533) the Church declared that she was a virgin all through her life, dedicated to God with her every breath and every heartbeat. The belief that she was conceived in her mother’s womb without any trace of Original Sin was strongly held from this time throughout the Church, although it was only formally proclaimed by Pope Pius IX in 1854. Likewise, it was widely held from earliest times that she was assumed body and soul into heaven at her death, although that was only formally proclaimed by Pope Pius XII in 1950. The Church Fathers grasped that, as Mary faithfully cooperated with God in reaching her own perfection, she is the sign given to the developing Church of how, through the Church, humanity would become perfect and united with Christ in the marriage of the Lamb, on the Last Day. The human race will be perfected and be drawn into the Godhead. We can and will become part of God Through all the prayer and struggle to understand Mary, a profound vision of how humanity can be perfect was realised. The overwhelming and erroneous sense in humanity that we are so broken that we cannot become part of God has been radically weakened. Many people still feel it, but it is more easily dealt with. Pathology number 3 – the strength of peer pressure cannot be broken. There are many deep stratas of human brokenness haunting fallen mankind that God is healing. All are crazy paths that humanity has followed as a result of the Fall, which need to be retroden in order to reclaim human integrity. As the Church moves through history, gathering people into the life of God, numerous holy souls are engaged in the work of bearing with Christ the pain of repairing humanity through their prayer and sacrifice. Through the Church the Holy Spirit is bringing about the reintegration of humanity. I do not intend to treat with all the twists and turns by which the Spirit is doing this – I am only trying to illustrate this dynamic of God’s Church healing humanity; I will fast-forward to the 1500s, the time of the Reformation. The Church had been very successful at converting tribes and nations, usually through converting leaders who were then followed by their people. This was because human society was largely tribal. People had group-think, which left many with shallow faith. But humanity was about to take a big step forward in development. A great awareness of the independence of the individual was developing. For centuries the Gospel teaching that each person has been set free in Christ was percolating in the heart of members of the Church. It had found immense resistance due to the organisation of society into tribes and social groupings. But like water smoothing a stone, it was building in strength until it broke the dam at this time. The freedom of each person became central in people's awareness. The universal demand for individual freedom was first focused in the Protestant Reformation and then the Catholic counter-reformation, when society began to move from being tribal to individualistic. It is important to note that individuality is a feature of the Trinity as is unity. Humanity had reached the point of growth when people wanted to know more authentically: How can I take responsibility? It involved a huge and bloody struggle. Bit by bit people gradually became more to claim their own freedom. The tribal mentality gradually changed. An example of change is St Thomas Moore who was at first virulent in attacking reformers, advocating the centuries-old practice of burning heretics at the stake. This was one of tribal society’s method of maintaining uniformity through terror. But after imprisonment in the Tower of London for over a year, he emerged to his own execution at peace and converted to love of his enemies and everyone. Those months transformed him into a mystic who battled the demon wishing to keep humanity in a primitive, limited form of responsibility. The stifling pathology of peer pressure has been radically weakened. Many people still feel it, but it is more easily dealt with. Pathology number 4 – human sin is so great that we are incapable of reaching heaven . Fast forward to the 1700s, 1800s and part of the 1900s. Individualism had become established, and with it came the need to face another deep pathology in humanity. It is all very well being free, but with greater sense of responsibility comes the dread of being wrong and failing. It was the age of dreadful guilt. Culture was formed by it. Many Christians stressed the judgment of God and the likelihood of being condemned. The question at the root of all this was: how can we find a remedy for humanity’s deep sense of guilt? Holy people battled with this pathology. One example of this was St Paul of the Cross who lived in the 1700s. He had reached a very high state of sanctity by the age of 33. Then, for over 40 years, he was given a dark night of the spirit; he felt all the time that God was displeased with him. Enduring this inner torment, he carried on his ordinary life with graciousness and humour. Paul battled with this feeling on behalf of other people for 40 years, always holding on to God in pure faith and love. God gave evidence that this hidden struggle was effective. Whenever he entered a town to preach a mission there were numerous healings, endings of discord, and lives changed for the better. The overwhelming and erroneous sense of guilt in humanity has been radically weakened. Many people still feel it, but it is more easily dealt with. Pathology number 5 – there is no God. It is obvious from the many weird religions which have been created over the ages, that there is an estrangement between mankind and God. Human beings have a pathological insecurity as they experience God’s absence, and have tried to fill the void by creating gods, which usually reflect exaggerated images of ourselves. These have been worshiped and fought over with very little positive effect. At best these religions have served to mitigate the profound insecurity that being alienated from God produces. If we do not know God, we fear the unknown, and feel incapable of making sense of events. In its strongest form it is crippling. There have always been two extreme reactions to this fundamental void in the human heart: fanatical holding to the perceived tenants of one’s religion whatever it might be, and cynicism about the whole issue of religion. These two are enormously powerful today in the West. As the Holy Spirit has brought about the weakening of humanity’s pathological sense of guilt, deeper understandings of the human psyche have emerged. The vast new insights produced by psychology, anthropology and sociology along with neurology have been so fascinating that our culture has focused on mankind itself. Much of the previous terror of God’s condemnation has been dismissed as mental sickness, and it has become accepted thought to explain God’s existence as a myth created to keep populations controlled by fear. At the same time, scientific progress, has flowered spectacularly in the West as a result of Christians seeking understanding of the universe created by the loving God who orders all things well. It is only because Christians believed in a good law-giver that we have been liberated to discover the processes which he has put in place. But the richness of scientific progress has prompted a temporary exaggerated pride in human knowledge . This sense that we can explain our world, coupled with the growing human-centred world view, has made the belief popular that we can explain everything on our own without God. And many today dismiss the notion of God, or just avoid thinking about him. Only now are we reaping the harvest of this human arrogance: young people suffering mental sickness because they see no meaning in life, people enslaved to consumerism, people doubling down on the frenetic search for distraction and entertainment, and selfishness elevated to the status of desirable life-style. Our culture projects itself as happy, but there is little joy. I believe that God has led us to this situation where we are so enabled to build a better world, and at the same time are pervaded by distress. It is so that we will seek him more earnestly and enter into a time of spiritual flowering. As Christianity has seemed to decline in its cradle, the West, God has quietly been profoundly active in holy souls preparing the coming age of more mature Christianity. An example of his mysterious activity is the life of St Therese of Lisieux. All during the last century she has been one of the most popular Saints. Her appeal was her joyful sense of God’s cooperation as we perform the simplest human activities, coupled with her ability to shine light while living an obscure life which lasted only 23 years. She has inspired millions who have enjoyed enormous spiritual strength through her closeness. It is only recently that writings of hers have been released which reveal that She was haunted by an all-pervading sense of there being no God for the last 18 months of her short life. She held on to faith in God without letting anyone know the fierce trial she was enduring; everyone admired her serenity and care for her companions. Jesus was sharing with her the struggle to overcome the deep sense of God’s absence, that age-old pathology resulting from the Fall, which he is bringing to a head for remedying in our day. Therese prophesied that a great trial of belief in God’s existence would come, and she willingly took her part in lifting the burden of this with Jesus. Another saint, Mother Teresa of Calcuta experienced a 50 year-long crisis of doubt and disconnect from God. Furthermore, there is an untold army of similar souls who have offered their lives daily in union with Jesus to heal this deep pathology in humanity. We will see very soon the result of their “spiritual sacrifice” (1 Peter 2: 5) as graces are being released, enabling people to encounter Jesus in ever growing numbers today. Where is it all leading? That is unclear, but we should expect to see more and more evidence of people turning to Jesus and his Church in the West, which some have foolishly claimed to have outgrown Christianity, and to have thrown off its shackles. In fact, it is in the West that Christianity is undergoing the deepening of maturity which the rest of the world will follow as different peoples pursue their own development in Christ. The overwhelming sense that there is no God is being radically weakened. Many people still feel it, but it is more easily dealt with.

Easter 2023 We spent Holy Week 2023 in Lourdes. The liturgy was wonderful. Much of it took place in the Underground Basilica which holds about 25,000 people. At the Easter vigil, it was packed. There must have been about 300 priests concelebrating. As we priests processed to the sacristy at the end, hundreds of people held out statues and rosaries and holy water for us to bless. The procession was quite rapid, and most priests tried to bless the objects by touching them as we passed. I felt that was a bit casual. So I stood at the back and blessed those that were brought to me. A long queue formed, and it went on so long that, in the end, we were forced to leave so that the janitors could lock up. How did I bless? I touched the objects, or carrier bags containing them, and closed my eyes. I looked towards the Father and concentrated on his love and grace. I was like a conduit of blessing, because I focused on him. My own thoughts and attempts to formulate prayers did not matter. Gradually, people knelt down and asked me to bless them instead. It carried on for a long time. There was a French speaking African married couple. I asked them to bless me, because I had become overwhelmed by the beauty of their sacrament of marriage as I blessed them. They were surprised that I asked them to do this, but they agreed to do it. The same long session of blessing happened after the main Easter Mass in the Underground Basilica next day. Once more, we had to leave because of the impatient looks of the janitors. Starting afresh every day I don’t think I could have done that if I had not spent time in the prayer of contemplation. That is when you leave thoughts, feelings and imaginations aside, and just stand in love before the Father. You cannot do this properly without being helped by Jesus. In fact, it is really sharing in the deepest movement of his heart, his infinite love for our Father. Don’t think that I get wrapped up into the seventh Heaven. Most of the time I just stay there hoping to be in love. I will give you an example. This is how it went today. I wake up with all sorts of problems filling my mind. Pictures of war-shattered cities, children being abused, politicians acting like children, Church members polarising, and widespread indifference. I get up and come before the Lord. I struggle to seek his face because these thoughts keep chasing each other in my head. My prayer is: ‘Father, show me your face. Jesus, help me to know and love the Father’. It carries on for a long time. I try to clear my head and put my thoughts and feelings on one side, and bit by bit I settle. Even though I want to, it is not often that I can rest quietly and peacefully in the Father’s presence. But I get a growing intimation of his peace. It is there somewhere deep inside, and things calm down. I am convinced that Jesus prayed like this – it must have been a lonely lifelong struggle to find the Father’s face and touch everywhere in this very broken world. I am sure St Patrick, the young slave in Ireland, while he was minding sheep out on the hills at night, also prayed like this. What an effect proceeded from his prayer! The Irish are one of the few peoples that were converted without bloodshed, and they are a people quite capable of that. What is going on when we begin to contemplate? Imperceptibly but surely, we come to contemplation with some of the sin of the world clinging to us, and it is pulling us down. Often, we want to switch off and find distraction in other thoughts and activities, e.g. switch on the TV. But in this prayer, we are with Jesus, the child of God parting the cloud of darkness to let the light of the Father descend. When that light penetrates there is healing warmth. Then things make sense, solutions occur, and hope is reborn. Also blessing and healing (salvation) descends on the earth. It remains and it is building up. It is like an indelible pen: it cannot be obliterated. In the moments of peace and being wrapped in the arms of the Father, we are never alone. We are surrounded on all sides by our brothers and sisters in their needs and lifethrows. Consolation in the arms of the Father can never be individualistic. We may personally experience peace and enlightenment, but that will be small fry if we don’t have an open heart to the brothers and sisters. This is how contemplation flows over into intercession. As we seek to see the face of God, even faintly we begin to experience the boundless generosity of his love. That very boundlessness demands an act of communion with other people as well. One thing that was striking about the Easter Blessings in Lourdes was that the people were from all over the world, Africa, Australasia, South America, Europe and the States. It was a great blessing to me to witness their thirst for the Kingdom. It was a true experience of Church.

Connected deep down A family farmed in a vast open land. They had a well that supplied all their water. Many miles away a tanker overturned. It was carrying purple dye, which emptied out and flowed into a nearby well. Soon the family found their own water had turned purple, and they discovered that all their neighbours across the countryside had purple water also. Things gradually returned to normal, but they had all learnt that their water supply was connected deep down in the ground. We human beings are similarly connected to each other in our deepest being, our spirits. My actions influence the lives of everyone, and vice versa. We can see this on the level of our emotions and intellects. Look how the supporters of one football team will share the same thoughts and feelings. But on the spiritual level it is far more profound, even though we are usually unaware of it. It is because it is so profound that we are unaware. We were made in the image and likeness of God, who is a Trinity of persons so perfectly bonded in love that they are unity; they are one. That same profound drive for unity is integral to our human nature made in God’s image. The problem is that it has been weakened by our sin. It is fracturedness that we experience more than unity. But we are made to be united at the very deepest level, love. We know well how the disunity shows itself and proliferates. How can the unity be restored? Restoring human communion It is the Christ who is the restorer of unity. His Spirit is the life-force that penetrates the spirits of those who are open to God, or at least to goodness when the presence of Christ is obscured. The more a person opens to Christ, the more they become restorers of human unity. How does this work? Firstly, it is important to say how it does not work. Christ does not work through human engineering of society. True, we have an obligation to work for a just society in which the well-being of all is sought. And God gives many graces to people who work for the good of society. But Jesus said “my Kingdom is not of this world” (John 18: 36). He shows us that building an earthly kingdom is the wrong way round. What Jesus did was to connect spiritually with all mankind, and he works from within us. During his life on earth, his humanity developed at such a phenomenal rate that, by the time of his passion, he had drawn all humanity into his heart, and his brilliant mind knew us all. This process was not simply one of studying us intellectually; it was one of love. He was the divine lover seeking to ‘know’ his beloved brothers and sisters. He was falling in love with each of us. Lovers give their beloved power to break their hearts, and the on the cross Jesus experienced the heartbreak of all mankind. He not only knew our every struggle and pain, but experienced them all as personally as we do. Why did he drink this dreadful chalice? Because he knew that only the Father could draw out the poison of our woundedness and heal us. Someone needed to open it all up to the Father for healing. He knew that he needed to make one gigantic act of trust. It was the for-all-time cry of mankind for the saving mercy of the Father. No one else could make such an unimaginably gigantic sacrifice of self. We all give up so easily. As he hung on the cross, he must have wondered if it would ever end, but, finally, he said “It is finished ”, and, with a loud cry, breathed forth his spirit to his Father. He had joined earth to heaven once more. ‘It is finished’ - the New Creation went into operation. This whole process of identifying himself with all people had started at his conception in the womb of Mary, and had taken a huge step forward when he was baptised at the Jordan. Jesus’ choice to be baptised, and so to join himself to our sin, drew from his Father the cry “This is my Son that I love; I am so pleased with him!” (Matthew 3: 17). [2] Here is no stern, demanding parent, but one who is entirely wrapped up in the elder brother’s brave struggle of love for all the rest of his children. It was never about punishment; it is all about our healing. St Augustine said: “Our Lord came first as medicine, not as judge” After Jesus died the earth stood dark and silent for a while. Then, to prove he was dead, a soldier pierced his heart with his spear. Out poured blood and water. The Church has always understood that that is the water of baptism to birth humanity into the family of God, and the blood is the Eucharist to feed his new people on their journey into God. Another ancient understanding of the piercing of Jesus’ side is that just as Adam’s bride, Eve, was formed from his side while he slept, so the Church, the bride of Christ, was formed from his side as he slept in death. The old world, stained by sin, began its transformation into The New Creation. The second body of Christ The death of Jesus was followed by his awesome resurrection, and 42 days of wonderful intimacy with the disciples before he ascended to heaven. At Pentecost nine days later, he returned in and through the Holy Spirit, and drew the disciples into the wondrous unity of his new body, his Church. On that Pentecost day a great sign was given. Thousands of foreign pilgrims to Jerusalem had rushed to hear the tumult caused by the disturbance of nature and the Spirit-filled disciples going wild with the joy of God. Although the disciples were all Hebrew, each of their hearers heard their words in their own language. The curse of Babel was removed. At Babel mankind had united in an attempt to build their own way to heaven. Their prideful plan fell to pieces and so did their unity. Pentecost was the great sign that God is now restoring human unity. Only it is not the outward unity which we attempt to engineer. We have a special name for it: communion . The Holy Spirit is drawing people into a new cohesive body, which is none other than the Mystical Body of Jesus, the Church. That is the true Kingdom of God which Jesus announced was arriving. It had now arrived.

Jesus did not establish an earthy kingdom through organising people externally. He builds up his reign in every heart that opens to him, and restores their bond with the Father and each other. This is how he is uniting the fractured human family from within. It is now in process. As it proceeds, society will become more just and the earth will flourish. People might object that such talk of flourishing is wishful thinking, and tell us to get real - that the world is full of injustice and poverty. But has there ever been a time when material progress is so achievable, if only we human beings could share and live together? There is a popular pessimism which proclaims that we are ruining the earth with our greed, yet the potential of science to discover ways of balancing our lives with that of our planet has never been so great. What is needed above all is humanity’s interior, spiritual renewal within the body of Christ. And don't swallow the rubbish that Christianity is a negative force. When Jesus founded his Church, the Roman economy was founded on slavery, public entertainment was full of violence and killing, women were chattel, and warfare was merciless extermination. Where did this all change gradually? In the Christian West. It has been a long struggle to improve, but, with the grace of God, it is happening. Because progress is gradual and costly, let us not judge real events through the mentality of instant gratifiction which is blinding our age. It is hard to counter the pessimism of the worldly who are dismayed by the discord experienced everywhere. That is no wonder; the devil engineers media coverage of every tragedy and horror, and we have to admit that people are guilty of turning towards every sensational happening. I suppose that is because we want to scrutinise all possible threats in order to build defences against them. But the spiritual revolution of our minds called for by St Paul (Ephesians 4: 23 ) convinces us that we are safe in the hands of our Father, no matter what evil we encounter. It also opens our eyes to the growth of the kingdom – remember that Jesus told us it is like the seed scattered by the farmer; it grows quietly largely unseen. Here we see again the difference between the kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God. The politicians and economists of this world call for policies and laws which will structure human affairs so as to produce the desired effects of security, balance and harmony. They have been doing this for thousands of years, and every attempt ends in repression, after which individualism reasserting itself in revolution. Empires fall. Then others start the whole process again organising our world in the hope of improving it. The Kingdom of God does not work through systems imposed on everybody. It works through the liberation and healing of each individual heart. As each heart is healed the urge to communion with other people grows. The Kingdom of God is the only remedy for selfishness. Only Jesus can infuse our human spirits with the Holy Spirit so that we mature. And it is a continual process in every human heart whether they are conscious of Christ or not. And it is a continual process in all of human history. The new Body of Christ evolving Only two human beings have reached perfection during their lives on earth, Jesus and Mary. The rest of us take our place in a long line of brothers and sisters ascending the stairway together to the house of God. The best efforts of people in previous times will always seem inadequate to us today, as ours will seem defective to people in the future. What matters is that we do our bit today and leave the gradual process of human improvement to the guidance of God. We are in a process of evolution in cooperation with the Holy Spirit. A Christian should resist the temptation of saying ‘they ought to do this or that’, and instead concentrate on asking ‘what is God asking of me now?’ If each person sought to know the will of God here and now, and allowed the Holy Spirit to transform them spiritually, the healing of humanity and the whole creation would gather pace. A warning lest we deceive ourselves by our pride. Much as we may desire it, God will not normally ask us to accomplish spectacular tasks. He will generally ask us to humbly proceed in little steps. It is so easy to neglect God’s calls to little steps of love and service because we want to be heroic and do ‘meaningful’ actions.

How do we hear the calls of God? How do we discover his will? The spiritual capacity to know the will of God only grows through knowing God. It is all about communing. Each of us must seek the face of God. That can only happen through prayer. Prayer has many forms, but all forms lead to contemplation. That is simply being with Jesus in our Father’s presence, being loved by them and joining in their love. Only through love can the knowing of God be experienced. Only through love are we and the whole of humanity made whole. Contemplation overflows into intercession The journey of contemplation is long and often lonely and frustrating. Gradually, under the mighty hand of God, our spirits awaken, causing many of the false characteristics to diminish that we have adopted as part of our identity. This is very personal, but as each of us develops into the unique image of God that he has created us to be, we become a gift for the whole world. One of the most surprising effects of contemplation is that we become aware that we do not face God alone. The Holy Spirit gradually guides us to really mean the words ‘our Father’ . We are not alone but part of the rich family of God which is gradually reuniting. When we pray, they are all with us. With that awareness, comes the sense of how humanity is evolving. It is through the faithful actions of all that we progress together. Each act of service and love adds to the vast transformation of all people, past present and future. Every action of mine, either builds or damages all humanity. Within this mystery of shared energy - often hidden - the service of intercession is key. Intercession is that form of contemplation where we gaze on the bountiful Father, and allows that bounty to pour down into other human beings and situations. The contemplative intercessor is the principal healer of the world. [If you want to read about Fr Brian's own journey into Contemplative Prayer, Click the heading Prayer of the Heart at the top of this page] Real progress and how the real economy works Pope Francis, in the Mass for the Meeting for the Protection of minors in the Church. (24 February 2019) underlined the centrality of contemplation and intercession as he spoke of a saint of our time, Edith Stein the Jewish convert who became a Carmelite nun and was eventually killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz. He said: “We look at the figure of Edith Stein - Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, with the certainty that (she expressed when she wrote) “In the darkest night the greatest prophets and saints arise. However, the life-giving current of mystical life remains invisible. Surely the decisive events in the history of the world have essentially been influenced by souls about whom nothing is said in history books. And which souls we have to thank for the decisive events of our personal lives is something we will only know on the day when everything hidden is revealed." [ 1] Scott Hahn writes: “It is the saints and angels who direct history by their prayers. More than Washington D.C., more than the United Nations, more than Wall St, more than any place you can name, power belongs to the saints of the Most High gathered around the throne of God” (The Lamb’s Supper, pg. 132). The vast Communion of Saints is the real economy through which we all work together in our prayer and in our deeds when they are offered as acts of love to the Father. Every good act done in the Body of Christ contributes to the great swell of love that is gradually raising humanity. These are the “spiritual sacrifices” (1 Peter 2: 5) that St Peter urges us to offer when he speaks of the Christian's wonderful identity: ‘You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a people set apart to sing the praises of God’ (1 Peter 2:9). Truly, while the world goes round and round in circles, repeating the same mistakes in each age, it is the people of God who are gradually moving the whole process on to wholeness.

(Where the text is in italics in this chapter, I am quoting from an article in the December 1948 edition of Homilitic and Pastoral Review by Reginald Garigou-Legrange entitled ' The Three ages of the Interior Life' .) The Dark Night of the Soul St Paul is the founder of the Passionist order. He was one of those singular souls who was gifted with a deep attachment to God from infancy. He lived eighty-one years. By the age of thirty-one he had arrived at the state of intimate union with Jesus Christ. For the next forty-five years he inhabited a dark night of ‘interior desolation of most painful abandonment, during which only from time to time did the Saviour grant him a short respite’. [1] ‘The Saint felt himself abandoned by God; he feared that God was angry with him. The temptations to despair and sadness were overwhelming. And yet, in that interminable trial the Saint manifested a great patience, a perfect resignation to the Divine Will and a great kindness towards all those who approached him’ . [2] This was not the classical state of the ‘dark night of the soul’ in which a person is purified in order to reach deep union with God. That dark night is where all human motivation to do and be good, such as having a positive self-image or strong intellectual conviction, are gradually transformed into the single motive of purely knowing God through love, and willing what he wills above all else. That seems to be the final stage before being ‘filled with the utter fullness of God’ that the apostle Paul speaks of (Ephesians 3: 19). Then the person powerfully brings the sense of heaven to this world. St Paul of the Cross, like St Francis and St Catherine of Sienna, only had to enter a place and people would find their lives changing to deeper goodness. Their spirits were so united to God that they radiated grace wherever they went. A very different Dark Night of the Soul But the long dark night experienced by Paul of the Cross was not purifying his soul, but a ‘dark night suffered for others’ where the already purified soul works for the salvation of its neighbour. ‘It retains the same lofty characteristics (as the classical dark night of the soul), but it takes on another character which reminds us more of the sufferings of Jesus and Mary who had no need themselves of being purified. ’ [4] Just as Jesus and Mary suffered as they felt the pain of this fallen world, ‘when Paul of the Cross walked through the streets, he could not see his world, except when considered from God's viewpoint. For forty-five years, often during the night as well as during the day, this was a sorrowful, heroic, unceasing prayer which sought for God with great eagerness, and this in order that God might be given to the souls for whom this great Saint was suffering (Luke 8:1). More fruitful than the years of preaching inspired by a lesser zeal, these painful years were a realisation, in an exceptional manner, of the word of the Master: "One ought always to pray and never to faint" (Luke 8: 1). [ (Hence, one can understand the import of that reflection of St. John of the Cross: "A single act of pure love can do more good in the Church than many exterior works" (inspired by a lesser charity).' Is charity graduated? What does Garigou-Legrange mean when he talks of being inspired by a greater or lesser charity? Charity is love of God, and like all loves it has grades. Here are some examples of different types of love: I can become attached to you with a kind of love if I am in your power and fear that you will hurt me - this sometimes happens to people who are kidnapped. Or I can love you with honour because you are much greater than me and I have chosen to throw in my lot with you and be loyal to you. Also, It is possible that I can love you conditionally if you love me and do not disappoint me. Or I can love you unconditionally whatever you do, and be completely at your disposal. That last love is more rare. But all these examples are somehow on the broad spectrum of what we mean by love. It is like that with charity, the love of God. Even the powerful love inspired by zeal for the conversion of all souls is lesser than charity inspired by total adoration and utter self-involvement in all God’s activity. That is perfect charity. [6] St Paul of the Cross's charity was complete self-involement in all of God's activity. He was walking the highest path - what the Church calls ‘redemptive suffering’. There are far fewer souls who reach this level than the rest of us, but they are placed before us to confirm us in our humble work of intercession for others – of joining Jesus in redeeming others. Really, we are the little brothers and sisters who are surrounded by a cloud of great saints in heaven who are interceding explicitly for each one of us here and now as we intercede for others. All of us are bound together in the divine loving, in mutual service and redemption. Every work of ours can be used in this ministry. It is what we have always meant when we say "offer it up", or as St Peter writes that we are ‘the holy priesthood that offers the spiritual sacrifices which Jesus Christ has made acceptable to God’ (1Peter 2:5) [7] . Surrounded by a cloud of saints I have spoken mostly of the communion of saints as it operates through the holy members of the Church on earth. That is because I have found that our teaching often assumes that the communion of saints is only about our relationship with the saints in heaven. My purpose is to open up the loveliness of the Church’s dynamic here on earth. I do not wish to minimise the wonderful dimension of our powerful connectedness with the saints in heaven and in purgatory. That communion with the saints in heaven is real, and in powerful operation here and now. The apostle Paul says we have ‘so many witnesses in a great cloud on every side of us’ (Ephesians 12: 8] It is through the gift of faith that we sense God weaving his rich tapestry of redemption, and that we choose to be threads in his loving design. Let us not forget either, the vast army of angels that surrounds us.

CHARLES DE FOUCAULD (1858 - 1916)  Charles belonged to a minor French noble family who prided themselves that they were descended from crusaders. He became a cavalry officer. But he was always drawn to deep prayer and eventually left everything behind to be ordained a priest and become a hermit in the Sahara Desert. He lived among a Muslim population, the Berbers. At first, he had a notion of bringing them the benefits of what he thought was a superior French Christian culture, but his total lack of success led him to listen deeply to God. It was then that he became more and more to experience God’s determination to perfect humanity, and that this required faith, intercession and patience from members of the Church. He eventually saw his vocation as a simple witness living out his Christianity faithfully within the dominant Muslim culture. He lived a life of prayer, self-denial and love of neighbour. He continued to seek aid from his French connections to support the impoverished people he lived among. Whenever that was not forthcoming, he suffered with them giving away food that he needed himself. They called him ‘little father’, but as a missionary, he was a failure. His supreme accomplishment was a growing faith that our eternal Father has clear plans for the salvation of the people he lived among, and Charles was content to await the divine timing only wishing to be faithful to the will of God as it manifested itself in his daily life. He offered his life every day for the conversion of his neighbours. That simple offering in a far-off spot deep in the Sahara seems obscure, and to some it will appear futile, but he knew his prayer and the offering of his life would be effective – in God’s good time. He was killed but not martyred; it was an act of violence by thieves. His martyrdom was his life not his death. Tales of his life have spread like bushfires and inspired many. He was canonised in 2022. He has become a flame of Christian hope - hope and faith in the divine design, which God revealed to Jeremiah, at a time of deep distress for Israel, as ‘plans for peace, not disaster, reserving a future full of hope for you’ (Jeremiah 29: 11). Contemplative intercession will demand more and more trust in God’s plan. We will be attacked by the Evil One, who hates this sharpest weapon in the armoury of God’s children. But, with the support of other members of the Church and Mary and the saints, we will take our part at the forefront of Christ’s driving out the works of Satan whom he vanquished on the cross. Satan does not give up easily; Christ generously calls fellow warriors who will never give up the spiritual fight.

In the real economy of the Mystical Body of Christ, intercessory prayer is essential for the ‘renewal of the face of the earth’. But can it bring about the eternal salvation of all humanity? Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, a Carmelite nun, gave her response to this question in an article from the website, Where Peter Is , January 17, 2024. (Her words are in italics.) ‘Pope Francis, in a recent interview , said “I like to think hell is empty; I hope it is.”… I would like to add my viewpoint on the matter…it is an extremely serious matter for me because it calls my whole vocation into question. I am a cloistered religious, a Discalced Carmelite nun, a member of a community totally dedicated to contemplation. We have no outside apostolate. Our apostolate is prayer for the Church and for the world. We don’t teach, we don’t nurse, we don’t run a retreat center. Our life is centered on prayer, liturgical prayer, and personal prayer. We are here to let God turn our every thought and action into prayer until, with His grace, we may be so united with Him that we will whatever He wills. One thing that we know that God wills is that “all human beings be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2: 4). [ Is that something that we, as contemplative nuns, should pray for? Certainly, if we will what God wills, then we should definitely pray for what He wills. Is what He wills possible? Is it possible that all human beings be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth? The answer to that is another question: can God want the impossible? Can God will what cannot possibly be done? If God wills something, then it is accomplished. There is a very interesting event described in the Gospel of Mark. ‘When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them. Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’ (Mark 2: 1-5). [3] I want to draw your attention to that last sentence: “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’” In every other encounter with people whom Jesus healed, he told the person, “Your faith has made you well.” Each person is saved by their faith. That is the general rule, but it doesn’t apply here. This situation was totally different. The paralytic was not saved by his own faith. The healing of his sins, was in response to the faith of those who brought him to Jesus. That is a gift that he received because of the faith of others. Can my prayers and the prayers of contemplatives and believers around the world cause all sins to be forgiven? Every sin that has been, will be or is being committed was lavishly paid for on Calvary 2,000 years ago. Countless times throughout the day, Catholics recite the Our Father. That prayer includes the words, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” There is enough grace through Christ’s sacrifice to save every human being ever created. I entitled this article “Can Prayer Empty Hell?” I do not know the answer to that question. Anyone who doubts the possibility that prayer can indeed accomplish what God wills, calls into question the very value of prayer, and therefore the value of the wholly contemplative life and the place of contemplatives in the Church. All I can say is that, whatever criticism I may receive for my viewpoint, it will not deter me in the least from praying that God’s will be done and that every human being will be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.’ More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of [ 4] Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation speaks of Hell’s emptying, which may seem to refer only to our prayer assisting the souls of those who have died. We have to combine that intercession with prayer for the affairs of this world now. In so far as our prayers effect the salvation of souls, they effect the gradual renewal of the face of the earth. Wars, famines, and all the evil movements in society which are drawing people into illusion and corruption can all be turned about by prayer and truth. We often take up the sword to fight for truth, but less seldom do we persevere in intercession. The hardened spiritual warrior endures to the end until evil is overturned. Spiritual warriors When I speak of the ‘hardened’ spiritual warrior, I do not refer to those who summon up their wills and force themselves to persevere. There is another hardness which comes to the person used to contemplative prayer which is not of our own making, but the effect of grace. Prayer will expose us to the weakness in our own make-up leading to humility, but through it, grace awakens us to the inner strength which God is exercising in and with our spirits. I think it is what St Paul means when he talks of ‘the gift of faith’ (1 Corinthians12: 9). We sense a strengthening within ourselves which we only occasionally are aware of. It is a strength which will come out plainly when we are tested most strongly. I write this on May 4 th , the feast of the English and Welsh Martyrs. In the Office of Reading Pope St Paul VI writes about the serenity, fortitude and forgiveness they all displayed as they were being publicly executed, sometimes through hanging, drawing and quartering – the pregnant St Margaret Clitherow was crushed to death under a heavy door which was loaded by more and more stones being put on top. She maintained her courage and fortitude. On the same day we celebrate many Carmelite priests and religious slaughtered during the dreadful Spanish Civil War. Such fortitude is a gift of God, but it grows steadily in the spirits of the person who contemplates. It calls them to persevere in intercession. This is the ‘faith’ Jesus talks of when he says it can move mountains (Mark 11: 19). These friars and nuns were martyred after suffering dreadful torture. The gift of fortitude, promised to those who witness to Christ unto death, has been poured out over centuries, and never more so than in our day and age. The Martyrs’ blood fertilises fields in which the Kingdom of God will flourish. They endured the horror of their imprisonments, tortures and deaths, turning them into "spiritual sacrifices". These offerings were all shot through with contemplation of God’s love, and also prayer for humanity. Such prayer has inexorable effect on all of humanity.

LOVE IS A FUNNY THING Love is a funny thing. Even when someone patently does not deserve it, they may still be loved by a spouse, a mother or a father. Could Hitler’s mother still love him if she was shown the catalogue of evil which he inflicted on the world? We cannot say no to that. It is possible. Love is a funny thing. Jesus tells us the story of the Prodigal Son, to whom his prodigal father gave half his wealth, the fruit of hard work over half the father’s life. The son was a full-on wastrel, totally absorbed in himself, with no respect for others or care who he hurt - look at how his brother was crippled by bitterness. But the father longed for his return and was eager to fan the faintest flame of sense in the prodigal’s heart. Jesus told that story of far-fetched paternal love, to jump-start his listeners into considering the boundless love of God the Father. He doesn’t play it down. It is a glimpse of the pure and infinite love that he experienced in his dealings with his Father, a love far greater than we can dream of or hope for. He knew it was the dynamic of the inner life of the Trinity. It is the dynamic which energises all of creation. Could God love Hitler? Undoubtedly. There is a great Christian book, ‘The Shack’ by William Paul Young which was made into a film. The main character, Mack, turned his back for a moment on a camping holiday, and his six-year-old daughter was abducted, probably by a paedophile, and subsequently murdered. He blames himself and will give himself no rest until he has retrieved her body. During one of his search trips to the campsite he meets each member of the Trinity. Two episodes stand out. Firstly, Jesus gives him a vision of happy children playing in heaven. His little girl is there radiant, and for a brief moment they hug. From then on his all-consuming self-accusation has gone – he knows she is safe and happy. Could Jesus save Hitler? He has done so, on the cross. In a manner we are unable to plumb the depths of, he actually took into his heart all the sin of Hitler and raised it up to cover it with the Father’s love. He knew all the vile consequences of Hitler’s hideous actions and actually felt all those worlds of suffering and destruction in his own being, and he still opened it all up to the medicine of our Father. What did our Father do with all of that? In his infinite wisdom and love, and with perfect power to cure all sin, he elaborated remedies for every single horrible action. The child, who was orphaned as she survived the murder of her family in the gas chambers, which crippled her emotionally for the rest of his life on earth, was lifted into the Father’s arms, held against his cheek and filled with the tenderest love, which heals all wounds and brings human hearts to wholeness. It happened in eternity not in time, but its effects had worked forward in time to assist the limping orphan in her survival and journey here on earth. Every single sin has been remedied in the infinite love burning within the Trinity. We are left with the question of whether St Julian of Norwich was correct when she declared that “All will indeed be well, and all manner of things will be well”. We can hope and pray that this will prove true. Is Hitler capable of repenting and making the journey of purgatory to his own salvation? Yes – the same with Stalin and all the loathsome abusers throughout history. What has that got to do with me? Are all these evil people out of the reach of my influence? Through intercession, Jesus shares his work of redeeming with his people. I can pray for Hitler, and offer up spiritual sacrifice for him. I may not be inspired to do that by the Holy Spirit who directs all prayer, but in my prayer of intercession for the whole world, God may take some of it and actually apply it to Hitler. You would think that one would have to pray for hundreds of years to work through such a task of intercession, but we are ignorant of the enormous power of the prayer of love. The spiritual world is the realm where faith moves mountains, and "a single act of pure love can do more good than many exterior works"(St John of the Cross). God takes our weak efforts at prayer and shoots them through with the infinite light of his love, so that their effects are out of all proportion to our effort. When will we really believe in the wonderful generosity of God and the power of intercession? It may be that we have been dispirited because we have often asked God for specific results without them being granted, but that is because we have not penetrated enough into sharing the love of God which is active in ways too deep for us to understand. The more we contemplate and know the love of God, the more we submit all our requests to his wisdom. Then the Holy Spirit leads us to release in prayer graces whose key has been specially reserved for us to turn. He longs for us to join in his spiritual outpouring of grace. What about Hell? When I write these thoughts I am very conscious of the firm teaching of Jesus about hell and judgment. But I am struggling to reconcile that with the principle teaching of Jesus about the infinite love of God. The understanding of the Good News has developed over the centuries. For example, in past ages, Christians have killed eachother over arguments about how to interpret the faith. That wasn’t Christian - it was broken human beings, not yet able to let the love and the guidance of God lead them. Today we reject violence carried out in the name of God. Is it possible that we are beginning to allow God’s utter love to break through our age-old anger and frustration which causes us to want to punish evil doers and make them pay? Are we about to become so involved in intercession in our age that we can realistically hope for the salvation of the whole human race? In another episode in ‘ The Shack’ Mack challenges God the Father to severely hurt the murderer. The Father answers him by turning the tables, and challenges him to pick which of his other two children are soon to die painfully. He cannot make such an awful decision, they are both precious to him. God explains that this is what it is like for him. How can he choose to maim one of the children he created? Whatever the murderer has done he is still God’s child. No one can deny the dreadful potential of every free-born human being to choose to reject God and flee to everlasting hell. Our freedom is too enormous to prohibit that possibility. But the judge we face when we die is not a heartless God reading out a list of indictments. It is our entering into the light of the infinite love of God. and, in that light, seeing ourselves as we really are, and realising our unworthiness. Each of us will judge ourselves and have to make the decision either to entrust our broken selves to the call of his love, or to remain shrivelled in our closed selves, which is hell. We truly have the potential to remain in that state for ever. But at the very heart of Christian activity is intercession: through prayer and sacrifices to play our part in completing the work of Christ. That is how the totally powerful grace of God is preparing humanity for eternal life. Is it not possible, now that we are in the age of deeper redemptive intercession, to hope and pray that all human beings can be saved? What about God’s Justice? God is strict. There can be no deviation or change in God. All things are obliged to be brought into line with his decrees; that is what righteousness means. When I write that, it sounds like a cold wind will blow all things into a rigid, pre-planned arrangement. But the wind is not cold; it is warm and wholesome. God’s justice is nothing more than his absolute resolution for his love to fill and order all creation well. We sometimes speak of the immense suffering of Jesus as demanded by the Father in reparation for all the sins of humanity. But the key is the word ‘reparation’. It is all about repairing us, for which both Father and Son are prepared to pay any price. Jesus’ life and death revealed that there is something of deep pain in God until we are all back home in the warmth of his mansions, fully alive and complete daughters and sons. Jesus was willing to endure the pain of all our wounds opening in himself, so that the Fathers ointment could sooth and heal us, enabling us to freely choose life with our Father. Justice is the no-holds-bared functioning of love. Jesus tells us: “I tell you most solemnly, whoever listens to my words and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life; without being brought to judgment he has passed from death to life” (John 5: 24). The justice of God is joyfully at work helping us achieve rightness, not loading us with condemnation.

In this materialistic and sceptical age, people can pompously declare that the great teachers of the mystical journey of love with God like Saints Paul of the Cross and Charles de Foucauld are deluded. They dismiss them as suffering from a weird form of mental sickness. Those critics sound like the flat earth believers of old. They close their eyes to the evidence. I listened to an engineer talking about how she thinks. She sees everything graphically in three dimensions. She even sees the type and size of screws involved in the machine she has in mind. She can then create it exactly. Few of us can think like that. But it is one of the types of thinking within the wide range of human abilities. We gladly rejoice in her gift and benefit from its results. At the same time, we can study her methods and gradually develop our own engineering insights. It is the same with the saints. To see the world exclusively in materialistic terms is an easy temptation in this age when physics and science in general are dazzling us with increasingly useful insights. People can be so impressed that they want to explain everything in mathematical and mechanical terms. We coin mottoes like ‘follow the science’, but science is a vast field in which there are often more questions than answers, and much admission of ignorance. Some branches of science deal with human behaviour. These study and quantify how people act and feel and think. From this they seek to predict how situations and personalities will generally play out, but that is far from exact because there are “X factors” in every person which are unpredictable. One of the branches of science which is most prone to difficulty in this regard is psychology. Often, from a purely materialistic point of view, it will deal only with the physical working of the brain and nervous system, the bio-chemistry involved in thought and emotions, and patterns of behaviour, in order to predict statistically how people will act - much of mental sickness is dealt with through medicine. Many psychologists refuse to deal with anything that cannot be measured. That automatically excludes the spiritual and mystical dimension of human beings. Their simplistic way of justifying their prejudice is to dismiss these experiences as delusion. To view human behaviour and personal experience as simply material is rather like a person who can only conceptualise items in two dimensions. They would have no access to the experience and insights of the engineer I mentioned above. I experience a similar deficiency myself, because I am partially colour-blind. I can see colours, but they must be very different to how most people see them, because a lot of the time I do not understand what they are talking about. It would be folly for me to think that they are all deluded. When people look at mystical experiences, such as those of St Paul of the Cross, and bracket them as delusion, they are demonstrating their own type of blindness, even folly. This is especially mystifying when there is so much evidence of the benefits of much of mystical experience. I trust other people’s colour sense because they exhibit such commonality, and it is obvious that they and others derive great benefits from their experience. I would love to paint, but if I tried people would laugh at my efforts. But I can still appreciate beautiful paintings and be inspired by them. At the very least it would be right for sceptics or aggressive deniers to examine whether the countless mystical experiences benefit or hamper people. That is not to deny that there can be real delusion passing itself off as mystical experience, but here the strong teaching of the Church about discernment of spirits should be acknowledged. In a great book, Is Faith an Ilusion ?, the former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Professor Andrew Sims, demonstrates how people of faith generally live longer and are less prone to mental sickness than non-believers. He also states that more and more of his colleagues are abandoning their systematic dismissal of spiritual matters because they observe the evident benefits. Nowadays, under the banner of ‘health and safety’ we spend so much time banning and avoiding troubling realities that we are in danger of losing the sense of adventure. There is no greater adventure than ‘exploration into God’. [2] I often see small children on the beach trying to create a pond in the sand. They then dash down with their buckets to fetch water from the sea and pour it in. But they are left with an empty crater, and give up. Fallen human beings are like that; they sense the vastness of God like children sense that of the sea, and they try to reduce it to a scale that they can manage. You can’t manage God. Many of these small children have not been taught to swim, and so shrink back from the waves. They do not know their own ability to float and move in the water. It is like that for those who shrink from the ‘exploration into God’.

The hunger of the human heart is far deeper than our bodily and emotional needs. It is for love. Our emotions dispose us to love, but they are incomplete because, after they have arisen within us, they can stay within us. It takes the committed response of another person to transform our emotion into real two-way love. Our hearts fundamentally are searching for bonding with others to complete ourselves, and to prune and develop ourselves, and not just us: the whole of creation has the same urge. At its very deepest this search is only fully realised by our bonding with God. For that to happen we need the gift of faith. It is the facility of faith which enables a person to begin to perceive God, and to gradually come to know him through love. There is a big question here: why is it that many people seem not to receive this gift? Furthermore, is God unfair when he seems to give faith to some and not to others? I think that the answer to that question lies in the infinitely wise and tender care of our Father. We and the angels are the only creatures we know of that God made in his own image. Now the deepest revelation of God is that God is a community, essentially a Trinity of persons united in utterly perfect love. We, ourselves, will never be redeemed except as a community. The creator knows that our human community works through love, which requires the voluntary decision to open ourselves to another. He also knows that most of us find that frightening. He assists the human community’s efforts to grow in love by starting with the most willing souls. Through them, all the rest of us are shown how to cooperate with his grace, and their progress creates a drag towards heaven which assists others. The fallen human community is very complex; we find it hard to transform our free will into loving. We have a history of disunity and multiple fracturing. We know very few people well and our love is extremely limited and often conditional. We lost our spiritual compass when we put ourselves in the centre of creation instead of God. It takes God to restore our enfeebled spirits. He knows us far better than we know ourselves. He knew that we could only gradually learn about him and that we need to do so with others. We may think of ourselves as sovereign individuals, but we really only flourish in company. The story of revelation is one of God gradually drawing people nearer to himself through dealing at first with a few chosen souls. Then they bring others into the process of salvation. Look how Jesus gently dealt with crowds, but limited his deep teaching to a few disciples. When he completed that process by drawing those disciples into himself after Pentecost, animating them with his Holy Spirit, their influence developed exponentially. This is how God works; this is his wonderfully wise design. As he forms spiritual communion through his Church, our human community grows through stages until his will is accomplished. The way he unfolds his plan is not unjust; it is tenderness and wisdom, and his timing lasts through ages not years or centuries. It all depends on willing souls taking up his cross and following him.

The Battle St Paul tells us that we are really engaged in a cosmic battle that is centred in humanity: “It is not against human enemies that we have to struggle, but against the Sovereignties and the Powers who originate the darkness in this world, the spiritual army of evil in the heavens” (Ephesians 6: 12). The great cosmic war of salvation was won by Christ on Calvary. Now we, his people, are in a process of reclamation. When a war is won, there follows the long process of establishing the peace. It has been ordained by God that this process is carried through by the prayer and work of his people.  Satan and his forces will not accept defeat lightly. They delude themselves into thinking that they are the real power. They desperately take every opportunity to confuse and muddy the process of humanity's resurrection. Hebrews 2: 15 tells us that Satan held humanity in slavery because of the “fear of death”. The fear of death means that deep down dread that I can be terminated - I can lose my life and everything that I have and am; my very self may disappear. To avoid that most people will accept any compromise. It is the compromises that are the sins. The purity of heart which enables a person to come to true integration is forever postponed. Evil becomes normalised and hope is nothing more than the desire to survive. The blessed purity of heart which enables us to see God is impeded. Where is Satan holding humanity in slavery? Wherever this fear of death is operative - I am tired or confused or bored. Deep down, underneath all this is the lurking sensation of being irrelevant, and fear of nothingness. In that state of insecurity, I can be drawn into the grip of a powerful temptation, and I frequently give in to it. In consequence I loathe myself and feel oppressed. My spark of energy is depleted and I know it; the joy that comes from fulfilling one’s obligations is lacking. This is the slavery that the writer of Hebrews is talking about. It is an inability to be free. The nature of temptation Here we need to open the eyes of our spirits. This weakness that we call temptation arises from a good part of our own selves that has been twisted, but it is being aggravated by the subtle whispering of the Father of Lies. In order to weaken us, an enemy will strike us where we are weakest or wounded. That is his surest way of disabling us. In the depths of our wounded spirits, we hear clearly the whispering of the Father of Lies. Oh, it is so subtle. We even believe that we have vacuum-sealed minds where we alone are thinking these thoughts, as though we are incapable of perceiving suggestions spiritually. If that were so, how is it that we readily accept that we can perceive the word of God? In many cases, Satan even tries to trick us into believing that he does not exist. That convinces us that we are thinking these thoughts on our own, whereas we are, in fact, open to a constant barrage of distortion by which he keeps us in that slavery. We can see this phenomenon working openly when a false narrative is circulated and believed on social media with crazy results. We do not see it clearly when we are being persuaded to sin in the quiet of our minds. Only the mind that is set firmly in Christ can properly withstand this whirl of fakeness. The true functioning of intercession This brings us to the true functioning of intercession. It is not to battle with Satan directly. He would like that, because he is the ultimate narcissist. If we set out to battle Satan, we will be making the mistake of fighting on his ground. It is a law of sanity that you should never step onto the ground of a person who is mad, because it is unreal; you have to call them onto the ground of sanity in order to bring them back to reality. The true functioning of intercession is to stand firmly in Christ. With him our minds and hearts are drawn to the Father. There we seek his face which is the face of love. When we pray, the brokenness of humanity surrounds us in hidden and shadowy ways, it may take the form of a meteor shower of distractions; it may be profound emptiness, or uncomfortable purposelessness. The key is to not give up. We stand in Christ; we keep standing up as Jesus did at the scourging at the pillar. That is the spiritual sacrifice we offer. It can be a harsh ordeal. We may fall into sin, but the hand of Jesus is always stretched out to his lovers to help them stand up again. This dedicated standing in Christ, seeking the face of the Father is what dislodges Satan. He cannot abide witnesssing the love between God and a soul. He has to flee, and, in fleeing, he is wounded permanently. This weakening of his grip enables little chinks of light to penetrate the souls of brothers and sisters as yet unknown to us, so that their liberation progresses. That is intercession. It is inexorably clearing out the putrid crust that has attached itself to our beautiful humanity, humanity that is created in the image and likeness of God. “May he give you the power for your inner self to grow strong” (Ephesians 3: 16) The amazing thing is that those who pray like this, although bloodied by the strain and pain of it, grow strong in the strength of the Holy Spirit. They become rocks of truth and love enabled to fulfil the purposes of God in extraordinary ways. I am speaking of ordinary people here, not just the outstanding Saints. But they are saints, none-the-less. We experience increasingly what St Paul describes when he proclaims “I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2: 20). It is written of Jacob that he spent the night wrestling with God before he came home to enter into his inherited title as the heir to the promise given to Abraham and Isaac. He was fighting not against God but with God for his future descendants who would be the focus of the salvation of the world. As morning came, God gave Jacob and his descendants a new name, Israel, meaning someone that has the power to deal with God. The perfect rightness which God insists that humanity achieve is released through the struggles of Jacob and his children, Israel. We now are the true Israel. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are our fathers not in blood but in faith, the capacity to deal with God. But don’t forget that Jacob had a limp from then on. While he and his descendants had been given access to the power to free humanity, which would mature in Jesus and those who believe in him, Jacob was painfully reminded that he himself was part of the broken humanity that he was called to free. It is a royal service not a privileged entitlement.

Some people say: “Intercession is fine for people who have time on their hands, but I am too busy”. What that actually says is that God takes second place to my agenda, and that is the root of sin. It is like a full bowl of fruit. Pour water in, and that represents the space we leave to God - the fruit is more important. You have to make times when you throw out the fruit and fill the bowl with water. Then, we need to look honestly at what time we give to refreshment and leisure. We might claim that we are too tired to use that time to pray. What we really are saying is: 'prayer is work, I need some down-time'. But refreshment at its most radical comes from time with God. It will pay dividends in renewed energy and an ability to discern what really is necessary in our lives, rather than what we fancy is necessary. The busy person’s Intercession The prayer of the heart calls you to be in Jesus’ presence and lovingly seeking the face of the Father with him. The thing of greatest importance is to start. That means that you are willing and God will use that intention to bless you. You may drop off to sleep, or feel plagued by distractions, but it is the willingness to start with Jesus which brings about a reordering of your mind and heart. God works gently with willing souls in their deepest self, their spirit. Don’t look for deep feelings, inspiring ideas and eloquent words in your communication with the Father. Look for the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness gentleness and self-control. The working of Intercession When Jesus returned to his home town Nazareth, he went to synagogue on the Sabbath. There he read Isaiah’s prophecy about how the Messiah would bring peace, liberation, healing and a time of the Lord’s favour. Then he sat down and said all this was coming true at that very moment in front of their eyes. He was stating “I am the Messiah”. They were impressed at how the popular local carpenter had been transformed into such an outstandingly charismatic person in the time he had been away. His words were loaded with wisdom and his touch healed the sick, but they also saw that he had no army. An oppressed people will dream of being liberated from their invaders, and they would want to give the Romans some of their own medicine. Jesus would say that he had not come to thrash the Romans, but to change the hearts of the Romans. Indeed, within 300 years, the Empire would become Christian, and Rome would become the center for the Rock on which his Church is built. Jesus would teach that the real warfare would be in individual hearts against the empire of evil which gives rise to such manifestations as Rome's cruel domination. How was this change of hearts to be brought about? First he would break the power of evil on the cross, and open the lock gates to the Father’s love. Then he would come back on earth in a second body, his Church to unite and heal the world. We are dealing here with the mystical uniting of all the people in whom he and the Father would be living through the Spirit. Who are these members of Jesus’ spiritual body? They are busy mums, hardworking farmers, and sailors and factory workers and nurses and policemen and cleaners, and those who struggle or bear pain resigning themselves to the will of God. Once a person is seeking the loving relationship with the Father, their every action can be an act of Love to the Father. Within the dynamic of the spiritual body of Christ, in which we are profoundly united, the Father receives each act of love and takes its energy, which is love itself and multiplies it. He then sends it back to earth to some soul who is stuck in sin or blinded by the dazzle of this world. These rays of light penetrate to their spirits and they are empowered to begin to change and cooperate with the call of God. Let there be no doubt that this is how the Kingdom or peace, justice and love is established and is building up. Do not look for clear avenues of revolution, but the steady building up of goodness in individuals. It is not revolution but evolution. This is all part of a divine design to unite and transform humanity, and to renew the face of the earth. That is how the divine economy functions, and each of us are called to play our special role in this transforming process of intercession. Why does our Father act in this way? We could ask: why does the Father withhold some graces until human beings begin the process through intercession? Is he being mean? No, he is being totally just. He is honouring us. We are beings of a grandeur so remarkable, that he will not short-circuit the process of our regeneration by minimising our roles. He, who can do all things, wants us to reach the dignity of being his co-workers with immense potential to act through and with him. We will never be complete until we have grown into mature sons and daughters, true images of our Father. How generous God is to allow us, who are the root of the world’s woes to play an integral part in the repairing and restoring of all things! How can any sane person postpone or hinder their own destiny with the excuse that they are too busy? Busy with what?

Is God doing something new in our time? I have recently been studying a fascinating book by Hugh Owen entitled ‘New and Divine’ . His basic thesis is that, through the writings of contemporary mystics like St Elizabeth of the Trinity, St Maximilian Kolbe and Bl Dina Belanguer, a new phase of holiness is being gifted to those whom he calls ‘exemplars’. An exemplar is a person who is an example of a reality which is not easy to understand. In this case they demonstrate a new growth in closeness to God. He argues that this ‘new and divine holiness’ is characterised by an ‘incarnation of Jesus’ in the soul of the person. This is where they have submitted their own will so strongly to his that it is him living and working in them. He claims that this is a new development in holiness, a deeper move into union with God than the ‘spiritual marriage’ described by such saints as Theresa of Avila and John of the Cross. He further reports that these mystics predict an exponential growth in the number of souls experiencing this unity, which will lead to the accomplishment of the prayer of Jesus: ‘thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven’. I will leave the discernment of these arguments to minds greater than my own. My personal take-away from the book is that it has given me a greater sense of what St Paul meant when he said ‘I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me’ (Galatians 2:20). Also, I feel a strong sense of accord with his analysis that all the great mystics of modern times speak with strong urgency of a great age of the Spirit commencing in our own time. They seem to all share the common theme that it is through growing more and more in accord with the divine will through contemplation that the Church will pray the new age into being. Intercession is crucial!

When I wrote of St Paul of the Cross’ redemptive suffering, I was unaware of Hugh Owen’s assertion that there is a development in mystical activity in the world in our time. If it is true, from the ‘exemplars’ he quotes, that God is inspiring a deepening of mystical union with God in our day, and, if that it is the tool by which the new age of the Church will be activated, we need to consider this. I will give an example of one of the ‘exemplars’ he quotes who made most sense to me: Bl. Dina Belanguer. She was a Canadian nun who lived for 32 years, from 1897 to 1929. She describes in her writings amazing conversations with Jesus and how that influenced the development of her soul. She speaks of being immolated to such an extent that Jesus is the one who lives and acts in her. 'Immolation' is the process by which we allow ourselves to become "less and less" like John the Baptist (John 3: 30), so that we can be filled with the Spirit, the life force of God. It is what Jesus meant when he said "whoever loses his life for my sake will save it" (Matthew 10:39). She explicitly explains that this losing of her self is not an annihilation of her self, but a true restoration of her self in the Spirit. She explains, for example, that this does not take away temptation, and that it restores her true identity rather than robbing her of it. She speaks of living within the life of the Trinity as in heaven, but still being in the body in this world. She reports that she feels the suffering of Jesus from the beginning of his humanity to the end of time, and is aware that, as she shares in it, her suffering is redemptive of millions of souls. She is living in the eternal now of the Trinity while still in her physical earthly body. Jesus’ suffering is much more due to his love of souls tortured by sin than anything he felt physically during his passion. She endures these with him. The suffering I have found it difficult to identify with the stress on suffering found in the revelations of the modern saints, and how our mother, Mary, talks about suffering at her recent appearances. I have for a long time felt that it is morbid to dwell on it so much. For example, the vision of hell given to the Fatima children did not ring true with the sense that I have, that we are moving away from a religion of fear to that of love. And the stress on hell seemed to downplay the desire of our loving God that all will be saved. But, when I see the situations of hell all over the earth in wars and turmoil, I believe there is also hell here now, and many choose it because they are enslaved to evil and sin. I ask myself: can it be that the redemptive suffering of God’s holy people can overcome and negate all the hell on earth as well as the hell of the afterlife? I fervently hope so. Still, I have to admit that I have hesitated to ask for the intimate union with Jesus, which welcomes suffering. My emotive response to that calling is ‘Please, No!’ Now, though, I am beginning to understand that this suffering is the other side of the passion of love which burns in the Trinity. Such is God’s desire that each soul be saved and healed that it pains God deeply until it is accomplished. These mystic souls sense this, leaving them with the unutterable joy of being so in love with God that they desire to share in his immense pain as a work of intercession in order to liberate souls into his unmeasurable love. They are so bound to God that they burn with his love for all souls. Now, that I can dare to aspire to. Climbing the ladder of holiness But how to climb the ladder to mystical union with God which these souls exemplify? Will I ever make progress there? Why am I so slow? It helps to remember that they are raised up by God as ‘exemplars’ and, even if more and more exemplars appear, theirs is still a special vocation. They were fast-forwarded in spiritual experience in order to give us ordinary people the vision of how redemption functions, and what to aspire to in our gradual progress. They are not raised up by God to make us feel inadequate, but to encourage us. They tell us that all people are called to this incarnation of Jesus in the soul, and that we are entering an age when the experience of that will become more evident and widespread. A truly Christian heart can only long for that to be true, but we have to trust God with the details. “Oh Lord, my heart is not proud nor haughty my eyes. I have not gone after things too great, nor marvels beyond me. A weaned child on its mother’s breast, even so is my soul” (Psalm 131). God will show each one of us our individual part to be played in the restoring of creation St Therese of Lisieux I find a lot of encouragement in the writings of St Therese of Lisieux. She only experienced one mystical experience. She professed that she was a little soul and could only live in intimate union with Jesus by only wanting what he wants. She called it her ‘immolation’. But I think it works out like this: I make the firm decision to cooperate with the grace Jesus offers me, firmly believing that he will aid me to make my will one with his Father’s. Then I begin to attempt to accept all the events of my life as being his will, permitted by him for his own good purposes, which I am normally oblivious to. Sometimes, these events can appear to be Hamlet’s ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. Often, they seem pointless, or downright crazy. But it is in accepting these as permitted by our Father, and therefore his will, that I grow in identifying my will with his. In that way, we gradually become people who can discern what God is asking of us. In carrying out our part in his plan (his will) the earth is drawn closer to heaven. There is no greater joy than involving ourselves completely in his will. We need to discern how to respond to the daily incidents which God has permitted. It takes some pondering. Here’s an example: Brother Leo and St Francis were on a journey and Leo asked St Francis ‘where do we find perfect joy?’ Francis replied that some might think it would be found in converting all unbelievers, but perfect joy is much more to be found were they themselves to remain humble and silent if they were refused admittance at the friary they were approaching, and also were violently abused by the door keeper. Then he said they could glory in the cross of Jesus Christ as St Paul advised ( Little Flowers of St Francis , Everyman edition, Pages 15 -16).  Flowers of St Now that differs from how, Jesus at his trial before the Sanhedrin, turned to the soldier who struck his face and asked him why he did that. Often we have to challenge abuse and injustice for the sake of the abuser, but quietly accept the pain for the sake of one’s own being filled with God’s love, which always channels the flow of God’s love into the rest of the world. What St Therese exemplified with her ‘little way’ was that abandonment to Jesus’ will produces a growing sense of his love for all mankind and a desire to make each moment an offering of one’s self for the salvation of all. I think that her little way is the straight path for those of us living in a busy, perplexing world who are not graced with high mystical experiences. Not muscular Christianity I had difficulty with all this talking about our will and willing. I have always been wary of muscular Christianity where the will is used to make ourselves pleasing to God almost without real recourse to grace. It is a form of self-glorification. But St Therese’s use of her will is reactive to the grace of God rather than being proactive out of her own determination. As we increasingly accept his will, we grow in the sense of living within the outpouring love and plan of the three person Trinity. Living in the Trinity is our vocation. We have begun that life through baptism. We are already living in the eternal now. Through contemplation we gradually ‘with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, (we) are filled with the utter fullness of God’ (Ephesians 3: 18-19). [2] Comfort and encouragement Cardinal Hume taught that the most important thing in prayer is to begin. I always found that comforting because it is mostly up to God what happens after that. My part is so often threadbare. Another great encouragement comes from St Charles de Foucauld who taught: ‘Love consists not in feeling that one loves, but in wanting to love; when one wishes to love, one loves; when one wishes to love with all one’s heart and strength, one loves with all one’s heart and strength’ [3]

An unexpected gift In these writings, I have concentrated on how we who are still on earth are called to intercede in order to hasten the spiritual revolution that the Father desires so urgently. I hope I have not seemed to give the impression of underrating the great army of saints and angels who intercede with Christ for us in heaven. Let me tell you what I experienced when I went to Rome in late October 2024. I wanted to pray at the tombs of St. Peter and St Paul. On our first visit to St Peter’s Basilica, it was swamped with tourists and I found it impossible to pray. But another day, after an early Mass, while the basilica was quiet, I prayed near to Peter’s tomb. St Paul’s basilica was more tranquil. I was not sure what I wanted to pray about, except to find God’s will with their help, and to pray for the Church. What I often find in prayer is that God tugs us quietly on to a particular path, and, as we stay on it, it develops a life of its own, and what God is saying to us becomes more clear. In Rome, that happened, I found myself standing at the tombs of great saints that I have known for ages, and becoming aware that they were closer than I had thought. I hadn’t realised that they had grown distant as my life progressed - it just happened. Now I was increasingly struck by their closeness. I could talk to them and knew they were listening hard. I did not hear them speak, but I knew strongly that they were supporting me in my prayer and work. St Josaphat One of them is St Josaphat. His body is in a glass tomb in St Peter’s. He was a bishop of the Ukranian rite Catholic Church of Ukraine, who at the age of 43 was martyred in 1643 at a time of conflict between the Catholics and the Orthodox, a split that still bedevils Ukraine today. What was wonderful about him was that he was a dedicated worker for reconciliation when few people wanted to hear that message. He was willing to go wherever he thought there might be an opening, no matter what personal danger threatened. Eventually he was ambushed and hacked to death with an axe. I have always had a great admiration for him. Our relationship was relit. St Clare In Assisi, which we also visited, everything speaks of that extraordinary man St Francis . Over the years, he has constantly filled my imagination and taught me so much, but it was St Clare who came close when I visited her basilica. Her quiet femininity, ardent love of God and of the Church, and sheer closeness at that moment was awesome. I know she is my supporter and friend. Also, I felt a longing to become acquainted with other less spectacular followers of St Francis. They weren’t comets streaking across the skies like Francis did, but walked the path of increasing love of God, and they transformed many other people through prayer and love. I could go on, but what I am describing is the renewed awareness which captured my mind and heart of how the Saints are very close and surround us as a vast army of protectors and friends. Truly, St Paul’s words powerfully describe this real-life phenomenon: “We are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12; 1), and “What you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…with the whole Church in which everyone is a "first-born son" and a citizen of heaven.” (Hebrews 12: 22). They are close here and now I had forgotten how close the saints really are, and how they are truly part of my life as I am of theirs. Maybe I had to make the jump from thinking of them as part of history to knowing them in the present day. I have always been fascinated by history, and it has been so helpful in understanding the present, but maybe I have concentrated on the circumstances of their lives in the past, which has made them seem remote; now I experience them as part of my life, my close kin. They are not always close, but it is like having frequent or occasional visits and calls from my family. And their lives are so relevant today! Take St Clare. She founded the Poor Clares, an order of enclosed nuns who seek to live in poverty and community. Some might say that she was merely a product of her age, and that they ended up enclosed, because they lived in a society which confined women to the home and restricted them more than men. But I believe that did not happen just because of the arrogance of men, but also because society wisely sought to restrict the number of unintended pregnancies and one-parent families, which frequently disadvantages children and wreaks all sorts of havoc in society. Remarkably, Clare boldly stepped out of the template of the Church of her time which placed enormous emphasis on providing security for congregations of nuns. She embraced radical poverty as a means to totally depend on God, and gathered women into communities of love. I n our time, the whole nature of femininity is being questioned and strange role models are being projected. There is much confusion and polarisation, and not a little distress. Where it is all being led by God is hard to tell, except that God's hand is, as ever, at work in all of the process. Certinly, if we let St Clare and so many heroic women of faith come really close to us, they will help us deepen our prayer of love and so come more surely to the understand the meaning and beauty of God's gift of our sexuality. The saints are alive and close to us today, still proclaiming their messages. What vast riches are at our disposal in the economy of God! Our Father has made the whole of humanity to ache for him and for peace and unity on earth, and he so longs for union with us, and to restore communion among his children. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven”.

God gradually develops his salvation in stages. Let's take a moment to consider how he does this. His people On Easter night, the risen Jesus entered the upper room to the amazement of his people, and he eagerly breathed the Holy Spirit upon them. That moment was the culmination of 2000 years of God’s preparation for the renewal of creation. He had centred this preparation stage on his chosen people, Israel. Long ago, God took a tribe of slaves out of oppression in Egypt. Then he led them through the desert for 40 years in which these wild spirits gradually made a covenant with him, because they saw his mighty deeds. It was his “right hand” alone that brought them victories. Remember how Joshua and Hur held up Moses’ arms in prayer to bring them victory over the Amalekites? (Exodus 17: 8-12) The walls of Jericho tumbled down as they processed around them just praising God. (Joshua 6: 1-20) He led them to conquer city after city, becoming skilful warriors. Truly, as Psalm 44 says, it was by God’s “right hand and arm” that they gained victories, and it was “because he loved them” . That was an amazing time. Then they settled and cultivated the land, became farmers and gradually their civilization developed; they started recording their history in books. But it was also a long period of centuries in which he stopped feeding them like babies – they had to grow up. They struggled to abandon their own tendency to invent their own gods, and slowly learned to deal with the real God in the way he demanded. All their worst vices came out and they had terrible times of crisis, but after two thousand years, they were at the stage where there were sufficient of them ready to receive the Messiah. After Jesus had ascended to Heaven, God’s chosen people assumed their new name “Christians”. It was time to bring all people into Israel, the people who deal with God. He stunned them with spiritual victories as they converted the Roman Empire and assimilated the wisdom of many cultures especially the Greeks. As they continued their journey of converting new peoples throughout the world, holiness flourished alongside depravity, all the worst vices came out and they struggled each in their day with evils within themselves. A great Christian culture developed. Its fruits were: human rights, university learning, science and democracy, universal education, the founding of hospitals, to name a few. But that too was a preparation stage from which the next development is to take place. God’s renewal of creation is progressive not static. What is the next development in God’s plan? In a prophetic poem, Christopher Fry writes: Thank God our time is now when wrong Comes up to face us everywhere, Never to leave us till we take The longest stride of soul men ever took. Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God. Where are you making for? It takes So many thousand years to wake… (The Sleep of Prisoners) Our own day and age. God has begun a great step forward in humanity, starting in the cradle of Christianity, the West. In order to prepare this next stage he has shaken his Church profoundly. He has exposed ways that were defective, with the result that many whose Christianity was mostly cultural and largely based on custom have slipped away. All this feels like things have deteriorated, but in fact he is renewing us from within. He is calling us to become more spiritual, more authentically Christian. It may appear to some that, in calling us to be more spiritual, God is asking us to downplay the material world, but Christianity is immensely material - God became flesh, and was nailed with iron nails to a cross of wood - wood that had been his primary material as a carpenter. He is in the process of renewing the whole of creation through human collaboration. The spiritual is pressing down on the world so that we and it can be filled with God. Faith seeks understanding God's being is far beyond our capacity to understand him. We are to relate to him through faith and love. But Christian faith always thirsts to understand both God and of the world he has created for us to develop and care for. Over the centuries, God has inspired Christians to discover the laws he has set into his material creation, which has caused the flowering of thought and science in the West. In recent years, much of this flowering of knowledge has become separated from its Christian roots, and we are faced with enormous potential for improvement which is deeply frustrated because, in isolating ourselves from the love of God, we have sealed the fountain of grace which enables us to properly love each other. Enormous love, which only flows from God's love is required to enable us to collaborate effectively in bringing creation to its glorious liberation . This can only be remedied by human beings maturing spiritually. God is busily leading us into that remedy. He is causing the whole world to be shaken. Our knowledge of each other and the world has increased, leading us into a challenging time of flux. Cultures are mixing and also clashing. We are enthralled by the differences, and yet frightened of losing our identities nationally and as groupings in society. God has led us to this time in order to call us more deeply into our most profound identity - children of his created in his own image and likeness, called to bring the earth to flourishing. Theories of everything There are many false "theories of everything" which offer world-views of how humanity is to advance. Only Christ is the answer. Only Christ suffices. The vision of the future offered by the so-called "progressive" philosophy has shown itself as brutalising, bogged down in overconsumption and endless "self-fulfillment"; it is hopelessly inadequate and visionless. The next great remedy offered for the world's ills, Islam, is adhered to by many wonderful and loving people who loath the violence, misogeny and fanaticism advocated by other Muslims. They are similar to Christians who, not so long ago, were moving away from violence inflicted in the name of Christ. We have to pray that the peaceful vision of so many of these good people wins the day. Yet fundamental to their belief is the principle that the Koran must be literally interpreted with no provision for rational analysis. It produces a type of faith which impedes understanding rather than seeking it. Christianity, despite the bogus claims that rational people left it behind at the time of the "Enlightenment", has, since the early middle ages, strenuously struggled to clarify and develop the relationship between faith and reason. This has led to the massive expansion of thought and science in recent times. This process has taken many centuries of debate, and the marriage of faith and reason is stronger today than ever. The process has been especially described in Newman's teaching on the development of doctrine where the basic revelation does not change, but its implications are continually being explored. One can only conclude that both the "progressive" and the Muslim world views are constructs of brilliant but typically defective human thinking. The other dominant system, authoritarian dictatorship, seldom claims to be anything but human. In places like Russia today, it may borrow religious trappings, but, in demeaning people, and choking them it demonstrates its real failure. Only the Spirit of Jesus moving in the Church proclaims that God has entered our world so that humanity can be incorporated into God. As the new stage in humanity's progress is being tumultuously born. God has been preparing his Church. The process of Christian renewal in the West is God’s way of recalling us to rely more deeply on "his right arm" and his "love" . Human development was reaching soul size. He is calling us into the exploration into God. Only as that progresses, will the world find the true secret of progress which is not primarily in the discoveries of science, but in the maturing of the human heart in Christ.

AFFAIRS ARE NOW SOUL-SIZED We are entering a period of deeper Christianity. God has brought us to the stage when it is the brokenness of the human heart resulting from self-separation from God that is to be faced. Each of us is being called to deepen our life of living in Jesus, seeking the face of the Father. That is the radical route to the regeneration of humanity. While each one of us has to follow the lead of the Holy Spirit in making this journey individually, all the other members of Jesus' mystical body accompany us in the communion of saints. In profound ways, they energise us, and we energise them. It is a personal, yet communal progress. On the deepest level of our being, the spiritual level, we are to become more fully our individual selves as we become more bonded with all of the other members of Christ's body. Organisers of human society assume that we have to become more cloned in order for society to work efficiently. Our Creator, however, broke the mold when he made each one of us, and he has formed us so perfectly that each of us is to sing our unique song in his great harmony of the chorus of love - just like the Trinity - in fact within the Trinity. More and more of us are to come before our Father to intercede, believing that the walls of our inner Jerichos will fall, those walls in others will also be undermined. Affairs are now soul size. He is urgently calling us to recognise our royal priesthood which requires us to intercede more profoundly. That means a greater life of prayer. God’s donkeys Prayer leads us to increasingly becoming agents of God's will wherever and however he shows it to us, which will usually take the form of fulfilling hundreds of humble tasks. It is in these that we will be purified and increasingly collaborate with him in the refining of humankind like gold. Let us not forget that our King comes riding on a donkey. Not a pretty animal, stubborn, sounding like a fog-horn, designed to pull and carry heavy loads. No one writes songs about donkeys. But there is a cross marked on its back, and for millennia it has carried our aged, infirm, pregnant mothers and precious children. It is the humble servant of the King. And how humble and cherishing our King is! We are his donkeys today, bringing him to a hungry world through offering him all our works and prayers, the “spiritual sacrifices” St Peter spoke of (1 Peter 2:5). We must never underestimate the immense power of prayer. When we open ourselves to God in prayer, we journey into his mysterious, ineffable, loving being. Our understanding fails to grasp him, but a knowing grows in our hearts. That knowing is that undefinable energy infused into us which is described by words like faith, hope and love. Faith and hope are the booster rockets of love; St Paul states that faith and hope will eventually disappear and creation will be restored in love as this age reaches its completion with the return of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the hidden agent in the Trinity, the catalyst and choreographer of this love which fills the universe. He is bringing the universe into the wholeness and holiness of the Trinity. We are his chosen collaborators. The name of this God-charged phenomenon is Church. Through his Church, God is gathering all creation into communion As people today rightly claim their freedom to take responsibility as adults, traditional communities have become fractured and new so-called ‘communities’ are springing up in social media. They are virtual and far from virtuous, lacking the richness of physical touch. But the fracturing is a preparation for the communion inspired by the Holy Spirit to become more apparent. As our hearts grow in the prayer of loving our Father, love and responsibility for others become more active and spreads, and the world itself is gradually changed. This is the dynamic we have to understand. There is a great difference between humanly organised society and natural human communities which are transformed into communion by the Holy Spirit. By natural human communities I mean such things as nations, families and friendship groups. At Easter, his people first met the risen Lord. In reality, they met themselves as well. Remember how he told Martha “ I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11. 25) ? He did not say "I will be resurrected"; he IS resurrection. It is not just Jesus who rose two thousand years ago, it is us along with all creation that are in the process of rising from the dead within his mystical body. He said: “ I am The Life” . He is among us. Humanity is increasingly being drawn into that life. That life is Church.

His second Body We had a Lent Course on Zoom. It turned into a series of sharings about the deep treasures of our faith. As it proceeded, it dawned on me that here was a microcosm of the Church. We were very different people with years of our own experiences behind us. Yet, as others talked, we each recognised our own experience in theirs with its hopes and graces and frustrations. Was that just a straw poll of individual Church-going Catholics, or was it the phenomenon of a master hand at work in all of us? It was the Holy Spirit working in different ways in each one of us, but producing a symphony of outcome which displays his unifying energy working in each of us. St Paul in 1 Corinthians 12: 5 tells us that it is "the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people ". What we call Church is a real, coordinated master symphony which is in fact all around us. It is the flow of God’s Spirit in human hearts and persons which is really a gigantic river moving through human history, and gradually drawing all people into itself - the second body of Christ. After the crucifixion, Jesus went in his glorified physical body into heaven only to return through the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is forming this new Mystical Body for him just as he formed his physical body in the womb of Mary. We are the parts of his mystical body. Each of us has a unique, essential function within it, and it is the Holy Spirit who coordinates this gigantic living Christ. St Paul looks forward to when this Mystical Body of Jesus will reach completion. In Ephesians 4:13, he says: “we are all to come to unity in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God, until we become the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself”. See the Church anew We need to revise all the notions we have of what the Church is, and start to appreciate the breadth of this God-guided phenomenon which is gradually drawing all mankind into Christ. Only after that can we reassess what we have been taught about the Church. The true picture of the Church only comes into focus when we have gained a notion and sense of this vast life-force working through human history to renew mankind. God is gathering into the life of the Trinity the children of Adam and Eve. The meaning of the original Greek word for Church, “ekklesia”, is “the gathering”. The functioning of this entity, this organism, the Church, embraces all humanity, yet it is entirely personal. It really is Jesus’s new body forming through a process of gradually drawing all human beings into communion, nurtured and cherished by the Holy Spirit. And wherever the Spirit forms Christ, Mary is his partner. It is developing gradually The process isn’t finished. We are deluded if we expect it to be. Look how God worked through centuries with Israel. He is working gradually in forming the new Israel, the Church. Our impatience can blind us to this reality. Is the Church shrinking in the West? No, we are being reorganised by God in preparation for the next stage which he has planned. Is this phenomenon of Church static? No it is developing. Have we got a handle on where the Church is now being taken by God? No, future generations will be given that when they write the history of our age. This is about hope and firm belief that when the Father sent his Son, he absolutely knew what he was doing. And if we aren’t told the whole plan, we have to live with that. We aren’t meant to see it all, but to walk by faith, which Adam and Eve failed to do. Our eyes are blinkered when we see the Church as the human institution with its hierarchy. Sure, God is developing the visible organised Church organically with its rules and customs and personalities under the guidance of the Spirit, but far more important is the Mystical Body functioning in millions of brothers and sisters all over the world. The Pope, bishops, priests and nuns are important, but to focus mainly on them and Church organisation is wrong. Focus on Jesus and on all the evidence of God’s unerring determination. And focus on what we know of how he worked in the past, and you will get a sense of how he is active now. The institutional Church exists to serve the great wonder of the Spirit, forming Christ in the whole of humanity Royal priesthood Each of us is a unique and essential part of Christ's Body. St Peter says we are “living stones being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2: 4-5). That means that every action and effort of yours is integrally significant in God’s plan. Nothing is outside of that process or neutral. All is contributing to the process of the gradual resurrection of humanity, or hindering it. Any prayer or action of yours now could help someone in a hundred years’ time or a hundred years ago. God is outside time and not limited by it. God allows each of his children to turn the tap to release grace into his process of salvation. Its operation does not open to scientific analysis and definitions. It is described in stories, and perceived spiritually more than intellectually. His ways are mysterious, but that does not mean that they are not perceivable. St Paul says “Only faith can guarantee the blessings that we hope for, or prove the existence of the realities that at present remain unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). It is our faith that assures us. We are like sailors filling our sails with the wind. They do not see or know all that the wind is doing, but they learn to move in it. In the soul of those who practice this way of life and prayer, he plants a sure sense that "all things work together for the good for those who love him" (Romans 8: 28). He also sends the occasional miraculous evidence that we are doing things right when we pray, or just place our lives at the service of his will, which is his determined drive for mankind’s home-coming. Contemplation and Intercession All of us are called into contemplation, which leads into prayer of intercession for our brothers and sisters. Do not underestimate the power of staying in the presence of God feeling nothing, or, worse, feeling distracted and even attacked. We say about some difficult people “their heart is in the right place”. That is how our Father sees us. He knows we are trying to pray, and that is immensely pleasing to him. What mum or dad is unmoved by a child that is doing their best? Just start, and stay there awhile, especially when it is difficult. Then is the time when it is most effective in releasing torrents of grace upon the human race. We are a combination of body and soul with minds and feelings, but at our deepest, we are spirits that have the capacity to be in love with God and all creation. If our minds are distracted or dull, and our feelings are disturbed, as long as our heart (our spirit) is set on our Father, we are in deep prayer - and effective prayer, taking up our part in this great engine which is transforming the hearts of human beings. It does demand that we build a habit of prayer. That is the narrow gate which leads to life and admits us into the regeneration of humanity from within. What of the times in our lives when we are out of our minds with cares and jobs that need doing? Is intercession impossible then? No, a simple prayer of offering it up is just as effective. A morning or evening offering covers everything. Then every effort of ours, every pain endured, every act of love, every frustration, every work for justice, every tear contributes to the great economy of saving and restoring our brothers and sisters from their hearts outward. But, for busy people, it is even more needed to make time for prayer, or they can get swamped and drown in the storms they go through. The real economy The economy is generally seen as how people exchange goods and services. It is also about how the culture which pervades these activities influences people's lives more generally, like greed/poverty, deprivation/overconsumption, exploitation/justice. It starts as considering material realities and ends up being about people’s happiness, and achieving or failing to achieve that goal. If the economy is driven only by human striving for happiness and security through material things, it is essentially defective; it must first of all be spiritual. Like all reality it is derives from God and must begin with him. All happiness is ultimately about true and balanced relationships. It starts with a relationship with God, which informs all other relationships: with our families, with what we eat, and possess, and where we live. Only after we have fallen in love with God, can we fall in love with all people and all creation. Some will say that we first need to have our needs for food, shelter and security satisfied before we can think about the things of God, but why do they have to be exclusive? You can have everything arranged nicely and still be deeply unhappy, equally, you can live in poverty and have more love and joy than the rich. A healthy economy is one in which all that is human and material is balanced by God’s grace and guidance. There is no argument for putting the first commandment, loving God, second; from it, all else flows. Look at how the struggle for trade unions and social justice started from the chapels, or universal education started from the parishes. Since they have been separated from their Christian roots, unionism has led recently in Britain to train drivers’ demands for huge rises, and doctors’ strikes shortly after they were given big pay rises. And education has become indoctrination with weird and distorted philosophies. The first commandment is to love God, and the second is to love our neighbour. It is a fundamental truth that Jesus expressed when he told us to “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all the rest will be added to you” (Matthew 6: 33). It is important to help people gain a vision of the real economy by which this world is being redeemed: not to see with the eyes of this world, but hear St Paul telling us: “your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution” (Ephesians 4:23). Your essential role You are not an insignificant second class Christian. Each of us is a firstborn in the family of God. Each of us has a unique, essential, and powerful part to play in the liberating of creation. We are each of us the children of God for whom creation has been longing (see Romans 8: 21-22). Each of us, in our own struggles, are part of the great redeeming current. All of the faithful are like an unending Mexican wave going around the world and the tide is rising. See the wonder of what you are a living part of. It is so beautiful and generous.

What does Church mean? The word ‘Church’ means different things to different people. For some it is a building, for others it is an organisation, for others it is the Mystical Body. Sadly, for many it is a concept, an external thing that they think about and react to in different ways. In reality it is an entity we can only appreciate properly when we see it as a life-force of which we are a member not a spectator. It can only be understood from within; it can also be sensed by "people of good will" seeking truth. Spectators often marvel at the way the Church keeps going when its members show such weakness and sinfulness. That is because they are unaware of the life-force and how it operates. It is in fact the Holy Spirit of God who enters the hearts of believers and joins them to Christ. By definition, they are sinners. The question should be not ‘why does the Church have sinful members?’ but ‘are its member generally growing in goodness’? Also you might ask ‘is the progression of the Church in the story of sinful humanity a force for good or for destruction?’ The Church’s enemies orchestrate a noisy cataloguing of the failures and vices of Church members, but they are silent about the vastly greater picture of successes, and saints, and Church organisations which have contributed to the development of humanity. We must not be silent about those great lives and achievements of holy people. Rather we should know that we are commissioned to be the latest vibrant members of this God-driven maturing of humanity. We should take to heart the way in which the Spirit has drawn so many people into the life-force of God, making them holy, and thereby more effective in improving the world. To know history is to be Catholic. What is Holiness? God is not creating some sort of Utopia on earth, as most people would understand it. He is working with humanity to bring the earth into Heaven. That is primarily about sharing his own life and holiness. ‘Holiness’ like ‘Church’ is a word which is much used, and not explained nearly enough. Again, most people think of it as a quality possessed by someone else, or some place or object, but not an inner dynamism which is developing their own hearts. This is understandable, because holiness is about being intimately connected with God which is a journey of mystery. It is through contemplation that we begin to be at home in the mystery of God's love, and that makes us increasingly aware of the Spirit working in the depths of our hearts. We pass from knowing about holiness, to experiencing it in ourselves. It is a continual process of growing in the knowing and friendship of Jesus, and going with him into the mystery of the presence of the Father. That is the dynamic which the Holy Spirit exercises in our spirits. On many diverse levels, it is at work in all people, it is the dynamic of the Church. An unexpected consequence of growing in holiness is the increased awareness that you are a sinner. All the great saints treated others as genuinely better than themselves. The Apostles addressed the early Christians as ‘saints’. We have mistakenly narrowed that word to mean only those who have stood out spectacularly as holy. That is a sadly inadequate definition of sainthood. The saint is one who is being sanctified, not just one who is already in heaven. According to the Apostles, saints are all those who have been set aside for ‘holiness’ by being brought into the holy Family of God. No wonder, Pope St. Leo the Great cries out: ‘Oh Christian, know your dignity!’ The Family of God - the Communion of Saints The Trinity is a family of blissful unity. Those who are baptised into the Family of God need to see their new birth not only as the individual process of their own journey with God, but as a family event. I have often been surprised at the warmth of welcome given to those who have been received into the Church on Easter night by members of the congregation who are perfect strangers. Instinctively, and without their thinking deeply about it, they recognise that here is one who is not a stranger. Here is a sister. Here is a brother. In many of today’s film dramas we hear the phrase ‘he’s family’, ‘she’s family’. Indeed it is often implied that this is the deepest value of humanity, and needs no explaining. Blood relationship needs no theorising; it is obvious and universally felt. Look at how adopted people often yearn to meet their biological relatives. What is not so obvious is the deep family bond within the Body of Christ, his Church. We sense this Church family bond, but seldom appreciate its deep power. The early Church had a deep sense of it. We hear it referred to frequently in the letters of the Apostles. They called each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’. They had experience powerfully the birth of new life in the disciples and converts, and they readily recognised the Holy Spirit in each other. At the same time, they drew a great distinction between themselves and the non-believers; they were a highly motivated minority. This sense of separateness was strengthened by the belief in the first century of the Church that Christ was returning imminently, and they had to salvage as many souls as possible before the end of the world and the final judgment. The sense of family changed dramatically when Christianity was adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and almost everyone joined the Church. The deep sense of Christian identity gradually shifted to being attached to a nation that recognised itself to be ‘Christian’, or an organisation they called ‘the Church’. God allowed this huge shift in the Christian sense of identity. In a way, it may have been in order to face us with the question of ‘how are all mankind involved in salvation, not just a chosen few?’ It has taken many centuries for this question to become clear. God wishes all people to be saved; that is to choose the path of journeying into God. We will only discover the answer to this great question of the salvation of all if we deepen our sense of the way the Family of God operates. The deeper ties When God the Son became human, every one of us human beings became related to him as sister or brother, and every one of us became through him a child of God the Father. Whether they were aware of it or not, this relationship with the Trinity became the primary relationship of every human being, greater than any blood relationship. That is the Good News. When people begin to experience the Good News instead of being ignorant of it, or merely aware of it theoretically, their inner selves come alive and begin to mature. And they begin to experience the vast new family of God's children The fact is that, deeper than blood ties, the spiritual ties between human beings are enormously powerful. In reality, my sins effect you, and your acts of love and goodness affect me. We will not be saved without each other. Jesus and the members of his body are on the cross until all are saved. We cannot escape this; we cannot separate ourselves from all the human family, which God desires to bring completely into the Family of the Trinity. People recognise the truth, ‘No man is an island’. Few however realise that this is not just about the social bond between human beings; it is much more really a spiritual bond. Through contemplating the loving Father, the realisation dawns that his grand design is to unite the whole of humanity spiritually as the Trinity is united. Do we not assert that in heaven we will know everyone, and be in loving communion for ever? Well, that form of eternal living is revealed as redeveloping here and now. It is the Communion of Saints. It is the Church. The real economy The earthly economy works by mutual assistance, but that is driven by self-interest. The spiritual economy, which is the far deeper project of humanity, also works by mutual assistance, but it is driven by the love of God and others. It is an indisputable fact that every one of your right acts, every travail endured for others, every sacrifice made in love, every prayer helps someone else through the economy of the Holy Spirit. Here is the real mother-load of gold for the ‘saints’ to mine. The engine for digging is contemplation, the process of refining the gold is intercession and sacrifice. That is how the Church, that jumble of sinners which so shocks us, is gradually transforming people into saints. We sinners are already operating as a Communion of Saints. Becoming the "light of the world" As we increasingly share in God’s love for everyone, we become the light for the world. Jesus prayed at the last supper to the Father: ‘may they be so completely one that the world will realize that it was you who sent me’ (John 18; 23). We rightly spend much time giving an account of our hope to the people of our age, but it is our love for God and other people that will prove to them that he has come and who he really is. Jesus tells us, in John 13:35, " By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples". He also revealed at the Last Supper that by our love he will be glorified when he prayed: ‘in them I am glorified’ (John 17: 10). The Martyrs of Compiegne The martyrs of Compiegne were an instance in which the glory of Jesus was dramatically witnessed in his people. Sister Gabriela of the Incarnation writes on the website, Where Peter Is : ‘These Carmelites were 16 nuns of the monastery of Compiegne in France, and when the French Revolution broke out and Catholicism was outlawed, they all vowed to offer their lives for the faith and for France. They repeated this vow each day. At first, they were allowed to live their religious life, but then they were evicted from their monastery and ordered to take off their religious habit and to cease living as religious. They broke up into small groups of 3 or 4 and lived in apartments, keeping in touch with one another and doing their utmost to live their Carmelite life as best they could. They were arrested in June 1794, and a few weeks later, on July 17, they were sent to the guillotine. They sang on the way to the scaffold, and each repeated her vows in the hands of the Prioress before she mounted the steps to the guillotine. The usually raucous, jeering crowd was totally silent as the nuns died one by one’ . Even the most degenerate person can recognise one who is full of the love of God. God is leading humanity into the fullness of love in the heart of the Trinity. That sacred pilgrimage is called the Church. How wonderful is the plan of God! All who love God, surely, must love his beautiful Church!

A MAN in love with the Church BLESSED FRANCIS PALAU Y QUER (1811-1872) - A life of solitude and busy ministry The previous Chapter is entitled "Love the Church". The Church is beautiful; it is the living Christ on earth leading all human beings into the intimate life of the Trinity. Once a person has grasped that, they begin to live within and love the Church. One man who had an extraordinary knowing of this was Blessed Francis Palau y Quer. He literally fell in love with the church. He was a Carmelite friar who lived from 1811-1872 and ministered in the Spanish and French regions of Catalunya. Here I quote in italics from an article in Heralds of the Gospel , March 2018 by Sr. Clarissa Ribeiro de Sena EP about his life. Sr Clarissa writes: "In 1840, the Spanish anti-clerical political situation had worsened, obliging Fr. Palau to take refuge in France for eleven years, where he lived mainly in secluded grottos. A group of disciples gathered around him, giving rise to a nucleus of hermits, as well as to the beginnings of a female community. These were the first seeds of foundations he would set up in the future. Returning to Spain in 1851, he went to the Diocese of Barcelona. A period of intense apostolic activity began, marked by concern for the lack of religious instruction among the faithful. He founded the School of Virtue in St. Augustine’s Parish, a permanent catechesis for adults who sought to confront “error with truth, darkness with light, shadows with reality, falsity with authenticity”. He laid great stress on the virtues and their opposing vices. This was one of his undertakings that bore the greatest influence on society. With time, about two thousand people from all classes, especially workers, were gathering on Sundays to hear his teachings. The resounding success of the School of Virtue, however, made it the target of malicious calumnies. Based on the false accusation of involvement in the workers’ strikes that erupted in Barcelona, the civil governor closed it in 1854 and exiled Blessed Palau to the Island of Ibiza, where, paradoxically, he found his preferred site for solitude: the little island of Es Vedrà. He writes “In the Balearic Islands, Providence had prepared for me the solitude which my heart desired,” 4 he himself narrates. "Nobody can approach that rugged rock except by boat; and its sheer cliffs rise so abruptly from the water that they can only be scaled by native experts. This is where I withdraw, from time to time, for my solitary life,” to “render accounts to God for my life and to consult the designs of His Providence”. Mystical union with the Church The year 1860 held a crucial event for him, one which would give meaning to his life. According to his own commentary, the time of his youth, his entrance into Carmel and the vicissitudes that followed, the periods of isolation, his priestly ministry and the resulting tribulations all amounted to a prolonged search: “I had spent my life in search of the object of my love, until the year of 1860. I knew well that it existed, but how far I was from imagining what it was!” It was the month of November, and he was preparing for the last session of the mission he preached in Ciudadela, when he was transported in ecstasy before the throne of God, where a most beautiful woman clothed in glory appeared to him, her face covered by a fine veil. He understood her to be the Church, which the Eternal Father entrusted to him as a daughter. He expressed the strong impression the scene made on his soul in these terms: “I desired to know this young Woman who came to me wrapped in mystery and hidden under a veil. Nevertheless, although veiled, I had such a sublime infused knowledge of her. I saw in her attitude such grandeur, that my happiness would be if she would accept me as the humblest of her servants and attendants.” “Holy Church!” he would later exclaim. “For twenty years I sought thee: I was looking at thee but did not know thee, for thou wert hidden beneath the obscure shadows of mystery, of figures and metaphors, and I could only see thee under the form of a being incomprehensible to me; it was thus that I saw thee and loved thee. It is thee, holy Church, my beloved! Thou art the sole object of my love!” Thus began a relationship between him and the Church as a mystical person. “I am a reality, a perfectly organized moral body: my head is God made Man; my bones, my flesh, my nerves, my members are all the Angels, Saints and the just destined for glory; my soul, the spirit that vivifies me, is the Holy Spirit,” she would say to him in one of his visions. These became more frequent, culminating in a spiritual espousal, in which Our Lord Jesus Christ gave the Church to him, also, as spouse. The beautiful lady of the first manifestations was followed by Sarah, Rebecca, Esther, Judith and other women who had prefigured the Church in the Old Testament. In this way she transmitted her sublime mysteries to him and strengthened their bonds of union. At a certain point, the perfect archetype and most pure mirror of the Mystical Bride of Christ appeared to him, the Most Holy Virgin. At the service of the Mystical Bride of Christ Such profound heavenly communications made the Church the root principle of his existence: “My mission is simply to proclaim to the people that thou art infinitely beautiful and lovable, and to exhort them to love thee.” With this zeal, he set out to evangelize in several cities of Spain. The mystical experiences with the Church were at the root of the foundations he set up. Sensing himself called to unite the active life with the rich contemplative tradition of Carmel, he founded two religious congregations. In his pastoral work, Blessed Palau also made good use of the pen. As well as several books, he published articles in the weekly publication El Ermitaño (meaning ‘the hermit’). In them he sets forth impressive analyses and predictions regarding ecclesiastical and social events. He also worked as an exorcist. The future triumph of the Holy Church In his visions he came to an apex of mystical union with the Church through a series of revelations regarding the internal and external evils assailing the Church and those which, in the future, would befall her. At the same time, Fr. Palau contemplated her immortal glory and definitive victory". (Fr Brian writes) What does this extraordinary man teach us? The Church does not authenticate the private revelations of the saints. She only proclaims as Blessed or Saints those whole lives have been examples of great holiness, and who have taught nothing against the teachings of the Church. I offer this outline of Blessed Francis’ life as an example of one who gave a heroic example of intercession. His search for the Mystical Body of Christ was so focused that he actually beheld in deeply personal ways the beautiful Church. His grasp of the reality of the Communion of Saints which we call Church gives us a glimpse of the beauty of the renewing of Humanity that God is bringing about in our world. From all eternity the love that is Father, Son and Spirit presses down urgently upon the earth. God is calling us with increasing urgency today. Humanity yearns like a restless youth for that love. A magnet sets off a reaction in iron filings, forming them into a coherent pattern. God’s love is the magnet, the Church is the pattern forming within jumbled humanity. We are being fashioned into the likeness of the Trinity of love which is God. The force we call magnetism is invisible, only detected by its effects. So the re-formation of humanity by the power of the Holy Spirit is only observable in its effects. People come alive, they change for the better, they find themselves being led into agreement and deep bonding with others, they work for unity with humbleness and life-long dedication. While they themselves are maturing, they experience in their hearts a surprisingly warm conviction that there is a supernatural connectedness of people. All this is gift – it is the Church, the divine economy.