Yesterday morning, Clare and I attended the blessing of the Royal British Legion Garden of Remembrance at Saint John's, sitting in the congregation for the first time. As I'm still Chaplain of the Cardiff and Vale branch of the Legion, it gave me a good opportunity to connect with many members who were present for the ceremony. Most of those present were as old if not older than I, and maybe for that reason alone they seemed pleased to see a familiar face there with them the usual place even if the service was being taken by a newcomer to them. RBL members ask very little of their Chaplain. While I was wondering what else I could offer to do Syd Nash, one of the event organisers approached me and asked if I'd help arrange a ceremony to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Legion next February in Llandaff Cathedral. That made me feel a lot better. I have a very high regard for all that the Legion does.
Afterwards, we lunched at Pipi's Greek restaurant in Caroline Street, with an authentic menu that'll take a few more visits to explore properly. I sipped my first proper Greek coffee since we holidayed in Corfu five years ago, awakening memories that go back four decades. Mediterranean food and places have figured greatly in our days of adventure throughout our married life together. We then made an effort to get started early with Christmas present shopping in John Lewis', but it was so crowded we soon ran out of energy and headed for home, to an evening without sermon preparation for a change. Tomorrow we go to St John's to listen to one of my tutor group students preach her first sermon.
I took advantage and stayed up late to watch the first two thirds of 'Vengeance' a popular cult movie about the overthrow of a nazi style dictatorship in Britain, which first featured the now ubiquitous-at-protest-events Guy Fawkes mask. I'd seen the last third of it before and made little sense of its end, so seeing the beginning was a reasonable effort to make on an idle evening. It resembles other movies, like Superman, Batman and Spiderman, deriving inspiration from strip cartoon novels, embodying narrative in which much is unexplained, so everything is barely credible or only just adds up. Storylines consist of an elementary argument forged from untested generalisation. The Guy Fawkes mask has become a trendy symbol for protests against the dominant western world social and economic order. It just doesn't add up to my mind. It's a triumph of style over substance for a media image obsessed generation. The season of Remembrance-tide always reminds us of how complex as well as costly the struggle for freedom and democracy will always be.
“My Father is at work until now, so I am at work”
ReplyDelete(John 5:17)
“I bless you my children! Today I wish to speak to you about God’s work in these times and about the general picture in which your life and your mission is inserted.
“Try to understand, above all, that you did not happen to be in the reality in which you are by accident, but you are here because of a precise divine project. Whatever you might think about yourselves or others might think about you, know that your life is precious and irreplaceable in the time and place in which you find yourselves to be, according to God’s projects. You have been preordained for this reality, and for this reason God gave you irreplaceable and original potentialities. No one in the universe is equal to you, because God’s creativity is unlimited and inexhaustable, and because each one of you is absolutely unique in his being and in his way of acting.
“Unfortunatly, many on Earth live below their potentiality, because they do not make of themselves a gift to Me. I am the only One to know pefectly the Father’s project for each one of you, because from Him I received the order to bring to completion His work in every person. I am acting in you by the power of the Holy Spirit, who enlightens you, cloaks you, constantly inspires you pointing out the avenue towards Me, so that I might reveal to you the Will of the Father for each one of you.
Without me you shall never truly be able to know yourselves, nor to be able to understand what is asked of you to do in this life.
“The Holy Spirit and I are constantely at work in order to realize the Father’s project in each one of you, but we can do this only with the help of your freedom, that is, only when you willingly and freely choose to love and serve God and you offer to Him your life. This is the indispensable condition so that your potentialities activate and are at work. In fact, by the moment you decide to live for God and to be totally abandoned to His will, within you the action of the Holy Trinity starts working, and little by little, transforms your life and your thoughts. Thus, you are beginning to become conscious of who you are in God and to make a mark on reality, a creative mark, because it is divine creativity working in you. I wish you to be conscious about what I am saying to you, because the knowledge that God is active in you, independently from your human limitations and frailties, is determinant for your mission in the time in which you live.
“Yours is a grand time and a difficult time for the entire universe. Grandiose for the power of the events that the hand of God is preparing, and difficult because it is a time of battle with the powers of evil, an always more open battle.
All this does not refer to the planet earth alone, but to the entire creation and all the people who inhabit many other planets. I have already told you that they are children of God as you are, and that I gave My life for them as well. They are your brothers in whom the project of My Father has to be perfectly accomplished, just as it is in yours.
“What is the project of the Father? To bring back the entire creation to the state of integrity and perfection it had before original sin; to bring back every person to the dignity and glory of a child of God. All men and every creature that exists in the universe must be made free from corruption and death which infiltrated themselves in the work of God because of the sin of your forefathers. Humanity must return to a correct relationship with God, by recognizing His authority and by submitting to His guide. How is the Father going to realize this project? By recapitulating all creation in Me, since He gave Me all power in the whole universe.
www.versolanuovacreazione.it Stefania Caterina
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