About believing in God as much as in love

I find it hard, in some ways, to use the term 'believing' in connection with God because the 'idea' of God as the creator of all that exists, has always seemed to me to be totally self-evident. If I were to try to explain my awareness of the reality of God, I would say that it is similar to my awareness of the reality of love.

Love, however, is as hard to define and as mysterious as is the 'concept' of God. I believe in love because I have experienced being loved and feeling love, for family and friends; for nature too, and music, poetry and art, in all its many aspects.

Love, in its many forms, can "move mountains" and melt hearts of stone. I have looked at my young children and almost felt something leave me and reach out and attach itself to them in a tangible bond.

It is this love which seems to me to be the absolute manifestation of the love of God. This love is that which I see as powering the universe, from the heartbeat of the atom to the explosive power of the stars. I feel this love as I feel the warmth of the sun, and I see God in everything as I see by the light of the sun.

Non-believers will give utilitarian causes for the existence of everything and some even believe that love is a result of self-interest, another aspect of evolution, and that may even be partly true. I wouldn't profess to know all the secrets of that wondrous process.

However, nothing can explain to me the concept that this all started from nothing. To quote Shakespeare and The Sound of Music, as I have before in some post or other, ''Nothing comes from Nothing.''

About the name changing of Holy Communion

Throughout my life as a practicing Catholic, I have spoken of 'going to church' as 'going to Mass' but in recent years we frequently hear it referred to as 'The Eucharist.' It has been explained many times that this is the Greek word for thanksgiving but the Mass is much more than thanksgiving. surely.

More specifically, it is Holy Communion, as many of us have always known it, that is now termed The Eucharist. To me, the term Holy Communion is the nearest expression of the miracle and wonder of receiving the life of Jesus within us.

Jesus is the 'Holy One' as we say in the Gloria, he is in communion with us and we with him. What could be more precious than that and what expresses it more closely than Holy Communion? And as we adore him when he is held aloft before our very eyes, what expresses his presence more closely than The Blessed Sacrament, the outward sign of the inner divinity of God?

For me, nothing.

About sitting in a different place in church

One morning, at the funeral of a very respected parishioner, I found myself having to sit on the back row of the right-hand side of the very full church whereas we generally sit on the third or fourth row of that same side.

Now please don't take this the wrong way. It isn't that we have an invisible nameplate on 'our' bench. If someone else should be occupying it when we arrive, we just accommodate ourselves happily elsewhere.

However, it is a recognisable fact that most regular church-goers tend to sit in the same place each week. Perhaps it is just human nature. As I viewed our church from this different perspective, I became aware of, or rather 'saw' everything in the church in a way that I wouldn't have done from my usual position.

I think it just brought into my mind a recognition that so much of what we do in everyday life is done on auto-pilot and perhaps it's a good idea to sometimes  'sit somewhere else,' figuratively speaking, just to see what we may have lost sight of.

About Jesus after the Resurrection

Why could it be, do we think, that Jesus only appeared to his friends after the Resurrection? He could have chosen to go straight to heaven to be reunited within the Trinity but no, he chose to stay with his friends, to comfort and reassure and then, to encourage and strengthen them for the task ahead.

He could have appeared to non-believers who might (and only might) have thought that, as he had died, and was now alive, they should believe in him. Those who hated him might have tried to kill him again and found out that he was now immortal, and had no choice but to believe in him!

No - they had had their chance, freely - without tricks or magic - to accept Jesus for who he was. For Jesus, his mother and his beloved disciples, those forty days must have been a time of utter peace and joy, a union of love.

About hoping and/or trusting

Over the years, hope has been a concept with which I have struggled. In the general sense, "I hope the weather will be good for our picnic tomorrow" or "I'm hoping for good results in whatever..." are straightforward examples which I can comprehend.

In the first instance, we have no control over the situation so 'hoping' seems natural. In the second, sometimes we might have an input, eg, if the hope is for good results in an exam, then how much revision was done is a key factor, which would mean that hope alone would be a somewhat 'vain hope'.

In the case of a health test perhaps, in some cases, no action of ours would have any impact so hope is a natural response, whereas there can be situations where our life-styles have an effect on results so maybe hope plus effort is to be 'hoped for.''

In the religious context, however, it is given a very high importance. Faith, hope and charity are, after all, entitled 'the three key gifts of grace' or theological virtues, to give them their more formal title.
Perhaps it is because I have always had absolute conviction that, whether in this life or the next, "All will be well," that I don't seem to worry about the ultimate future because there seems no need.

This might sound complacent but I don't mean it to be. I believe we all have to try as hard as we can to be good people in whatever circumstances life places us but, on the whole, I live fairly happily in the present, with my life, if not always with myself. And as for that, I have complete trust that, in the end God will sort me out and take me home.