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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. Gabriella 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. Gabriella 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.

For years I have heard spiritual guides saying that it is our wills that are crucial in the prayer of the heart. I have to admit that I have found it difficult to make sense of this, because it sounds like muscular Christianity which I have found inadequate. I imbibed a strong moralising religion as a child, which meant learning what was right and willing myself to do it – this was especially reinforced by the image of a fearsome God who was keeping the score. The result was a sense of failure combined with frequent resolutions to do better. I know that was not true religion, which is about relating to the God who is love. What I was practicing was a throwback to Old Testament keeping of the law. I think that is what Jesus was talking about when he described John the Baptist as the greatest man born of woman, but added ‘yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is’ . He said: ‘Since John the Baptist came, up to this present time, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence and the violent are taking it by storm’ . (Matthew 11, 11). Muscular Christianity with its stress on will power uses violence against self and even against others to take the kingdom of heaven by storm. So why do the greatest spiritual guides keep saying that the will is central? A clue lies in The Catechism of the Catholic Church’s chapter on prayer (2563). The explanation begins with the heart: “The heart is the dwelling-place where I live. According to the Semitic (Jewish) or Biblical expression, the heart is the place ‘to which I withdraw.’ The heart is our hidden centre, beyond the grasp of our reason and of other people; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully.” The Catechism’s explanation then shifts the focuses to the heart’s movement and actions beyond itself: “The heart if the place of decision , deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as images of God we live through relationship: it is the place of covenant” (my underlining). I find the words ‘decision’ and ‘choose’ more helpful than ‘will’. As I spend time in silent prayer seeking the face of God, with the conscious attempt to love him and be loved by him, it is the constant renewing of the decision and choice which gradually solidifies an attitude of love in my heart. Much of the time, there is no feeling or understanding of this living relationship, but, as time goes on, I am aware that that relationship is an attitude developing in my heart. That awareness rises up from my heart to my mind more and more throughout the day and night. It is like a catch of a tune springing up in the mind. But the word ‘will’ or 'will power' certainly describes the strength needed when there is temptation. I find that it is easy to resist temptation when I am aware of the Father’s love and Jesus’ closeness. It is when these are obscured that my will must operate most strongly. Usually it is not a matter of willing to do something, but rather a tenacious clinging on in the dark to the hand of God. That takes grit, in which I am often lacking, but as the relationship grows I expect my will to grow stronger. We might ask: what does temptation have to do with contemplation? Temptation is never far away from one who contemplates. The Evil One knows only too well what power for good flows from the lovers of God. He hates contemplation and tries to disrupt it whenever he can. Thankfully, God shields his lovers much of the time, but at others he permits us to be tempted. It is not that he is abandoning us then, but he is turning the Devils weapons back on his own head. Each time we overcome temptation with the help of God's grace, not only does the Devil weaken, but also our own inner self grows stronger. It is in that struggle, that we are tested and purified like gold in a furnace. When undergoing temptation it is important to remember four basic Catholic teachings. God will never allow us to be tempted beyond our strength. But often we will not appreciate what strength we have with the aid of God's grace until after struggle is over. All temptations eventually pass. Temptation is not sin. Sin is where we willingly indulge a temptation and welcome it into our souls. Then it restricts our capacity to experience God's love. In that state of deprivation we allow evil to become stronger in ourselves and the whole world. Temptations arise from virtues that are wounded and twisted. Anger, for instance, is a God-given power of our soul to remove evil with extraordinary force. When anger is diseased, that force is used to harm and hurt. The saints and spiritual teachers mean something much deeper than 'will power' when they are dealing with our wills. We shall consider that in Chapter 12. QUESTION How are you finding my thoughts on the prayer of the heart/contemplation? I am sure I only see a small part of this deepest activity of our spirit. Would you care to add something of your own thoughts and experience? Use the 'comment on this article' button below.

PANGE LINGUA In 1264, in response to growing demands, Pope Urban IV instituted the feast of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, Corpus Christi. He asked St Thomas Aquinas , one of the greatest thinkers that the Church has ever produced, to compose hymns to be sung on the feast. Today we still wonder at the gift of poetry that he displayed.  Among his hymns was ‘Ecce Panis Angelorum’ and ‘Pange Lingua’ which most of us are familiar with. If you do not know the Pange Lingua, you will probably know its last two verses, the Tantum Ergo, sung at Benediction. On this great feast of Corpus Christi, I take the liberty of offering my own translation of the Pange Lingua. Oh tongue of mine, sing of the Mystery of the glorious body and precious blood. This is the price paid to redeem the world. which the King pours it out upon the peoples from his generous breast, He was given to us, born to us from the immaculate Virgin. And, after living in our world and scattering the seed of his word, he climaxed his dwelling among us in this amazing way. In that greatest of suppers, celebrating with his friends, after they had eaten the Passover meal as laid down by the Old Law, from his own hands he gave himself as food to his twelve companions. The Word took our flesh; now he turns actual bread into his flesh. And (wine) is transformed into his actual blood. If our senses cannot perceive (the great Mystery), Sincere hearts are assured of it by the light of faith. Let your eyes gaze with wonder at this holy revelation of God. The Old Covenant with God is completed by this new intimacy. Let your faith perceive what your senses can not. Praise the Father, the Son and the Spirit! Do it with overflowing joy, and be blessed!

OH, THE RICHNESS!!! If you blink, you could miss some of the treasure poured out into our laps at this time. First, we are nearing the end of the Easter Season. Like Christmas, it is all too short. Personally, I am just getting into re-examining the Resurrection of Jesus – it is ending too soon! In recent years I have found myself concentrating on his passion and death, the central drama of human history, in which he fought and conquered evil. I have found such richness in the acclamation, “We proclaim his death”. I see my valiant and all-loving saviour routing, in his suffering heart, mind and body, the forces which entangle me and my world. What love! What courage! What hope! But this year it is the resurrection which is stunning me. I have been thinking a lot about the aversion of our modern minds to the whole idea of miracles. Mathematics and science base themselves on strict and unchanging laws in nature. Many philosophers today say that what seems to us to be a miracle will eventually be explained by the discovery of natural forces that we are presently unaware of. They say, if there is a God, he is primarily the law-giver, and therefore he is incapable of changing the laws that he has made. Even among ‘Christians’, there are some who say that one day we will discover the bones of Jesus somewhere in Palestine. But God is not primarily the law-giver. He is the Father who is the delight of his children. He can never be put into a box of human definition and will always surprise us. Through miraculous glimpses and disciplined formation he is re-forming us into his own likeness. On Easter morning, his Son really revived his own body as it slept in death. He not only came back to life he pulsated with the glorious new life of the new creation. I can’t get to the bottom of that – I need more time! Second, Pentecost comes quickly. There was such a supernatural commotion in Jerusalem that thousands of people flocked to the scene. What they saw was some deliriously joyful men celebrating with a big ' C' . The Holy Spirit of God, released into the world at Easter was bringing the Church to life. The Apostles are inspired, there was the miracle of everyone understanding them in their own language, and 3000 were baptised that day. I feel like spending more time here to think about God’s Spirit forming mankind into Church, bringing about the new creation here and now. I feel we only get time to remember what happened at the first Pentecost, and then are moved quickly on by the liturgy. But isn’t that desire to enter more into Pentecost as it is happening here and now precisely the work of ‘Ordinary Time’? Oh, I hope so. Third, we move onto Trinity The diet of the Liturgy seems too rich. God needed 2000 years to reveal to Israel the Mystery of the amazing love life of the three persons who are united as one God. There is no truth more deep or important. How can we just give it a day in the Liturgy?  But that very deepest reality, Trinity, is what every single day is about not just Trinity Sunday. It is where we have come from, where we are now and where we are going. It is the reality in which we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17: 28). Every day is meant to be a new stage in our exploration into the reality of our God-filled existence. A large part of the Liturgy, the big feasts, is revisiting the events of salvation, and reliving them to receive their message and know afresh the power of God. But an equally large part is just being in God and learning reality under his mighty hand. We do that by letting the Holy Spirit give us encounters with Jesus, who gradually incorporates us into himself and takes us to our Father. That is Trinity life here and now. Suddenly it’s Corpus Christi In the last paragraph I said that Jesus ‘incorporates’ us into himself in order to take us to our Father. What a surpassing mystery that he should actually do this physically when we eat his body and drink his blood! The Eucharist is the daily bread of Christians, the food for the journey. We call our last reception ‘Holy Viaticum’, the Latin for ‘food for the journey’. In that case the journey is from this world to the fully real world of the Trinity, where there will be no more days, only the eternal now, which we cannot even imagine. We only know it is eternal bliss and beautiful complete communion. The Mass is that point when millions of Christians throughout the world gather as one with all the saints of heaven and are given a foretaste of that glory which is to come. In its strength, we go out to fulfil the next stage of our task of drawing all creation into Jesus’ new life. Through repetition we learn. The great feasts we celebrate so closely together at this time, are like the headlines in a newspaper, which we scan, and later return to in order to familiarise ourselves with the details. They highlight in dazzling dramas, the everyday drama of ordinary life in Christ. It says a lot for God’s understanding of us that we spend year after year relearning so that day by day we can live more fully.

WHERE DOES EVIL COME FROM? The argument from reason that there is a good God. One of the great arguments for the existence of God is the way the world is so perfectly designed. Such detail and harmony working in such incredible complexity, could not just have happened on its own. There has to be an amazing mind at work creating it. This argument will move many people to believe in God and many will seek to know him. Then it is not a matter of reasoning yourself into a conviction that there is a God, but of actually relating to him. The argument is called reason; the relationship is called faith. The argument from reason that there cannot be a good God. But reason will often object: ‘then why is there so much violence and evil?’ The only answer we can offer is not one from reason but from faith. Those of us who believe the scriptures know that an event took place soon after the creation of humanity, whereby human beings chose to know evil as well as good. Put simply, our faith teaches us that evil is not God’s doing but our own. Reason will often argue; ‘even though there are terribly evil human beings, evil is so enormous and so clever, that there must be a mind greater than any human mind behind it’. Our faith informs us that there is indeed a spiritual being so powerful that he is the origin of all evil. He, the Devil, was the one who tempted the first human beings to let in the hideous reality of evil. The father of lies The Devil suffers from such enormous self-absorption that he deceives himself into convincing himself that he is like God, and he actually tries to be God. In dreaming that he is absolute goodness, be cuts himself off from the only being who is absolute goodness, and he hates goodness and hates God. But just as darkness cannot put out even a little candle flame, but must flee before it. He flees from God and concentrates on trying to corrupt God’s beautiful creation where humanity gives glory to God. He wants to own us The Devil is incapable of creating anything – only God can do that. His mode of operating is to twist and wound things that are good. He turns loving into lust, zeal into violence and caution into craven fear. Just as a skilful magician distracts us while he performs his tricks, the Devil is the deceiver par excellence. His object is to lead human beings into hell. That is not primarily a place, but a condition of mind and spirit. The Devil has enormous power to put deceptive thoughts into our minds. When a person gives in to his subtle deceptions he or she violates truth and goodness in themselves. Once that takes hold, he manoeuvres in subtle ways to lead them to consent ever more deeply to their own brokenness. Thus the inner awareness that we are good is eroded until we are filled with such hatred of ourselves that we cannot stand it and direct our hatred outwards at the world and ultimately at God the source of all good. Then, although the person may sustain an attractive persona for a while, they are fundamentally absorbed by evil. That is hell on earth. Does the Devil really exist? Despite the manifold evidence of supernaturally organised evil, his favourite deception in our day is to convince us that he does not actually exist. That works for a while in the good times, but leads to us being caught from behind by the mounting experience of evil. He tries to tell us that all evil comes from human sickness and brokenness, which we can’t help. But no human being could really desire and plot the hideous institutionalising of senseless destruction which we hear of daily in the media. It is the Devil who is the great orchestrator. What is the remedy? It is simple. The Devil has no power to harm us if we are clothed in Christ. We must concentrate our hearts and mind on Jesus. Like drivers on a darkened road when powerful headlight are approaching, we keep our eyes on the white line at the side of the road which is the true way onwards. The dazzling lights which try to dominate our senses will always pass. They are nothing more than smoke and mirrors. We keep our focus on Jesus, the Lord of abundant life. There is a difference between denying that there is a Devil and cultivating a habit of ignoring him because we are focused on Christ. If a child has a tantrum because he has decided that he does not like carrots, it is good to ignore his screams and protests and just carry on enjoying tasty carrots until he discovers his strop isn’t working. He will soon give up. The Devil always withdraws in the face of peaceful faith. Jesus never withdraws. He is with us always until time has run its course and all is lifted up into the glory of God.

SAINTS PETER AND PAUL The Papacy Just a month ago the world was gripped by the Funeral of one of the greatest popes of all time, Francis, and the rapid procedure of electing his successor, Pope Leo XIV. It all took place on the spot where St Peter was crucified and buried. At the end of this month, we celebrate St Peter along with St Paul, the other great apostle who was beheaded about the same time and is buried nearby. It is as the successor of St Peter and the teacher of St Paul that the Bishops of Rome base their claim to primacy among all other bishops. Catholics, the majority of Christians, totally believe that, and many of the rest somehow acknowledge it. We know and feel the special charism that the papacy is to the Church – and the world somehow also feels and acknowledges it. Now the latest Pope has been given to us.  His Coat of Arms Each new pope chooses his coat of arms, which is used officially throughout his reign. Here is a link to the Vatican News article which explains its symbolism.