“It gets to the point that in John’s Gospel ones whole relationship to Jesus becomes internal & purely spiritual. Jesus has been celebrated in formal language according to the religious styles of every age, & sacred spaces & churches have been built for him. But the only thing that matters is the immediacy of the heart, a feeling of pure love. Then what Jesus was & said is not past but present, & everything speaks to us from deep within. What he said becomes our dearest possession, what he was is our own life, & then one cannot speak of Jesus as a historical person , but as a power that floods us, utterly invisible but strong as the air we breathe & the light whose warmth we feel & the twinkling of the stars that lights us in the darkness. “Spirit” is the word we use for this, because we have no other. We can describe it as a strong feeling that we can totally & deeply sense & see what it is that makes us alive. Jesus promises us that he will give his Spirit to those who love him, & the Spirit will lead us to all truth. The world will not understand, but we will comprehend that we are not being left orphans. We will be close to the power to which we owe our being (God) & it is in an intimate relationship in which we sense how right Jesus was when he called on us to trust in nothing but love. Jesus was in God, & we will sense this to the extent that we ourselves enter into the person of Jesus of Nazareth & abide in him. We will also sense that he forms & penetrates our very lives. We only need to understand a little of Jesus’s message to know that all the old conflicts, eruptions, renewals, struggles & triumphs, anxieties & victories will return. It is like grasping a fish net with our hands & pulling it out of the water. No matter where we take hold, we will draw the whole net after us. It is the same with Jesus’s message. No matter where your life comes into contact with him, you will be lead into the whole truth. Something of his spirit will be alive in you, & you will sense that he was from God to the extent that he acquires reality within you. There really is such a miracle; that one human being can be for another something like the living Christ, & embody a power that is stronger than death & transcends despair. If you ask how that can be, the answer is only this one impoverished word; love.” (The Open Tomb: Eugene Drewermann) Please continue to include in your prayers our six young disciples who celebrated their First Confession this weekend in preparation for their First Holy Communion on the Feast of Corpus Christi 3rd June 2018 at our 10am Mass. You are welcome to see the progression of their Saturday morning classes around the walls in the Parish Hall, prayer & work which is supplemented by the help & example fostered in their families at this fertile spiritual moment in their lives & by relationship in our lives. We are to hold our third Parish Forum this Sunday at 11.15am in the Parish Hall to take forward the fruits which have emerged from those who have participated in the last two recent Forums. We will be looking at a possible organisational structure of the life, liturgy, ministry & outreach of our Parish community, after which we hope a number of you will be prepared to take on some of the duties, responsibilities & consequential blessings of serving one another, as we seek to deepen within & extend without. Our Nursery Unit at St Benedict’s Primary School began at Easter & is very much alive & flourishing. There are 3 Taster Sessions next month for those interested to see & taste, before registering your child for Sept 2018. Dates Tuesdays 5th, 12th, & 19th June 1.30pm to 2.30pm. Email ac@st-benedicts.n-yorks.sch.uk or telephone 788340 With love & prayers, Fr Bede.