12/05/2024

Seventh Sunday of Easter

“They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.”

Remember, in this context ‘world’ does not mean creation – which, at the start of Genesis, we are told is good – but as in the ‘devil, world and flesh’; the values, ambitions and life styles that separate us from God.

Where is your heart? What are your ambitions?

My ambition is to live with God in Paradise for all eternity by: 

1. Becoming more Christlike every week and thus patient, kind, generous, ready to excuse, to trust to hope and endure whatever comes.

2. Staying fit across my PIES – the physical, intellectual emotional and spiritual dimensions of my life - so as to help God make this world a better place – for as long as possible.

3.Being – and acting – like a good friend to my friends – the closest of which is Jesus Christ whose presence I sense in everyone. Hence way I celebrate mass and preach.

I may have told you how in the mid-70s while teaching a classroom of 14 year olds at Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School about ethics, morality and the way they should behave, a hand shot up, “It’s all right for you  farver, you get paid to be good.”

During the next break, I asked him why he blurted that sentence. He explained. His dad was a carpenter, his uncle ran a pub. It was clear what they got paid for. But for a priest? It made me think. That sentence etched itself into my memory.

As a priest I admit I am paid to be good. As I don’t get paid much, explains why I am not very good. (Pay me more, and I might get better!)