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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.

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.

HE NURTURED LAY FAITH GUIDES Within the life time of many of us a great saint lived on Malta, St George Preca (1880 - 1962). George was born in Valletta, Malta, growing up not far from the Carmelite Shrine there. At the age of four he nearly drowned in the Grand Harbour, but was rescued by a passing boatman. When his family later told the story, they would joke that he had been rescued from the waters, like Moses. George, recalling that the rescue had happened on the 16th July, feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, attributed his rescue to the protection of the same Lady. As a young man, George was enrolled in the Carmelite scapular and later joined the Third Order. Attracted to the service of the priesthood, George joined the diocesan seminary and was ordained a priest in 1906, inspired by a personal mission to convert the world. Early on, Father George (‘Dun Gorg’ in Maltese) noticed the lack of genuine faith education amongst the young people of Malta . Their religion was built around festivals and formalities, with little connection to their interior lives and a truer following of Jesus. His vision for something more and his lived integrity attracted a circle of young men around him who gathered for prayer, discussion and ultimately to work as lay missionaries in parishes and villages around Malta. His society was known as MUSEUM, which stood for Magister, Utinam Sequatur Evangelium Universus Mundus, or “Master, would that the whole world would follow the Gospel.” A society of laymen who would teach the catechism to the people while receiving instruction themselves was unheard of at the time, and it took twenty-five years and much tension with the Church authorities (including at one point the closure of the Society’s houses) before the Society’s existence was officially approved. It continued its work throughout World War II even in the places where members fled from the violence as refugees. Dun Gorg continued preaching and writing, drawing on the rich spiritual writings of Carmelites Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross, as well as, Elijah and Mary, his models as a Third Order Carmelite. He had a flair for making Carmelite thoughts, teachings and traditions clear and simple for working people. In 1951 Malta celebrated the Seventh Centenary of the Brown Scapular, with Father George at the forefront. In the same year the Carmelite Prior General, Killian Lynch, formally affiliated him to the Carmelite family. We gain an insight into his spirit when we learn that it was he who composed the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary in 1957. He died in 1962, and was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on 3 June 2007, being described as “Malta’s second father in faith” after St Paul. Today the Society has over a thousand members and is responsible for the teaching of some 20,000 young people in the Maltese islands, the UK, Australia, Peru, Albania, Kenya and the Sudan. Dun Gorg’s feast day is the 9th May. (Acknowledgement to Universalis for this information)