Advent – 1st Week Thursday
4th December 2025
Gospel (Matthew 7:21,24-27) ?
A careful person will immediately notice something missing from the Gospel passage used in today’s liturgy: verses 22 and 23 have been omitted. Let’s put them in.
It is not those who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven.
When the day comes many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, work many miracles in your name?”
Then I shall tell them to their faces: I have never known you; away from me, all evil doers!”
Therefore, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock. [Matt 7:21-24]
‘Evil doers’ is translated elsewhere as ‘you who practice lawlessness’. The original Greek is ‘those working contrary to the law’, and any act contrary to the Law of God is sin, and therefore evil. This understanding relies on your closeness to God; the closer you are, the more gravely you consider sin of any kind, and seek to avoid anything that goes against doing the will of our Father. For though we listen to these words of Jesus, do we go beyond a mere acknowledgement that there is wisdom in them? Do we actually act and put them into practice. Do we make them more than just nice words of wisdom? Are they the law by which we live our lives?
Well, surely the sheep cannot be criticised if even the shepherds of the Church fail to live the true Gospel nowadays? Woe to those shepherds, and I have seen so many of them, who offer only lip service to God. Woe to those who carry out routine duties going through the motions while their spirit is far from God. For what am I even here in the Abbey if I rise at 3.45am every day and sing the psalms, if the words coming out of my mouth are not rising from a spirit seeking always to know, love and serve Jesus? In vain is my early rising, for the Lord pours his blessings on those who love him, even while they sleep.
Maybe the verses were omitted from today’s liturgy because it casts the clergy in a bad light. A priest living a holy life brings many souls to God. A priest who is sexually impure (especially with other men or children) or is a heretic unfaithful to the Doctrine, abandons the flock or leads them to follow Satan in his sin. Scripture prophesied that the abomination of desolation will affect the priesthood, leading many to apostasy (to embrace the doctrines of hell) in anticipation of the arrival of the Antichrist. We seem to have entered something similar these past fifty years. The end of all this is deicide: to kill belief in the one true God, Jesus Christ.
Priests need to be more than superficial Pharisees. They must be like angels: messengers and servants of God working tirelessly and selflessly as intermediaries between God and man. Yet, more than angels, for only priests can perform the miracle of the Mass.
If the priest is sinful do not worry. The Mass and the sacraments are still valid. For the very fact of the holy sacrament of their ordination makes them Christ in that moment. They still prophesy in the liturgy, drive out demons through the sacraments, and work the miracle of the Mass. So do not judge them. Leave them to God. Pray for them, that they become what they are supposed to be: Christ to others. If they refuse, Jesus will tell them to their face: ‘I have never known you; away from me’.
Advent – 1st Week Wednesday
03/12/2025
Reading (Isaiah 25:6-10)
On this mountain,
the Lord of hosts will prepare for all peoples
a banquet of rich food, a banquet of fine wines,
of food rich and juicy, of fine strained wines.
Psalm 22(23)
You have prepared a banquet for me
in the sight of my foes.
Gospel (Matthew 15:29-37)
Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I feel sorry for all these people; they have been with me for three days now and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them off hungry, they might collapse on the way.’ … He instructed the crowd to sit down on the ground, and he took the seven loaves and the fish, and he gave thanks and broke them and handed them to the disciples, who gave them to the crowds. They all ate as much as they wanted, and they collected what was left of the scraps, seven baskets full.
Feasting, especially on good food and wine, has been a particular pleasure of mine. Yet wine dulls the mind, and food slows the body. Feeding the flesh (and its sensual delight in comfort and pleasure) starves and weakens the spirit. Of this I am certain. I would gauge that about 95% of what we eat is purely for pleasure, and thus, Gluttony. The body therein becomes even more susceptible to Sloth (laziness), especially a laziness in regards to the things of the spirit; like time and effort dedicated to prayer, spiritual reading and Church (instead of TV or other distractions and forms of entertainment). And soon we pass all too easily into the full worship of the body, both our own and those of others, in the third sin of the body: Lust.
However, being greedy for food and drink is not the sin of Greed, which I do not hold as a sin of the body but of the spirit (along with Pride, Anger and Envy). Greed is a lack of generosity that will not share; a looking after number one and one’s own personal interests, finances and possessions that gives little or nothing to the other. Greed is a disease rampant in today’s world, driven by materialism and consumerism. And this greed has branched out into destroying this great period of Advent and the celebration of Our Lord’s Nativity, turning it into a festival of brightly decorated trees, wrapped presents, the false personage of Santa Claus, and a Gluttony of food and drink.
Fasting and penance are practices which the modern world and, it pains me to say, some in the modern Church, have belittled or ignored. And yet, the crowd in the Gospel were with Jesus three days, praying and fasting, as they waited to be healed. And when Jesus fed them it was with bread and fish – the basic food of the poor at that time in Israel. The Lord’s feasting on rich food and fine wines in Scripture, has always been understood as food and drink for the soul and spirit; in particular, the allegory of the vine producing good fruit (grapes) used to produce the best wine, kept till last.
If you intend to feast this Christmas, I suggest you steer clear of gluttony by balancing your feast with prayer and charity. Find a way of giving generously (the same amount you spend on yourself and your family this Christmas) and when you sit down on Christmas day, set a place for Jesus and raise a toast in his honour.
Advent – Week 1 Tuesday
2nd Dec 2025
Reading (Isaiah 11:1-10)
On him the spirit of the Lord rests,
a spirit of wisdom and understanding [not ‘insight’]
a spirit of counsel and power,
a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
The fear of the Lord is his spirit [not ‘breath’].
Here we have the four ascending levels: knowledge – understanding – fear of the Lord – wisdom. In Latin ‘knowledge’, the lowest level, is scienza, science. It is this knowledge that brought about the fall of humanity. For humanity did not fall by grasping at a higher form of knowledge, believing the lies of Satan that it would make them as gods. No; they turned away from the higher wisdom in which they already lived to grasp at the basic science of things. Such scientific knowledge is determined ‘good or evil’ by two factors: how you attain such knowledge, and what you will do with that knowledge when you have grasped it. Consider the ‘evolution of the ape’ scene from Kubrick’s 2001, A Space Odyssey. The ape swings the heavy thigh bone and realises it crushes the skull bone; and so the ape uses it as a weapon to kill. Today the base scientists rebuke and disparage higher forms of knowledge because they quite simply fail to grasp them, preferring to idolise and make a god of their own inferior science. They truly lack ‘counsel’, which in Hebrew means ‘design’ and ‘purpose’. They have no understanding, hence they lack the fear of God, and the wisdom that comes from the true encounter of a created soul with its Creator God.
Gospel (Luke 10:21-24)
Filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, Jesus said:
‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to infants [not ‘mere children’]. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do.’
Infants have no scientific knowledge. They learn through relationship and interaction. They do not question the existence, identity, role or authority of their parents. They learn base scientific knowledge, yes; but more than that. They learn to understand and grow in wisdom. If scientists were true to their modus operandi, they would experiment, and draw conclusions only from the unprejudiced results of their experiments with God. But though it is possible to study God using only the intellect, this is a restrictive approach, for our spirit has three faculties made in God’s image: intellect, heart and will. And so there should be a whole interaction with God and with his Word as a living person and as recorded in Scripture, which is also the Word of God. In my twenties I began to study the Scriptures in great depth, even learning Hebrew and Greek to better understand words like Wisdom and Knowledge. But as a child I had listened to the Word of God with my heart. Read the Bible with an open mind of deep faith and a trusting heart of a loving child. It really happened and it is all true; so ponder these things in your heart, as Mary did, and ask your guardian angel to explain it to you, or the Holy Spirit to enlighten you. For although knowledge can be achieved through human effort, it is impossible for anyone to acquire understanding, fear of God and wisdom without the direct help of God, his angels and his saints. The church calls the highest experience as ‘infused knowledge’ placed directly within the heart and mind of the mystic. Sounds completely unattainable. It isn’t. Simply become an infant in your approach to God, and such things will be revealed to you.