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God delights in our love, proved by our devotion in prayer; but He delights in the charity in our hearts, when we freely choose to leave our devotions to attend to a neighbour, whether a person taken ill, or a husband arriving home and deserving a kind welcome.

Through Christ and His Church, we can avoid confusion, and avoid Hell. God longs for Catholic priests and Bishops to teach the simple truth, in ecumenical relationships as well as Church events: that God became man, founded one Church, which is still here, teaching the truth, forgiving sins, making people holy, and preparing them to lead holy lives and then to enter Heaven, to be with God, the Saints and the Angels forever.

Christ asks His friends to be brave in speaking the truth about God and goodness; but He also asks us to be prudent. We need not feel guilty about avoiding trouble and controversy when this is possible without cowardice. He Himself ran away or hid, to avoid death, when He had stirred up anger by His words, but when it was too early to fulfil His great plan.

Christ has ordained certain men to be as 'other Christs' amongst us, to guide and govern us. We are not wrong to speak with gentleness and truth about words publicly offered by a priest or Bishop which are heretical or foolish; but Christ is grieved when He sees His priests needlessly criticized for personal appearance or habits, or cruelly slandered.

Christ's saving work on earth was something that only He could do. As God-made-man, He enabled sinful human beings to know and love Him, and, through Him, the Father. We can neither free ourselves from our sins nor know, without Christ and His Revelation, exactly how to please the Father. Through His Spirit, given in Baptism, we receive power; and through His Church, in every age, Truth, to guide us.

If we are full of self-pity, no matter how justified it seems, we become inward-looking, focussed not upon Christ or our neighbour but our own feelings of misery. This is spiritually harmful - as if we are sitting on the edge of the Abyss, in danger of falling, not like those other suffering people who say: "I can't do much good, but I'll do the little I can" - on the way to Heaven.

A priest or Bishop who speaks only of generalities, year after year, when he meets with Protestant Ministers, is failing in his duty. To practice ecumenism does not mean never mentioning the glorious truth that Christ founded one united Church, upon Peter: a Church which exists today, with its door open, for everyone willing to come in and practice the Faith, guided by her sure teachings.

Most Catholics have heard the phrase, "The Real Presence"; but few have thought it through. Those who do so are aware the Almighty God, the Son of God, chooses to be Really Present in a special, sacramental way, in each of our Catholic churches! Those who know this kneel, bow, and adore Christ. Those who don't know, or don't care, chat and laugh as if in a pub or a cafe.

The Lord does not give great tasks to those unwilling to fulfil ordinary tasks. If people are not willing to look after their own relations - especially old parents, and young children - they are not going to be able to speak up with confidence, to other people, about the Christian life being a way of self-giving and charity.

Everyone receives a just judgement, at death. The Blessed Trinity, our God, is infinitely compassionate and merciful, but does not over-ride our freedom, by which we choose to follow the path to life, opened by Christ, or choose to walk away, to sin, and to end in the Abyss, in a disaster of our own making.

To be trapped in sinful ways, alienated from God, and helpless to bring about lasting change, is like being trapped on a rocky island, surrounded by a deep Abyss. Only if someone is parachuted in to save people there can they be helped to safety. And that is what Christ did, by coming to our world as God-made-man

Any wife ought to say what she believes is right, in conversation with her husband, but in obedience to Christ and the Apostles she ought always to speak with respect, and bearing in mind the fact that, in God's sight, her husband is the head of the household; and God wants her to honour him as the head, according to the tradition.

Jesus Christ is swift to console His friends in their heartache, pain or exhaustion. If we call out to Him in faith and humility, asking for the privilege of a spiritual Communion, He is very close to us, bringing peace that only He can give, and guiding us in our actions by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit.

Though we cannot see them, the other members of the Church, of Heaven and Purgatory, are united with us in praise of the Father, through Jesus Christ, at every Mass. We can take comfort from the truth, that we are already doing, on earth, in our prayer, what we hope to do in Eternity, when we are perfectly joyful in God's Presence.

Christ sees every tiny act of charity that we do for love of Him. He sees each one as being like a personal gift to Him - or like a rose-petal thrown by a child in His honour, where He is Present in the Most Blessed Sacrament, as the Sacred Host in carried along in a monstrance, by a priest, for the faithful to venerate and adore.

Christ wants us to avoid the ultimate disaster. Christ leads us by love, encouraging us to follow the Way to Heaven, helped by His guidelines and graces; but those who persist in disobedience and foolishness, ignoring His Commandments and decrees, or neglecting prayer, or corrupting others, or being irreverent towards His Sacred Ministers, or persisting, without repentance, in any grave sin, are allowed to follow their own paths. Alas, these lead to the great sewer which carries souls to Hell.

In giving us hundreds of beautiful, joyful, spiritual images, Christ wants us to know that He leads us by love, not by threats of punishment; yet for a full catechesis (as shown in the recent few dozen paintings of the Radiant Light series) there must also be serious mention of death, Hell and Satan, to show the Eternal consequences of unrepented grave sin and the loss of God, in ways people can understand.

Christ loves and honours His beloved Mother Mary. He wants us to love and honour her, and to give her special honour in and through the Church. He delights in seeing Popes and Bishops set an example in this, by their sincere prayers and other acts of devotion at Marian shrines, and before images of Our Blessed Lady.

In the Father's sight, it is tragic that many Christians refuse to honour the Virgin Mother of their Saviour. How can they imagine that the perfect son of a perfect mother does not love her, does not honour her, and does not want all His friends to honour her, too? These Christians find out the truth when they die, and lament their previous blindness.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is dear to God the Father. Christ, Son of God and of Mary, loves His Mother and wants her to be loved and honoured. It is tragic, in His sight, that some Christians refuse to honour her. They discover, in Purgatory, the truth about their neglect of her, and they bewail the blindness of their earthly lives.