18/02/2024

First Sunday of Lent

" Repent and believe the Good News"

Repent – change the way you think. From being a pessimist become an optimist. Change from having a negative to a positive mind set. From imagining that we are alone in the Universe to realising that God is Emmanuel, with us.

The Good, the great News, is that God is with us. Emmanuel. We are invited to live in the Kingdom of God; here and now as well as after our death in divine eternity.

Concentrate on the local positivity rather than the global negativity, the conflicts in so many places - Middle East, Ukraine, Sudan, to identify but three - and the threat of fresh horrors.

However, bear in mind, that out of horrors good things can come. It was The Great War – 1914-18 – that enabled women to be seen as far more competent than previously imagined by men - and thus be able to be elected to the House of Common on 21 November 1918: and in 1928 Women received the vote on the same terms as men (over the age of 21).

Thanks to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USA came into the war and  Corporal Hitler declared war on the USA. Eminent example of inevitable, eventual self-destruction. Thanks to that, here I am in the UK.

 Thanks to my vocation, I am in close contact with many beautiful families where there is - as well as illness and the Effects of old age - a real sense of unity and mutual uplift.

Even here, the Klatsche - the coffees and teas and orange juice with the friendships clearly felt - is heart-warming and life enhancing.

So, after you hear, view or read the national and international news, pause, thank God for your friends, they are a part of The Good News.

In them God is Incarnated and through them – and without them - helps you. He certainly helps me.