Our Relationship with God exists in the context of a single well-defined and structured Plan or Pattern or System devised by Him. This Document is, in essence, an attempt to say what that Pattern is.

There is a Plan or Pattern or System to our Relationship with God. God wants Us to relate to Him in accordance with His System or Plan - He wants Us to relate to Him in the One and Only way that He wants to relate to Us. Each one of Us is being asked by God to relate to Him, during this temporary transitional life, in the exact same way - His Way. We, for our part, have a responsibility to find out "what He has said" about Himself and about how He relates to Us and about how He wants Us to relate to Him. We cannot tailor or adapt or modify His Plan.

The "Necessary Mechanisms" of God’s Plan for a Relationship with Us Humans are referred to as The Holy Mass and The Seven Sacraments. Each one was created both in God’s Non-material, Eternal World (where they are free from the constraints of Time and Space) and, at the same time, in our material, time-bound Universe. They now continue to persist in God’s World but are not directly accessible to Us on an "individual" basis. They are, however, accessible to Us on a "collective" basis - as members of a particular Group, as part of a particular Society - through a particular organisation which God established. That organisation is The Catholic Church. The Holy Mass and the Seven Sacraments (the Necessary Mechanisms), which persist in God’s Eternal World, are accessible to Us through that organisation - through its Ordained Priests. The Ordained Priests of certain Orthodox Churches can also minister the Necessary Mechanisms to their members.

God's Plan for a Relationship with Us is neither a static thing which has always existed nor did it come into existence in its entirety from some point in time. It came into existence in parts or events over a very long period of time. Specific actions and events had to happen and they had to happen in a particular order to assemble and "activate" all of the components of the Plan. Examples are (a) the Creation of the Universe and (b) the taking on by God of Human Nature. All of these actions and events are "once-only" occurrences. God undertook most of these actions and events but some were undertaken by certain other persons. Some actions and events in Supernatural History have yet to happen.

Persisting in Time and Space. This sounds a bit "scientific". Are there suggestions Einstein? The answer is - "Yes! There are suggestions of Einstein!". But not quite! Einstein’s ideas about Time and Space relate solely to the mechanics of this material Universe. For Christians, specific things which God wants to exist to all Time and Space are caused by Him to exist or persist solely in His Own Eternal World. However, He has also provided the "necessary mechanisms" whereby We can gain access to the "Eternal Things" through, and only through, the ministering of His Ordained Priests of the Catholic Church and of certain Orthodox Christian Churches.

I use the expression "what He has said" quite deliberately because nothing in the Universe gives Us information about God and nothing "proves" to Us that God exists. Things that we observe might seem to "suggest" the existence of a God, or Gods, but never "prove" it. They may, however, re-inforce the beliefs of a believer. Even if something did provide proof, there is nothing that would tell Us anything specific about God and about how He wants to relate to Us, if at all. For Us to know specific things about God and about how He wants to relate to Us, He would have to tell Us. This He did through a very small number of people of the Jewish religion. Christians use the expression "Divine Revelation" to refer to what God has told Us. But why the Secrecy? I will explain later why God has a need for secrecy about Himself for the Plan to work.

- The Fact of God

- That God is as Christians say He is

- That God wants to relate to Us Humans

- How God wants to relate to Us - His Way

- What God had to do to facilitate that Relationship

- What certain other persons did (freely) to facilitate that Relationship

- What We must do to avail of that Relationship

1. Only One God exists. God alone was not "created". God created everything else.

2. In this One God, Three Persons exist. But how can this be so?

The main statement that can be made about our One and Only God is that He is a Good and Loving God. He is a Nice God. Even the statement that He is Infinitely Powerful is as if nothing compared to this fact.

God's Infinitely Loving Nature causes Him to be disaggregated into more than one Person so that there is within Himself both Lover and Loved. There are Two Persons who are to each other both Lover and Loved. Specific events which have occurred in the last four thousand years have caused us to identify these as Father and Son (explained later).

All characteristics and powers which these Two Persons in God have in common have been divested from Them to a Third Person. We identify this Third Person by the name ‘The Holy Spirit’ - a name which greatly understates the most powerful Person in existence. We shall refer to these Three Persons in God as The Divine Trinity.

The characteristics and powers so divested to the Holy Spirit are not taken away from The Father and The Son. Whereas The Three Persons in God may be separate and different Persons, they are not substantially separate and different. Between Them They have only One Will - God’s Will. Any action of the Holy Spirit emanates from All Three Persons - emanates from God.

3. God is the Creator of everything that exists, except Himself. In particular, God is the Creator of All Intelligent Life. He has created only two types of intelligent beings capable of knowing Him for what He is - namely, knowing that He is God, the Supreme Being and Creator of Everything. His sole objective in creating everything was to bring these two types of beings into existence and every created thing that exists has some purpose in relation to them.

In a first Creation He created intelligent spirit beings, to whom we give the name Angels, in a created place which we call Heaven. In a second Creation He created us Human Beings in this created material Universe. Everything else created by God has a reason for existence which is directly and solely related to the existence of Angels and Humans.

4. The creation of Heaven and the Universe were among the earliest events in Supernatural History. The creation of all Angels and that of the first Humans were also very early events in Supernatural History.

5. Both Angels and Humans had to go through a temporary period of free choice immediately after their creation during which We (Angels and Humans) had to choose freely, individually and personally, to relate to or not to relate to God in the One and Only Way that He has enabled Us to. God has provided Us with no valid capability whatever for creating our own plans or ways of relating to Him. Any other way is false and ineffectual.

For all Angels, their temporary period of free choice was fully completed before God created any of Us Humans. Those who chose God remained in Heaven with Him; those who rejected the Relationship which He asked of them were removed to another place to which we give the name Hell.

We Humans are in our temporary period of choosing while we are alive in this Universe. This fact is central to everything that Christians believe. After this life, we will ultimately go to either Heaven or Hell, depending on the Choice we make. Life for Us in this Universe is a temporary transitional life.

The sole reason for the creation of this material Universe is to be a place for each one of Us Humans to come into existence and to live our temporary transitional life of free choice.

6. God’s attitude to His created beings, Angels and Humans, is one of infinite pleasantness and love. He expects the same loving attitude from Us towards Him in return. He also expects Us, Angels and Humans, to relate to each other in the same pleasant and loving way.

In fact, God and Angels and Humans are, together, regarded by God as a Single Society of Intelligent Beings. God wishes this to be a Single Divine Society. But we Angels and Humans, who are not intrinsically Divine, have to opt in to the Divine Nature of the Single Divine Society; and it is Divine Nature that is on offer to Us. This is what God is offering and what He is asking Us to choose during our temporary transitional lives - Angels in Heaven and Us Humans in this material Universe.

7. Every living thing in our Universe has both a material aspect of its being, such as our bodies, and a spiritual aspect, referred to as "Soul". The soul is created by God at the moment that God recognises the living thing for what it is. This He does for each one of Us Humans at the instant of our Conception and, thus, before implantation in our mother’s womb.

It is not NATURAL for any living thing in the Universe to have an Immortal Soul, and this includes Us. Body and Soul are two aspects of a single, indivisible entity. When the body of a living thing dies, so also does its Soul.

However, the souls of all Humans are, in fact, immortal. The survival of our Souls after Death, the keeping open of our Accounts, is a Gratuitous SUPERNATURAL Gift from God. They will never die because we are the subjects of God's Plan to create beings like Himself, and He is immortal. Each human person's body will die as does every living thing in this Universe, but will be raised from the dead or, more precisely, our immortal Souls will be re-embodied by God at a time of His choosing, and then we will live, Body and Soul, infinitely long lives from that point onwards. For better or for worse, God will never cease His recognition of any one of Us.

8. Why do we exist? Why did God create Us? The reason for our existence is that God wanted to create beings (friends) exactly like Himself - even Divine like Himself - and we are those friends. But we can not be separate Divinities from Himself. Instead, He would offer to each one of Us a Personal Share in His Own Divinity. As I will also explain later, our Personal Share is a Share in the Divinity of the Second Person in God - referred to as God the Son.

A Personal Share in the Divinity of the Second Person in God exists for every Human Being whether they have accepted or chosen It or not, and It has always existed because God has always existed. This latter fact, that It has always existed, is very important. It is not a created thing.

9. The Holy Spirit, the Third Person in God (to Whom all Divine Power has been devolved), will give each of Us our Personal Share in the Divinity of the Second Person in God if we Freely Choose It in a prescribed ceremony known as a Sacrament.

10. In the most general terms, there are Four Choices to be made and to be lived during this temporary transitional life -

God asks Us to relate to Him by living these four choices. Unless we try, as best we can, to do these four things while we are here in this Universe living our temporary transitional life, then we would be an unacceptable and inharmonious instability in God's Divinity when we are in our final life after death and we would be incapable of joining Him in Heaven as He would like.

11. Most of Us Sharers in the Divinity of the Second Person in God will not be fully acceptable at the time we die. It is virtually impossible. We have to achieve absolute and infinite perfection to be able to exist in Heaven in the presence of God. To cater for those of Us who have made a good effort, but not quite good enough, there is a second temporary transitional life in a place we have named Purgatory.

We do not know, in detail, how this second temporary transitional life works to complete our Perfection. Its purpose is to allow Us to complete the perfection of ourselves. It is probably a good idea not to leave ourselves too much to do in Purgatory. Achieving Perfection is needed to join God in Heaven. Achieving Perfection is easier and quicker while here in this Universe. But there are no "Choices" to be made in Purgatory (it is too late for that). However, Time exists in Purgatory and we will be very conscious of it. Our experience in Purgatory will be very boring and will not be pleasant. This experience is commonly referred to as Temporal Punishment. Punishment is an appropriate word because it is our faults, failures and misdeeds which will cause the "need for" Us to go there.

For most of Us, when we leave this temporary transitional life we will have deficiencies in how we lived up to what is expected by God of a Sharer in the Divinity of the Second Person in God. These deficiencies will be in the areas of the four "free choices" and include the areas of personal virtues.

Remedying these deficiencies in Purgatory will not be a pleasant experience. Do as much as you can to Achieve Perfection while living this first temporary transitional life. Do what you can to avoid the "need for" Temporal Punishment and, failing that, do what you can to get it over with here in this easier temporary transitional life.

12. A Christian is a person who has a Share in the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

The following is an outline of how God brought it about that We can obtain Shares in the Divinity of Jesus Christ. Jesus IS the Second Person in God. The Second Person in God became a human person. Let me explain. As I have already said, God has within Him three distinct Persons called Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I refer to them as the Divine Trinity. The Person of the Son became Incarnated, was Conceived, as a Human Being (i.e. with a physical, mortal body like ours) in this Universe about two thousand years ago, and He was given the name Jesus. He was born of a human mother named Mary; the Person of the Father in God was His Father; the Conception and Incarnation of the Person of the Son as Jesus was, like everything that God does, achieved through the divested power of the Holy Spirit. (God only ever acts in this Universe through the Person of the Holy Spirit to Whom all creative power has been divested).

The Incarnate Son, now Jesus, combines within Him both Divine and Human Nature in such a complete and inseparable way that a totally new nature exists for which we have no separate word. I will call this new nature God/Human because I cannot think of a suitable word for it that will be easily and quickly understood by everybody. Every Christian also has the nature of God/Human.

A Christian is a person who shares in the new nature of God/Human after "freely choosing", and after being given by God, a Share in the Divinity of the Incarnate Divine Son, Jesus, in an event called the Sacrament of Baptism. The Conception, or Incarnation, of Jesus is the most important event in the Supernatural History of God and Us. This section is the central or pivotal section in this Document.

Sharing in the Divinity of God, Jesus, is God's Objective for every Human Person and not just some. God is not just the God of Christians, He is the God of all Humans, and He is the God of all Angels.

13. But our Personal Shares are not "individual Shares". Because it is the same Jesus from Whom all Christians have their Personal Share of Divine Nature, then there is a real concrete unity between them all in the Person of Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God. They are said to be, with Jesus, the Mystical Body of Christ. This includes all Baptised Christians, alive and dead and all people who will become Christians in the future, including persons not yet even conceived.

This unity between Us in the Mystical Body has a parallel in the fact that Humans are social beings whose wellbeing depends on being active and pleasant members of Society.

None of Us can approach God completely alone except in exceptional circumstances. If and when we do want to approach God alone, we must anticipate future "collective" contact with God with others present.

14. When a person receives their Share in the Divinity of Jesus by being Baptised, they become integrated into the Divine Trinity, but not fully. Two out of three things happen - we enter into Personal Relationships with Jesus, as His brother or sister, and with the Father, as His son or daughter. This is referred to as our Supernatural Adoption. But we do not enter into a fully activated Relationship with the Holy Spirit.

15. We enter into a fully activated Relationship with the Holy Spirit in a further event called the Sacrament of Confirmation. The Sacrament of Confirmation is a "follow-up" to the Sacrament of Baptism. As will be seen, it could be said to "complete" Baptism.

As is the case with Baptism, we "choose" whether or not to be Confirmed.

Through the Sacrament of Confirmation the Relationship with the Holy Spirit (of a Sharer in the Divinity of Jesus) is "awakened" or "activated". Confirmation attaches to the Confirmed Person access to the powers of the Holy Spirit and also the privileges and the benefits which will help them to undertake the two great practical responsibilities which are parts of the central rôle of each adult Christian - namely -

This is because God's Will and Love and Power and all other attributes which are common to both the Father and Jesus exist in, are divested to, the Holy Spirit.

By way of emphasis, I am re-stating that it is from when a Christian is Confirmed that they have access to, if they choose (as they should) to avail of it, everything that God wants each one of Us to have to enable Us to be His Messenger to all other people.

16. The story of the Life of Jesus (The Second Person in God) begins before the Creation of the Universe. Before the Creation of the Universe there was just God. There are Three Persons in this One God - Lover, Loved and the Holder of All Divine Power.

Scientists tell Us that the Universe started its existence from a single point in Space in what they refer to as The Big Bang. This, they tell Us, happened about 13 to 14 billion years ago. Everything in the Universe is now spreading out from that single point.

This theory, or fact, is very helpful to those of Us who believe that God created this material Universe. It provides a spectacular image of the moment of Creation.

17. What was the purpose of the Creation of the Material Universe? God created the Universe solely as a place (i) for Us Humans to come into existence to live our temporary transitional lives and (ii) for The Second Person in God to be Incarnated as a Human Person to provide the mechanisms whereby All Human Persons could obtain and keep alive Shares in His Divinity.

God's Creation of Heaven and of Angels appears to have been a separate process. But their lives and our lives are deeply intertwined. Nothing happens in our Relationship with God without an Angel or Angels being involved.

Life generally, and Human Life in particular, can evolve out of matter if suitable physical conditions exist. God created matter with the basic physical and chemical properties that We are familar with. But He has also given matter less easily observable "super-properties" by which, under suitable conditions, simple life forms can come into being from chemical substances based on the element Carbon. In their turn these simple life forms can "evolve" up to higher life forms until the highest life form, Human Life, comes about. God wishes to have Us as friends and as Adopted Sons and Daughters.

18. We now skip forward from the Moment of Creation by about 13 to 14 billion years to a time about 5,000 to 6,000 years ago. At that time, millions of people were alive on our planet Earth. They had language. Many, but not all, had some education. They had organisation. They lived in communities, some in small towns. There was organised activity - hunting, gathering food, farming and specific trades. But life would have been a bit rough for most people. There was Good and there was Evil. There was the rudiments of religion, some of it quite formalised.

Up to this time (5,000 to 6,000 years ago) God had not had any direct contact with any Human Person. But this was going to have to change. His first ever direct dealings with Humans occurred at about this time. It was with two people - a man and a woman - who, we are told, had the names Adam and Eve. God's dealings with them are fundamental to His Plan for a Relationship with Us. But I am deferring discussing those dealings until near the end of this Document when we are discussing Original Sin.

19. We now skip forward to a time from about 2,000 to 4,000 years ago. This was a period when God engaged with Us Humans on a serious scale. But not to all Humans. God's dealings with Us was, and had to be, focussed to ensure that what He was doing and saying was heard and correctly understood by a large number of people and that these would be well documented. All of this engagement during this time was with a tight-knit nation of people - the Jewish Nation.

Why these particular people? The Jewish People were both a Nation and a Religion. They had a view of God as a Father to them - which is the same as God's view of Himself. They had literate people, teachers and a priesthood. They had defined sets of religious and moral beliefs. God Himself, speaking to Moses, assembled these religious and moral beliefs into a compact resumé known as The Ten Commandments.

God re-inforced the Jewish People's sense of being a religion and of being a nation. This is evident from their writings from this period. These writings have been included in the Christian Bible under the title of "The Old Testament". Their value to Christians is mainly that they show how God led up to the Incarnation of the Second Person in God (now named Jesus).

God promised to send them a great leader who would......? What? Unfortunately, they totally misunderstood what God was promising to them. They thought that He was going to send a great "earthly" leader who would bring them total happiness and superiority over all that troubled them. They were not correct.

20. We now skip forward to the time when Jesus was alive as one of Us (about 2,000 years ago). When each one of Us is conceived, two things happen. We come into material existence and Our Soul is created by God at that instant. But it was different in the case of Jesus. He came into material existence at that instant just as We did but He had previously existed in Heaven. He was The Second Person in God. Now He is Jesus - fully Human and fully God.

All of the important details of God's Plan for a Relationship with Us were told to a young Jewish Woman named Mary by an Angel named Gabriel. She was also asked if She would allow the Second Person in God to be Her Child with all that that would entail - Conception, Birth, Nurturing, Minding, Educating et alia. She agreed and thus many extraordinary things happened for Our Benefit, including -

21. And so Jesus - The Second Person in God - was born Nine Months later. He was totally vulnerable and His presence immediately attracted the attention of those who would want to end God's Plan for a Relationship with Us by killing Jesus. They were not successful at this stage and Jesus survived to adulthood.

Jesus, both while in Mary's Womb and while He was a very young child, could not have known that He was God and would have had to have been told, by his Mother Mary, the account of His Conception together with whatever new information the Angel Gabriel had given to Her.

Mary may not have known how things were to progress in Jesus' Life and She seems to have discouraged Him from "going public" about who He was until He was about thirty years old. This was when He changed water into wine at a wedding ceremony. Things rapidly developed from there. He lived only another three years. He was very active during these three years. From our point of view, this is the period when the greatest number of Events in Supernatural History occurred. By the time Jesus was gone, all of the essential mechanisms of God's Plan for a Relationship with Us were in place - The Holy Mass, The Seven Sacraments and His Church. Jesus was viewed as a major threat by religious leaders. So much so that they managed to have Him executed. Little did they know that they were helping to bring about some of the greatest Events in Supernatural History including Jesus' Resurrection from the Dead and God's final Defeat of Satan.

22. Jesus started life knowing nothing about who He was and why He was here on Earth. He had to be told who He was and what His Place was in God's Plan for a Relationship with Us and broadly what He was supposed to be doing here in this material Universe. If He had been directly inspired about these things then He would not have been truly Human because no Human Person is ever directly inspired about anything. Everything has to be told. We learn, We listen, We contemplate, We Reason.

Among the principal inputs to Jesus' education were -

Although We speak of Jesus as having a "public life" for the last three years of His Life, He did not separate Himself from family and friends. Mary, His Mother, was a constant companion to Him and to His friends and to His Disciples (including The Apostles - to whom Jesus had delegated certain special functions and responsibilities).

23. So, what did Jesus do that is of Benefit to Us? The practical framework of God's Plan for a Relationship with Us includes The Holy Mass, The Seven Sacraments and The Church. These Divine Gifts emanate from God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and they cause things which Jesus did for Us to become present to Us and to cause effects in Us at a supernatural level -

24. Jesus, also known respectfully as Jesus the Christ or simply Jesus Christ, ended life by being murdered after being very badly beaten and tortured and after being publicly humiliated and degraded. His death by Crucifixion at the hands of the Roman rulers of Palestine was carried out under pressure from the political and religious leaders of Palestine and, to a lesser extent, pressure from a relatively small number of the people who were influenced by those leaders. It was claimed to be an execution, but it has been recorded that all charges against Him were both publicly and privately acknowledged by the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, to have had no substance.

This was at least the third attempt by Satan to prompt evil people to kill Jesus.

The Suffering and Death by Crucifixion of Jesus were also major events in Supernatural History existing outside the constraints of Time and Space.

As previously mentioned, all events in Supernatural History (such as these) exist/persist in God’s Non-material World without the constraints of Time and Space. Such events are accessible to Us at any point in Time and Space through the necessary mechanisms provided by God - namely, The Holy Mass and The Seven Sacraments - ministered by Ordained Priests of the Catholic Church and of certain Orthodox Churches.

25. Jesus rose from the dead three days after His Death. He chose to do so for our benefit. He didn't have to. By raising Himself bodily from the dead to the full state of being God/Human again He made the new nature of God/Human permanent and irrevocable. This raising of Himself from the dead we refer to as The Resurrection of Jesus. Keep in mind that this is the Material Resurrection of Jesus (atoms, molecules, cells etc.).

Forty days later, He returned to Heaven, with His fully restored nature of God/Human. This we refer to as The Ascension of Jesus to Heaven. We can safely assume that, at this point, He would have received from God the Father and Others much congratulation on a job well done.

Like His Suffering and Death, His Resurrection and His Ascension are also pivotal once-only events in Supernatural History. Like all actions and events in Supernatural History, they are not subject to the constraints Time and Space but, rather, they exist to all time - past, present and future - and to all places in the Universe for Us all to partake of.

Every Human Being who has died will be resurrected, or re-embodied, in the future at a time of God’s choosing. Christians who live lives which are true to their Share in the Divinity of Jesus, by behaving towards God and towards all other persons as Jesus Himself would and by being His Messenger, will follow Jesus to Heaven and live there forever with God in an extremely happy state.

Non-Christians, namely those of Us who have not chosen their Share in the Divinity of Jesus through The Sacrament of Baptism, will also be resurrected because they have Immortal Souls. While a Share in Jesus’ Divinity exists for each of them, it is not known what their future eternal life after Death will be. They do not have the Nature of God/Human.

Our Resurrection, Christians and Non-Christians, will take place in this time-bound Universe because Jesus’ Resurrection did. It will be His Resurrection (an event in Supernatural History) that we will be sharing in. Without Jesus' Resurrection there would be no Resurrection of the body for Us Humans. He will have to reverse His Ascension to Heaven and come back to this Universe to raise Us from the dead. We refer to this future event in Supernatural History as The Resurrection of The Dead.

26. Jesus, the Son and Second Person in God, is Infinitely Benevolent towards every person - living, dead and yet to come. He asks Christians in particular to wish for and to bring Peace and Mercy and Justice and Goodwill to everyone personally as if we are Jesus ourselves because we are in fact actually Jesus by virtue of our Share in His Divinity.

We Baptised Christians must allow Jesus to operate through Us. We must not make any exceptions because He does not see exceptions. If we behave in any other way towards others or make exceptions, then the Life of Jesus in Us may die, we may kill It or damage It, and we may as a result give up our right to eventually follow Him to Heaven.

There is never any incompatibility between our responsibility to love and be nice to God and our responsibility to love and be nice to other people. They are the same thing - there is no separation. A Share in Jesus’ Divinity exists for every Human Being whether or not they have chosen to accept It through Baptism. Jesus said that we should love God and love all other people. It could be put this way - 

Allowing Jesus to operate through you in this way is a primary purpose of this temporary transitional life. Attending to your own concerns is a secondary purpose. Acknowledging this is the greatest expression of the Humility that God asks of Us all.

27. Why do we NEED to pray to God? We need to pray in order to empower God in this Universe. The reader will recall that Christians are in fact actually Jesus in this Universe by virtue of our Shares in His Divinity. It is a central part of this Relationship between God and Us that, in all matters relating to Us here in this temporary transitional life in this Universe, God has delegated the effectiveness or otherwise of His Will to Us, absolutely and infinitely. The day-to-day operation of and the effectiveness of God’s Will depend on Us also willing what God wants and also doing what God wants.

But He has not delegated any of His Power to Us. Nevertheless, by delegating the effectiveness and operation of His Will to Us, He has indirectly disempowered Himself in relation to Us. But we can and must re-empower Him. Doing so is the simplest thing you will ever be asked by God to do. Just say and mean the General Prayer given to Us by Jesus, the Second Person in God, when He was here in this Universe - "Our Father, let your Will be done on Earth as It is in Heaven".

It is in the nature of this latter Prayer that it is, in fact, a Statement of our Choice to allow Our Own Will to be conformed to God’s Will.

By delegating to Us the operation of and the effectiveness of His Will in matters relating to Us here in this Universe, God has caused Us to have real substantive participation in His Work and Efforts for Us. It is NOT merely nominal participation. We, Jesus, pray to God the Father - because Jesus does.

To avoid any misunderstanding, praying in words is just one facet of how we should relate to God. Everything that we do should be suffused with the General Prayer referred to above.

28. In addition to our general empowering prayer, we can and do ask God to do specific things that we would like to see happen. However, the "totally general" prayer of "Let your Will be done on Earth as It is in Heaven" is THE best way to re-empower God because He knows what is best in all situations whereas we tend to be incapable of knowing what is best. It is more correct to refer to prayers for specific things as Petitions.

When we do ask or pray for something specific, we should add something like - "...however, not my will, but Your Will be done!" - and mean it. Because of our general inadequacy in knowing what is best, God has to be selective about our petitions. However, benevolent and reasonable thinking (Wisdom) enables Us to have better insight into what God wants to happen. Asking (praying) for Wisdom for ourselves and for others is a most worthwhile prayer. It should be our primary "petition-type" prayer.

But always remember that the more general "power enabling type" of prayer is what God "needs" to hear in order to be able to function in this Universe. It should permeate all of our thoughts and actions.

The most rejectable petition or request is one which calls for "publicly obvious" miraculous intervention. This would be prejudicial to the Secrecy which is a pivotal component of God's Plan for Us in this temporary transitional life. Our "Free Will" must not be prejudiced. If God ever does grant you a miracle, there is an onus on you to keep quiet about it.

29. Christianity might, incorrectly, be thought of as a religion founded by Jesus Christ when He lived in this World about two thousand years ago. But to a Christian it is not correct to view things in that limited timeframe. The religion of Jesus Christ was founded before the Creation by God of our material Universe. More correctly, Christianity has always existed. It is the One and Only Plan for the Sharing of Jesus' Divinity with Us. Christianity has always been God's Plan for a Relationship with Us Human Beings.

When Jesus Christ was here two thousand years ago, He was not "founding a religion". He was here to achieve two broad objectives :-

At the moment, we are dealing with the first of these objectives. Later we will deal with the second - known as Divine Revelation.

Jesus was here to put in place the "mechanics" or "workings" of God’s Plan for a Relationship with Us. He was here "doing things which needed to be done for Us" to cause the Plan to work. The Incarnation, Life, Death, Resurrection from the Dead and Ascension back to Heaven of the Second Person in God, Jesus, were a climax in the activating by God of His Plan for a Relationship with Us. These particular actions or events were "activating", or putting in place, the most important components of God’s One and Only Ever-existing Plan for a Relationship with Us. Everything had to "happen" in reality.

An important sub-title of this Document is - The Supernatural History of God and Us. This is not some casual additional title. It is a pivotal concept. The individual beliefs of Christianity cannot be viewed in isolation from each other. Every detail is linked to every other detail. But it is more than just that, more than just some static interlinkage. Every detail came into existence, or was activated, in a dynamic step-by-step chronological process or history. Hence what I refer to as - The Supernatural History of God and Us. Any consideration of individual beliefs or concepts outside of or separate from this dynamic historical context is flawed and can lead only to error and misunderstanding, or at best confusion and indecision as to what Christianity is about.

For the scientifically minded, there is a Science to what God has done. His Plan for a Relationship with Us was merely abstract, a blueprint in God’s Mind, until He "engineered" it into existence through the events of Supernatural History. There are Systems, Mechanisms and Processes in God’s Plan for a Relationship with Angels and Us.

30. Why the Secrecy? The Creation of the Universe (an early event in Supernatural History) was the beginning of the carrying out of the part of His Plan which has Us Humans as its sole object (His Second Creation). The sole purpose of this Universe, including our little planet Earth, is to be a place where we Human Beings live out a temporary transitional life of "free choice" before, eventually, another permanent, eternal life after death - the nature of which (happy or unhappy) depends on the choices we make.

The principal reason for this first temporary transitional life in this Universe is for Us to have the time and a place to choose to accept or reject God and what He is offering Us (a real and living Share in the Divinity of Jesus), freely and without the prejudice of actually knowing Him DIRECTLY. If we knew him directly, we would not be able to reject Him. We would then lack that Infinite Freedom which God Himself has and so We could never be true (identical) Sharers in the Divinity of the Second Person in God - God is Infinitely Free and He freely chooses to be Who and how He is e.g. a Benevolent and Good God.

Therefore, an essential part of His Plan is that God is secretive about Himself towards Us during our temporary transitional life in this Universe. Without secrecy, He would be making a nonsense of the very reason why He created the Universe for Us in the first place. The Creation of the Universe, the long Evolution of the Earth and of Life, culminating in Humankind, are parts of God's very patient Plan to allow Us to exist for a short time in a true state of not knowing Him directly and so we are able to choose infinitely freely whether to accept or reject Him. We make the Choice solely on the basis of information He gave to some of Us and which has been passed on to the rest of Us.

The "essential secrecy" needed for God’s Plan to work is established and maintained as follows -

God has thus devised an effective Plan for bringing Us into existence in this temporary transitional life while at the same time concealing Himself from Us.

31. Let us for the moment look at the "other type" of Relationship with God - Rejecting God. We have said earlier (in section 10) that there are four things that we must do to "choose" God. The converse of this is that there are four ways to "reject" God. The most fundamental way is to reject our Personal Share in Jesus' Divinity which God offers to each one of Us. Another is to accept it but then fail to be true to that Divinity by failing to be, as Jesus would be, benevolent both to God and to His People - to ALL other people, living, dead and yet to come. By failing to be Jesus in this Universe. We can also reject God if we fail to believe all that He has told Us about Himself or fail to pass this information, this News, on to others.

Failing to believe includes failing to make sufficient effort to learn what there is to know about God and about His Relationship with Us.

After accepting our own Personal Share in the Divinity of Jesus, we then have to go on to prove that we are prepared to live our lives to achieve God's objectives rather than our own selfish ones. We demonstrate this to God in the four ways already discussed. We must be real and active agents of Jesus in the world by doing those four things; we must allow Him to live again through Us through our Share in the Divinity of Jesus, the Second Person in God. Then our Share will be a Living Share and God will see It as such and will not allow Himself to reject Us.

32. God's First Creation, the Angels, have a major rôle in relation to Us and in relation to our day-to-day living of God’s Plan. Just as We Humans are asked to be Agents of Jesus, Angels have already chosen to be Agents of The Holy Spirit (for Good) or Agents of Satan (for Evil).

They too had a time of "Choosing". We do not have a lot of information about the nature of their Relationship with God. A possibility is that they were offered or were given a Share in the Divinity of the Third Person in God, the Holy Spirit who is similar in nature to Them. Many Angels, the most senior of whom was an Angel of the highest rank next to God named Satan, freely chose, individually and collectively, to reject or abuse whatever Relationship God wanted them to have with Himself.

The nature of their Rejection of God would most likely have been equivalent in some way to the most common defect to be found in our own Relationship with God - namely, failure to acknowledge that, while here in this temporary transitional life, we should choose to totally subordinate our concerns and objectives to His; all else should be secondary. Such a failure would have led them to the notion that they were not only not subordinate to God (mainly to the Father and the Son, who had divested their Infinite Power to the Holy Spirit) but were at least equals of God. (Satan is recorded in the Gospels as asking Jesus to bow down and adore him).

They are thought to have gone even further and, under the leadership of Satan, attempted to take over God's position as the Supreme Being (but not as Creator). Support for God was led by a low-ranking Angel named Michael. Satan, and all the other Angels who sided with him in rejecting and challenging God, were removed from Heaven and put in another created place, called Hell.

God does not personally exist in and chooses to have no influence or control in Hell. When creating Hell, God also anticipated Us Human Beings and made it suitable to receive those of Us who would reject the Relationship which He would be offering to Us. Hell is an unpleasant place. Try not to be your own Supreme Being.

The instinct to think and to do evil is so infinitely great in Satan and his follower Angels that they will act even when they have perfect knowledge that they will not succeed.

33. Satan is very, very powerful - he is almost as powerful as God is in relation to Us because God allows him to be such, for the moment. His "will", what he wishes to happen in any matter whatsoever, is always opposed to God's Will. God allows Satan and his Angels access to Us which is equal to what He allows Himself and His Angels, but only while we are living our temporary transitional life in this Universe. This is for a very good and productive reason. Because of this, when we choose to reject God, it is not merely an abstract rejection of God. Our Rejection of God is real and concrete because we identify with and become aligned with God's Living Opposite - a Real Personal Evil Being, Satan, and we strengthen his position. Without Satan, choosing God would be empty because no real and substantive alternative would exist. Without Satan, God's Plan would be second-rate and the Plan might not even exist at all - at least, not in its present superior form.

34. The Holy Spirit is, on the other hand, the Real Personal Love of God actually personified. This is because the operation of all of the characteristics which God the Father and God the Son have in common, including Love itself, has been devolved to the Holy Spirit to an infinite degree. The Holy Spirit and those Angels who sided with God are, therefore, the Infinite Opposites and Adversaries of Satan and his Angels in the matter of God's dealings with Us in this temporary transitional life - and vice versa. The Holy Spirit is, therefore, our Advocate before God and Satan is our Adversary. The Holy Spirit is also God’s Advocate before Us. He promotes God’s Interests with Us.

35. Neither the Holy Spirit nor Satan can "control" Us directly to make Us do things which we would not want to do. But both can seize opportunities to influence or to prompt Us in two ways.

The first way is by subconscious prompting - Inspirations from the Holy Spirit and Temptations from Satan. Both the Holy Spirit and Satan can use our present knowledge and desires and inclinations to set up situations in which we have a choice to do good, when the Holy Spirit is involved, or evil, when Satan is involved.

The second way is a more powerful and effective one and it is the more usual way. It is the use of other people to do the prompting; more especially, the use of "you" to prompt others - Good Influence and Corruption.

When Jesus is judging how you "chose" during your time in this temporary transitional life, He will be looking very especially at, among other things, the extent to which you made yourself be an Agent of the Holy Spirit or an Agent of Satan in the matter of these promptings and influences while here in this Universe.

Two additional important points - 

36. Both the Holy Spirit and Satan can co-ordinate strategies of enormous complexity, but the two of them require our co-operation and intervention to carry them out. A specific strategy by Satan to hurt you, or to prompt you to do Evil, or to prompt you to reject your Relationship with God, or cause you not to find out about that Relationship or details of It, could have started 20,000 years ago, 10,000 miles away and have involved millions of people. But if you put yourself at the disposal of and under the protection of the Holy Spirit, then you need not fear such things. At best, Satan will have some attack made on you, maybe physical, maybe mental or emotional. Be ready for these, for they will happen. They can be a useful indicator that all is well between you and God. Relax and trust God. Especially, Trust in Jesus.

37. In what circumstances might we go to Hell? If we reject God by significantly falling down on any of the four things that God wants Us to do to enable Him to live through Us in this temporary transitional life (cf. section 10), then we damage our Share in the Divinity of Jesus. In the extreme, we kill our Share in His Divinity. We become as if we are the incarnate son or daughter of Satan (not, of course, in reality). If we do this then we earn the right to join Satan in Hell. If we bring things to such an extreme, then our eternal life after rising from the dead will be with Satan. We will be a real and actual victory for Satan over God.

In Hell, we will be aware of the existence of God and that He is Good, but we will not experience Him and we will not be the objects of His Infinite Benevolence. Instead, we will be the objects of Satan's Infinite Malevolence, for ever.

38. In what circumstances might we go to Purgatory? Hopefully, most Christians will "get by" with the benefit of God's Infinite Mercy and after a time in Purgatory (if we had made some level of positive effort). But it will be a pity to have relied on such a third-rate and unproductive route to our permanent life. Our present first temporary transitional life is a short and easy test for most of Us. Purgatory will not be for a short period and will not be easy.

The more we develop a positive and productive Relationship within the Divine Trinity during this first temporary transitional life, the less we will have to make up for in Purgatory.

If you are a person who makes little or no effort to live your Relationship with God, then you are in big trouble.

This is the end of our consideration of the "other type" of Relationship with God - Rejecting God - which we began in section 31.

39. What if we have damaged or killed Our Share in the Divinity of Jesus? Can We fix Our Share? Jesus not only earned for Us the right to be given a Share in His Divinity, He also earned for Himself the sole right to restore Life to our Share and to forgive all of our offences against God if we freely and deliberately ask for that forgiveness.

It is probably rare for any of Us to totally kill off our Share in the Divinity of Jesus - but all of Us damage It. The restoration of life and/or wellbeing to our Share in Jesus' Divinity is available from Jesus to each Baptised Person by means of a major personal, supernatural occurrence equal to what happens to Us in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. It occurs during an event - referred to as the Sacrament of Reconciliation - ministered to you by Jesus through a suitably qualified person - namely, an Ordained Priest.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation can be partaken of even when it is not needed for the extreme purpose of restoring life to our Share in Jesus’ Divinity.

40. How was the Sacrament of Reconciliation instituted by Jesus, the Second Person in God, when He was here in this Universe? As in the case of the Sacrament of Baptism and of the Sacrament of Confirmation, and like the Eucharist and the Holy Mass, a "once-only" event in Supernatural History activated the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This was when Jesus the Incarnate Second Person in God, while He was dying on a cross, asked God the Father to forgive those who were involved in His beating, torture, degradation and Death. Those people were our representatives. What Jesus did for them is potentially available to all Human Beings. Although they are now nameless, they had real and substantive involvement in this Once Only Event in Supernatural History - the Moment of God’s Forgiveness. All of our transgressions and failures are automatically joined by God to theirs by virtue of our Shares in Jesus’ Divinity which exist as part of His Plan. That Moment of God’s Forgiveness is an event in Supernatural History which continues to exist. During the Sacrament of Reconciliation we share with them (if we chose to) in that Moment of God's Forgiveness.

41. Jesus, God, also prescribed how we can avail of that forgiveness. It must be ministered to Us by a suitably qualified person - an Ordained Priest - through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Jesus said - "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven. Whose sins you shall retain, they are retained". With these words Jesus "prescribed" how Forgiveness is to be ministered. There is no direct access to God’s Forgiveness - no access without the Ordained Priest.

Any Divine Gift made accessible to any of Us is necessarily "made accessible" to all of Us. But it is "accessible" only by Baptised Christians because they are The Mystical Indivisible Body of Jesus Christ by virtue of their Received Shares in His Divinity. But note the use here of the expression "made accessible" – we still have to consciously "choose" to be forgiven through the method prescribed by Jesus - we must ask for forgiveness through the Sacrament of Reconciliation ministered by an Ordained Priest.

42. But things go much further than just God forgiving Us in some abstract or nominal way. God’s Forgiveness is an infinitely substantive action. Jesus is The Actually Guilty Jesus. This section is another pivotal part of this Document.

A bit of revision. By virtue of our Personal Shares in the Divinity of Jesus (whether we have chosen them or not), the unity which exists between God and each one of Us is total, whether we are aware of it or not. Those who have chosen their Share (Christians) are One with Jesus, God. Those who have not are potentially One with Jesus. The Moment or Instant of The Incarnation was the moment when the Allocation of Shares in Jesus’ Divinity became Actual rather than merely a Plan. This is because it was the Moment of the Creation of the Nature of God/Human.

All of Jesus' Goodness and Evil come to Us and all of our Goodness and Evil go to Him. Since there is no Evil in God, it is solely His Goodness which comes to Us. We, on the other hand, have a measure of both. Just as We are Jesus by having a Share in His Divinity, He is Us. By God’s Choice, We make Jesus murderer, thief, liar, slanderer, vandal, nuisance. We make Jesus The Actually Guilty Jesus.

Again, it is not merely in some nominal way that We do this. By allocating to Us Shares in His Divinity, He has willingly taken to Himself all of the Guilt and the Disgrace and the Odium, in reality. This is an inescapable result of His allocating to Us Shares in His Divinity. Jesus, the Second Person in God, through His Incarnation as a Human Being, drew down on His Own Head the full Wrath of God for every evil that would be done by every Human Being.

43. And He went further. He inflated all of His Suffering while one of Us here in this Universe to Infinite and Divine Proportions and then "Chose" to offer them so inflated as Infinite Punishment for All Wrongdoing. Again this was not in some merely nominal way. Jesus drew all of this on Himself in two complementary events in Supernatural History.

The first of these two complementary events is referred to by Christians as The Transfiguration of Jesus. It happened when, in the company of a very small number of witnesses, Jesus drew to Himself the full reality of His Divinity. The witnesses saw Him physically transformed while this happened.

The second of the two complementary events is referred to by Christians as The Agony in the Garden. This occurred at a place called Gethsemane. Left alone and neglected by even His closest followers, and with the full reality and capability of His Divinity now in Him, Jesus (God) contemplated each individual act of our wrongdoing for which He was now, by Choice, actually Guilty and actually deserving of All Punishment. The effect of this on Him was of infinite proportions and was very distressing for Him.

His Suffering at Gethsemane was greater than at any other time during His temporary transitional life in this Universe. Describing that event as the Agony in the Garden is a great understatement. It pushed Him to the Infinite limits of His Divine capability. He would have experienced every unpleasantness to an Infinite Degree - pain, nausea, rejection, disappointment, bitterness and much more. He was so distressed that He even asked God the Father, the First Person in God, if there was some other way to achieve Their Objectives for Us.

Jesus' Suffering at Gethsemane together with the beating, torture, degradation and His Death actually took on the character of Infinite Punishment for the Actually Guilty Jesus. He thus deflected All Punishment and all of God's Wrath away from Us and towards Himself when He uttered the words - "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do". We can, if we so choose, partake of this Deflection, of this Forgiveness, if we sincerely seek it through the Sacrament of Reconciliation ministered by an Ordained Priest.

It is because of these things that Jesus has done for Us that we refer to Him as Our Saviour.

44. Terrible responsibilities exist for Ordained Priests. It is a most serious offence before God for a Priest to make a Person who wishes to partake of the Sacrament of Reconciliation feel uneasy about it. He should be consoling and welcoming. To be otherwise is to be as destructive of God's Plan as heresy. Heresy draws people away. A Priest with a bad attitude pushes them away.

And every one of Us must also constantly be of this consoling and welcoming frame of mind towards every person. It is a central practical way of allowing Jesus to live on through Us. This, among our other acts of Goodness and Benevolence, helps to give, maintain and heal the Life of the Mystical Body of Jesus. We must all be part of a wider Sacrament of Reconciliation Process.

Just as Jesus caused Himself to become the Actually Guilty Jesus through the mechanism of obtaining for Us Shares in His Divinity by creating the new nature of God/Human through His Incarnation, He also shares with Us His rôle as Saviour of All Humans, just as He is. We should live up to this rôle, just as He does.

45. The Collective Nature of Absolutely Everything for Christians -

46. How has God given Us information about Himself and about how He wants to relate to Us during this temporary transitional life? How has He done this and still maintain the essential Secrecy about Himself which is central to God’s Plan for a Relationship with Us. Creating this "isolated" temporary transitional life in this Universe is God’s solution to the need not to prejudice Us in making our Choices. However, the need for secrecy presented Him with a problem - How do we find out about God?

In this Universe, isolated from God as we are intended to be, we could never have detailed knowledge about God and about His Relationship with Us unless He were to tell Us. God has, therefore, directly communicated all of the information we need, but only to a very small number of people – all of whom were of the Jewish Faith. These, without exception, were already firm believers in God in the general sense as understood in the Jewish Faith before He gave them any information. These people were, therefore, not prejudiced in any fundamental way by His contact with them. Indeed, the Jewish people had already developed an idea of God as a Loving Father, which came close to the Truth. It was, and still is, their central belief. They also had a belief that God would send a leader to them to establish His Kingdom on Earth.

For the rest of Us, our detailed knowledge about God comes solely from "the word of others". We must rely on the word of others -

Such knowledge has been passed on to Us both verbally and through writings. This "word of others" technique is a key element of God's Plan for a Relationship with Us. It is the third means, after Evolution and Death, by which He avoids prejudicing Us, but yet it is sufficient to allow Us to know all that He wants Us to know about Himself and about His Relationship with Us during this first temporary transitional life.

We use the expression "Divine Revelation" for the information which God has given directly (or revealed) to Us through that small number of Jewish people.

The main direct recipient of Divine Revelation was Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Jesus, even though He was the Second Person in God, was a student of Jewish teachers and of Mary.

47. What are our "Word of Others" Sources of Divine Revelation? There are three broad headings under which we consider Sources of Divine Revelation.

The first two of the headings relate to the actual sources which the Church uses to determine what has been revealed by God (mainly by Jesus) -

The third heading relates to the One and Only Mechanism whereby what God has revealed is examined and definitively stated -

Most of God's Revelations to Us about Himself and about how He wants Us to relate to Him were made and confirmed by Jesus, the Incarnated Second Person in God, while He was alive here on Earth in this Universe about 2,000 years ago. Jesus was Jewish. He didn't leave Us with any writings of His Own; His principal objective while living His Temporary Transitional Life here in this Universe was to put in place the "necessary mechanisms". However, some of the original witnesses and early recipients of what Jesus had to say made an effort to write down as much as they could about Jesus and what they recollected of what He had said and done. Most of these actually knew Him personally and/or would have had the benefit of the in-depth knowledge and understanding of Jesus' Mother, Mary.

48. With regard to Written Sources (Scripture). There are five documents which recount some information about Jesus' Life - the Four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and a book referred to as The Acts of the Apostles. The latter is thought to be a continuation of the Gospel of Luke – it continues from where Luke’s Gospel ends. It also includes some additional information; it recounts some of the activities of Jesus' direct followers, including those who knew Him personally, in the immediate period after His returning to Heaven. This additional information shows that they organised themselves, planned activities, allocated functions and responsibilities, and considered and made decisions on matters relating to their beliefs even at that early stage.

Unfortunately for Us today, most of what Jesus told to His followers was told by them, in turn, only orally. This gave rise to some confusion by the time it got passed around a bit. Largely to resolve such confusion, some of Jesus’ early followers and their closest colleagues sent "letters of clarification" to various local groups who were confused about, or were debating, any specific issue. These are referred to as "The Epistles" (The Letters).

The Four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles and one other book - The Book of Revelation – are usually referred to collectively as "The New Testament". But they are not the complete picture.

Again unfortunately for Us, the confusion and debate continued after Jesus’ close friends and followers were dead and gone. This problem was compounded by (a) the rapid geographic spread of Christianity and (b) poor communications. Prominent figures began to emerge and debates became "politicised". To resolve these debates, the Church adopted the practice, started by Peter and the Apostles in Jerusalem, of assembling in (what we now refer to as) a Council and deciding definitively on a resolution of the matter under debate. Usually, a binding Dogmatic Definition on the topic was issued. Almost all Dogmatic Definitions made so far have been made in order to settle debates and disputes.

49. Revelation is one of two broad objectives. The Incarnation and Life in this Universe of the Second Person in God, now called Jesus Christ, are the most substantial set of the pivotal events in Supernatural History. This particular large set of events in Supernatural History achieved two broad objectives.

Firstly, the most important achievement was that those events brought into existence the new nature of God/Human which God intends for Us. Those events also put in place all of the essential mechanisms that are needed for Us to be able to change our nature from merely human to God/Human and to be able to relate to God as He wishes Us to - namely, as active Sharers in the Living Divinity of Jesus.

But secondly, when Jesus was here, it provided God with the best opportunity to convey the knowledge that He wants Us to have about God and about His Relationship with Us. This Jesus did to a full and sufficient extent; sufficient such that God has no further need to directly convey any further knowledge to Us.

50. The Revelations made and confirmed by Jesus when He was here in this Universe are final and complete. Everything else emanates from this.

51. The information which was written down is not the complete picture. To re-iterate, Jesus gave the information about God’s Plan for a Relationship with Us to His followers and friends and relatives when He was alive on this Earth both in words and deeds. A lot of this information was actually written down by some of his original and early followers. We not only have the five key documents - the Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles - but we also have the Formal Letters written by some of those original and early followers. Some information was passed on by word of mouth and was written down soon after.

52. With regard to Historically Preserved Knowledge (Tradition). Some information was not written down in those early days and it survived for a long time as (i) oral knowledge or (ii) knowledge reflected in traditional beliefs and practices. As with the study of any historical subject, all available sources can validly be looked at both to establish what God has told Us and to enable Us to figure out the full meaning and implications of that information. I emphasise the expression "figure out" and I will return to this again.

As already mentioned, some of the formal writings of the original and early followers were put together at some early stage into a single work which we refer to as The New Testament. As we have also mentioned, this collection of writings does not provide all of the information we need. The significance of the New Testament is that, insofar as we may make reference to such early writings, these are the only writings which the early Church believed to have any significant validity as a written source.

53. In all matters, Christians are the successors of the Jews as God's Chosen People. We have already seen that We could not know anything about God and His Relationship with Us unless He came and told Us. This He did to a very small number of members of the Jewish religion, a religion which He adopted as His Own, before He created the Universe, because of the similarity which He knew would exist between their beliefs and the Real Truth about Himself.

God communicated with those few persons over a period of about two thousand years ending about two thousand years ago with the Incarnation of the Second Person in God, Jesus, and the final Revelations by Jesus of what we need to know. Only a small number of Jews understood and accepted that God had come among them in Jesus; that He was the expected Messiah. These few became the first of what we would now describe as Christians (a term which they, perhaps, may not have ever used themselves).

54. Whose job is it to spread knowledge about God’s Plan for a Relationship with Us? Christians are, or more precisely, should be, among other things, God's Messengers in this Universe. We have already seen that, to maintain the necessary secrecy about Himself (required to avoid undue prejudice), God communicated the Message about Himself, and about His Relationship with Us in this temporary transitional life, to a very small number of people, and then put the onus directly on them to pass that Message on to others - "secondhand". All Christians inherit that responsibility. The secondhandedness is not just some unfortunate aspect of God's Relationship with Us. The secondhandedness is an indispensable and essential part of that Relationship because it protects the necessary secrecy about Himself.

A central part of the Message is, therefore, that every person who accepts their Share in the Divinity of Jesus has had the onus to spread knowledge about God’s Plan put on them also. They must accept an obligation to pass on to other people all that God has told Us about Himself and about how He relates to Us in this temporary transitional life because this is what Jesus would do and we are Jesus.

55. God does not "give" Us Belief in Himself (often referred to as Faith) at some specific point in time. This Faith is part of our nature. We have been designed by God to find the idea of God acceptable. But Faith needs to be "awakened". It is other Humans and not God who "awaken" it in Us. Each Christian has been "commissioned" by God, through their Shares in Jesus’ Divinity, to awaken it in others. But it is not only Christians who are capable of awakening Faith. All Human Beings can.

After Faith is awakened, we need to develop a clear understanding of the mechanisms (and they ARE "mechanisms") of how God relates to Us - an understanding of the mechanics of how He (a) transfers to and (b) sustains His Divine Life in Us (transfers and sustains Our Shares in the Divinity of Jesus). One of the intentions of this Document is to provide information about the more important of these mechanisms.

56. Christians - Sharers in the Divinity of Jesus Christ - are now His Representatives in all things in this Universe (or, more precisely, they are Him in this Universe) and are asked to accept all the burdens and responsibilities of that rôle, of that fact.

57. I want to further discuss The Church. But before that I need to say a bit more about Supernatural History. Events in Supernatural History persist in Time and Space because they also occurred and occur in God’s Eternal World. For example -

are not merely ordinary events which have occurred and are now over and done. Instead, they were, along with some other events, major essential events in the implementation of God's One and Only Plan for a Relationship with Us which didn't just "occur" but are events or, more correctly, "phenomena which exist" outside of Time and Space in a Supernatural History of God and Us. Transience is a feature of all things in this material Universe but it is not a feature of anything in God’s Eternal World.

This Supernatural History was and is the carrying out by God of certain actions, designed by Him, which brought into effect or, more correctly, activated or awakened the component parts (the Mechanisms) of His Plan for a Relationship with Us. These Mechanisms are necessary for Us to be able to relate to Him in the Way that He wants Us to relate to Him.

It is because each timeless event in Supernatural History emanates from a corresponding observable event in our time-bound history that we can easily misunderstand them by thinking that they have happened and are over. However, because they also occurred in God’s Eternal World and are not, therefore, bound by either Time or Space, all events in Supernatural History are present, not only to the time and place where we can identify them as having happened, but also to all Time before and after and to Every Place that God chooses them to be present, which includes all of Our Universe.

58. There is only One Truth about God and His Relationship with Us - God's One and Only Plan for a Relationship with Us. There is no scope for deciding for yourself some other way to relate to God.

There is only One Way to relate to God - His Way. God has gone to a lot of trouble to put His Way in to place.

59. Up to this point we have discussed Events in Supernatural History without categorising them into this type or that type.

Events in Supernatural History can be categorised. I would suggest that there are three categories identifiable in the Events which we have discussed up to this point in this Document -

To repeat, there are three categories identifiable in those Events which we have discussed up to this point in this Document.

60. But now we will consider a Fourth and Very Important Category of Event in Supernatural History. This fourth category consists of actions undertaken by Jesus which put in place an Organisation to guarantee Unity in perpetuity in every matter relating to the Mystical Body of the Second Person in God, Jesus Christ, which consists of Us by virtue of Our Shares in His Divinity.

The Members of Christ’s Mystical Body, also known as the Sharers in Jesus’ Divinity, cannot be allowed to flounder or be confused as to what they are to believe and understand and do about their Relationship with God. It would make no sense if there were not a single understanding of the details of that Relationship and how it works.

The fourth category of Events in Supernatural History consists of the actions taken by Jesus to establish the organisation which Christians refer to as The Church. The Church is the Guarantor of the Unity in perpetuity in every matter relating to the Mystical Body of Jesus.

61. The largest Christian group, or Church, is commonly referred to as The Catholic Church. About 50% of Christians belong to the Catholic Church. By way of background information, the Catholic Church says, among other things –

62. Jesus was not "setting up a religion" while He was here. He was putting in place the components of God’s Plan for a Relationship with Us.

But Jesus did set up an organisation. That organisation is the Catholic Church - which is itself one of the Mechanisms that He put in place. The Catholic Church is THE pivotal Mechanism from which all of the Essential Mechanisms emanate.

The structure of the Organisation is reflected in the way that Jesus did things when He was here on Earth - which was to have Himself as Head/Leader/Teacher of His Apostles and other followers. Then, after Jesus' Death and His Ascension back to Heaven, Peter, who had been designated by Jesus Himself, was accepted by the Apostles and followers as leader.

While Jesus was not "setting up a religion", He did, as we have seen, "set up" or "put in place" what we now refer to as the Catholic Church with the Pope as its leader as successor to Peter. Jesus ruled out the possibility of other ways of relating to God and He formally declared the setting up of His Church (His Organisation) when He said to His main follower, Simon (who He renamed Peter - the Rock), "You are Peter and on this Rock I will build My Church".

This basic organisational structure has persisted to today. The Church is the structure of The Mystical Body of Jesus Christ. The main rôles of His Church are to be Jesus' formal agent or authority in ministering to, teaching, guiding and helping all of the Members of The Mystical Body. The formal structure, initiated by Jesus, is an inseparable feature of the Mystical Body. Without the formal structure, most of the Mechanisms of God's One and Only Plan would not work.

63. The Catholic Church is organised into "geographic administrative areas" the main type of which is referred to as a Diocese. Within each Diocese there are smaller "geographic areas" each of which is referred to as a Parish. Note the description "geographic". The Catholic Church tends to discourage "diffused" groupings which are not organised on a Diocesan or Parish basis. It sees these as a threat to people’s understanding of the uniformity of its beliefs and as having potential for dispute and disaggregation. A Diocese or a Parish is, primarily, the people and families, together with their Bishop and Priests, within the "geographic" area and not the geographic area itself.

64. Scope and Status of the Church’s Beliefs. If you draw up a list of all of the topics which arise in the consideration of our Relationship with God you will find that they divide up into two broad categories -

It is as simple as that. I would love to be able to avoid the expression Faith and Morals but these are the same things. That expression, and the two terms in it, have developed a somewhat academic connotation. The expression currently seems to say to us that this is a territory which belongs to philosophers, theologians, priests, seminarians, students, universities, colleges etc. and is NOT for the ordinary considerations of ordinary people.

But this is not so; it cannot be so. If the most important thing in the Universe is the Relationship between Us Humans and God, then all of these topics are the most important topics that exist and they are the property of all Human Persons.

65. The Catholic Church might appear to have a two-tier status for its beliefs. In relation to some of its beliefs, it has formally declared them to be Infallibly True but, in relation to some others, it has not done so. The Church expects that its members will claim to be members only if they accept all of its Teachings. Some internal informed constructive debate is accepted on topics which it has not declared to be Infallibly True. This state of affairs reflects the fact that the Catholic Church has not yet made dogmatic pronouncements about all of its beliefs. The number of these is small.

There are two principal methods by which the Church can declare a Belief to be an Infallible Dogma. It can be done either -

Under both of these methods the Definition emanates from the Bishops collectively. The Holy Spirit, the Third Person in God, guides and will not allow the Church to make an error when it uses these procedures. Papal Infallibility, one of these two procedures, has been invoked, formally, only twice. In 1854, the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary (Jesus' Mother), and in 1950, the Dogma of the Assumption of Mary to Heaven.

Some Dogmas were declared for the purpose of resolving potentially divisive debate. In all of these instances the Dogmas were declared by Councils of Bishops.

66. The Catholic Church believes that the full meaning and implications of the Revelations of Jesus, the Second Person in God, have to be "figured out" and that there may still be aspects which are not yet fully understood. This makes the Church very reluctant to rush in to declaring Dogmas. One serious omission at the time of writing is that the rôle of Mary as Co-Mediator with Her Son Jesus of all Graces and Benefits from God, while very widely believed, is not yet a Dogma.

67. Let us now return to the Means given to Us by God to enable Us to both obtain Our Share in the Divinity of Jesus and to maintain It as a Living Share and to the Rôle of The Church in ministering them. These Means are referred to as The Holy Mass and The Seven Sacraments (I refer to them collectively as the Divine Gifts).

This is a central and pivotal statement in the matter of Our Relationship with God. To re-iterate, the statement is referring to The Holy Mass and The Seven Sacraments.

The statement may sound a bit complicated. But it will become easier to understand when you understand the individual explanations of the Sacraments and the explanation of The Holy Mass.

68. The Primary Rôle of the Catholic Church is to minister, that is to make available, to its members The Holy Mass and The Seven Sacraments (The Divine Gifts). To make The Divine Gifts available to those of Us who have accepted our Share in the Divinity of Jesus, the Second Person in God. To those who accept the Church's Beliefs and who also adhere to how it says we should live our lives on Jesus' behalf during this temporary transitional life. Those who accept that The Church is the Guarantor in Perpetuity of the Truths of God’s Plan for a Relationship Us.

The Church has a singular and exclusive rôle in relation to The Means given to Us by God; in relation to The Divine Gifts. It does not share this rôle with any other person, or body, or organisation. It is not possible to engage with God through The Divine Gifts except through the ministering of the Ordained Priests of the Church.

69. We have already dealt with the three pivotal Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Reconciliation. There is a fourth pivotal and fundamental Sacrament to consider - the Sacrament of Holy Communion of the Eucharist. The Sacrament of Holy Communion involves, among other things, physically consuming what is referred to as The Eucharist (cf. next paragraph). A more appropriate, but long-winded, name for the Sacrament would be "Holy Communion of The Eucharist with other People".

A validly appointed, or Ordained, Priest of Christianity can change bread and wine, without changing their appearance to Us, into the Actual Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus (that is, Jesus' total Nature of God/Human becomes "really present" in the Bread and Wine). The bread and wine so changed is referred to as The Eucharist.

The process of changing the bread and wine into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ has been given the name Consecration.

Jesus said that we should physically eat and drink the Bread and Wine so transformed. This eating and drinking is an external visible expression of a supernatural action which happens at the same time. We feed and strengthen and enliven our Share in the Divinity of Jesus by consuming this changed Bread and Wine - The Eucharist. Consuming The Eucharist is referred to as the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

The Sacrament of Holy Communion, the consuming of bread and wine which has been changed into the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus, the Second Person in God, is the only one of the Seven Sacrament which Jesus is recorded in the Gospels as having explicitly and in a detailed way, instituted or activated. This He did on the evening before He was unjustly killed. He was dining with his main followers, The Apostles, at the time. He left no room for doubt about what he was doing. He said of the Bread and Wine, at the meal, – "This is My Body; This is My Blood". This too is an event in Supernatural History which exists for and to all Time, everywhere in the Universe. And Jesus explicitly conferred on those main followers, at that meal, the power to do what He had just done. He went on to make the following important and powerful statement - "Unless you eat My Flesh and drink My Blood you shall not have Life in you".

When a Priest "consecrates" bread and wine, he is not doing so afresh. He is participating in or calling into the present that First and One and Only Consecration by Jesus. The Priest cannot consecrate bread and wine outside of the context of Jesus consecrating bread and wine.

A Priest who carries out such Consecration must have the following three intentions for the Consecration to be effective -

A Eucharist used for display and Adoration must eventually be consumed and replaced by a newly consecrated Eucharist.

70. Let us now consider The Holy Mass. The main emphasis in this Document is on matters relating to the ordinary living of our lives as Sharers in the Divinity of Jesus. To be more precise, there is special emphasis on the Five Main Means given to Us by God to facilitate the living of this ordinary temporary transitional life, namely -

71. Attendance at The Holy Mass is the most gigantic extraordinary thing that any Human Person can do during this temporary transitional life. But, what is The Holy Mass?

There are two ways that we can look at The Holy Mass -

We must not concentrate on one of these perspectives at the expense of the other. Most literature that I have read about The Holy Mass makes the mistake of concentrating almost exclusively on the content of the ceremony. This is very flawed. The central questions are - "What is it about?" AND "What is going on between God and Us during our Attendance at The Holy Mass?". These are, in reality, a single question and the same information answers both.

The Holy Mass is one thing; Attendance at Holy Mass is a separate thing.

72. The Holy Mass is a ceremony, presided over by an Ordained Priest, which makes God really present to Us here in this Universe and it makes present to Us All of the Events in the Supernatural History of God and Us; Time and Space are brushed aside. Equally important, our Attendance at the Holy Mass makes Us directly present to God in a complete manner, something that We cannot achieve in any other manner or circumstance during this temporary transitional life. Attending Holy Mass bypasses all of the restrictions and inadequacies which tend to exist between God and Us in this Universe.

Attendance at The Holy Mass is the pre-eminent Human activity while here in this Universe. It is All of Supernatural History focussed into our lives. When any Christian is present at a Mass celebrated by an Ordained Priest of the Catholic Church or of certain Orthodox Churches, they are actually present to all Events in Supernatural History. Especially, a Christian is present to those Events specifically related to Jesus' Life in this Universe, and most especially and primarily to His Incarnation and Birth, and also to His Death (and the beating and torture and degradation which preceded It), His Resurrection, His Ascension back to Heaven (with His Nature changed from God only to God/Human), His sending of the Holy Spirit into this Universe and His eventual (yet to occur) Return to this Universe. These are the Events which put into place the Mechanisms of God's Plan for a Relationship with Us.

73. Because they are the same "once only" events in Supernatural History which are present at every Mass without the constraints of Time and Space, then every Mass is The Same Holy Mass as all others, not just in appearance, but in fact. Every Mass is actually the complete One and Only Supernatural History of God and Us, with Time and Space brushed aside, and is not a re-enactment of that History. It is not accurate to speak of "masses"; there is just Mass or The Holy Mass.

74. We don't "go to Mass", we "attend (The Holy) Mass" – we make ourselves present at and participate in the One and Only Mass. When you attend The Holy Mass there is something which you should be doing and be conscious that you are doing it. You should participate in The Holy Mass by bringing with you in your Heart and in your Being the galaxy of your entire life to allow it to be drawn into the Galaxy of the Life of Jesus. By doing this and through your Attendance at The Holy Mass, Jesus is best empowered to live again in the Universe through You. It is also the best mark of respect and acknowledgement of His Status that we can possibly show to All Three Persons in God.

Even when you are saying "private prayers" those prayers have efficacy ONLY because they anticipate your Attendance at The Holy Mass.

75. The focal point of The Holy Mass is when the Ordained Priest who is presiding over the Mass changes bread and wine into the Person of the Son in God, Jesus, thus causing Him to be actually present to those in attendance. Our presence to the galaxy of events or phenomena in Supernatural History is at that point infinitely and perfectly complete because of the "bringing forth of" the actual Real Presence of God the Son, Jesus, in the Eucharist. Because a Christian has a Share in the Divinity of Jesus (is a Member of Jesus’ Mystical Body), he or she is also present in the Eucharist. You should present the galaxy of your entire life to God through yourself actually present in The Eucharist.

76. There are two aspects to our living of The Holy Mass. The Holy Mass, this blending of Our Lives with the Life of Jesus, is an on-going, unstoppable, dynamic process and not just the periodic formal ceremony. For each one of Us, there are two principal and equal practical aspects to this dynamic process that we call The Holy Mass -

Your total Life as a Christian is, or should be, The Holy Mass lived in both of these ways. Non-attendance at the periodic formal Mass seriously diminishes you as a Sharer in the Divinity of Jesus. The Holy Mass is the only mechanism provided by God through which you can blend the galaxy of your life into the Galaxy of the Life of Jesus and His into yours.

You cannot have one of the two aspects without the other. The Catholic Church, partly to emphasise this infinitely important connection between these two aspects, prescribes that its members must attend the formal, social presenting of The Holy Mass at least once a week on its "day of rest", Sunday. But it is for more than mere emphasis. Such attendance is the most complete and proper social living of the Life of Jesus' Mystical Body (we Christians), as such.

If you discontinue Attendance at The Holy Mass then you set yourself adrift from both aspects of this unstoppable and necessary dynamic process. The process goes on without you.

77. The formal structure which has been given by The Church to The Holy Mass in its periodic form has been given the name "The Liturgy of the Holy Mass". "Liturgy" is a word which is not in common use today. One dictionary definition describes it as ‘a set of formularies for public worship’. The Liturgy of The Mass could be seen as an agenda or "a list of things to be done during a formal, structured presenting of The Holy Mass". This Liturgy or "list of things to be done" is an invented but appropriate setting for our periodic Attendance at The Holy Mass.

The formal structure or Liturgy of The Holy Mass has a rational construction or running order just as a work of music or a play would have. The "list of things to do" includes –

78. The following are Three Important Outcomes from our Attendance at The Holy Mass -

79. In addition, attendance at the periodic formal liturgical Holy Mass is the best way to formally give Glory and Honour to God.

80. The reason why it is primarily the Death etc., Resurrection, Ascension and Return of Jesus to Heaven which we are present to at Mass is because they are the main group of events in Supernatural History about which Jesus personally, as one of Us, had to make His Principal Free Choices. Jesus always made His Choices for our benefit and against our Adversary, Satan.

Jesus always made His Free Choices in a way that would ensure that the components of God's Plan for a Relationship with Us would be successfully "activated" and would be totally effective. This is an extremely important point. Jesus’ Choices set up the System and the Mechanisms and We for Our part choose to use these and We choose to identify with Jesus’ Choices.

81. What is God’s perspective on Our Attendance at The Holy Mass? What does it mean to God personally? It ‘pleases’ Him when we are present at Mass. He experiences an infinite emotional, psychological and intellectual "pleasant reaction" to our attending The Holy Mass - our attending and acknowledging the full Supernatural History of God and Us. (An appropriate prayer at Mass would be to pray for help in making Him happy).

82. There is also a more general, and very important, question about what God gets from His Relationship with Us. So far in this Document we have been looking at things in terms which emphasise what We are getting from God. There is a danger in this approach of encouraging the reader to have an ego-centred or selfish view of Our Relationship with God. We should not only allow Jesus, the Second Person in God, to operate through Us, we should do everything primarily for God, the Divine Trinity of Persons. Don't just accept His Friendship. Give Him yours. Make it a two-way friendship. He likes you. He enjoys your visits and your company. God can give Himself anything, but He cannot give Himself our Love. God longs for the Love of All Human Beings.

83. . How was the Sacrament of Baptism instituted by Jesus, the Second Person in God, when He was here in this Universe? All of the Seven Sacraments were instituted by Jesus, the Second Person in God, while here in this Universe before He Ascended back to Heaven.

As we have said repeatedly, it is during an event which we refer to as the Sacrament of Baptism that each of Us can accept our Personal Share in the Divinity of the Person of the Son in God, Jesus. Another way of looking at this is that during the Sacrament of Baptism our human nature ceases to exist and we become God/Human.

It was Jesus' Baptism by His cousin John in the River Jordan that initiated or activated this pivotal and key part of God’s Plan for a Relationship with Us Humans, it activated this most essential mechanism. But there is only one Baptism, that of Jesus. When we are Baptised we partake of His One and Only Baptism; Time and Space are brushed aside.

84. During the Sacrament of Baptism there is an external physical washing with plain water to represent and parallel a real spiritual washing of ourselves. But it is more than just that. Jesus was Baptised by his cousin, John. When we are baptised, it is not a new separate Baptism. Jesus' Baptism was a major "once only" event in Supernatural History, and It exists for all Time, both before and after. Jesus’ Baptism is as significant for Us as is His Incarnation. Jesus’ Baptism complements and completes His Incarnation. Without His Baptism there would have been no mechanism for Us to obtain our Shares in His Divinity and, therefore, His coming into this Universe would have been a waste of effort. When one of Us is baptised, Time and Space are set aside and we share in the actual Baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan made present to Us. Our person becomes as His Person is now, God/Human. That is the purpose and effect of Baptism.

When Jesus was Baptised, He heard the voice of God the Father from Heaven saying - "This is my Beloved Son, in Him I am well pleased". These words apply equally to Us at the moment of our Baptism. It is the moment when we accept and receive our Personal Share in the Divinity of Jesus, the Second Person in God. It is then up to each one of Us to sustain the Divine Life of Jesus in Us from that moment through the way we live our lives and also through the Three Means which He has given to Us to maintain the Life of our Share in Jesus’ Divinity - namely, Attendance at The Holy Mass and the Sacraments of Reconciliation and of Holy Communion of The Eucharist.

85. The Sacrament of Baptism should, additionally, be seen as a "Contract" between God and each person who is accepting their Share in the Divinity of Jesus through Baptism. In return for what God is giving to Us -

86. Is there an Eighth Sacrament? Not quite, but almost. The next two paragraphs are a preamble to what I want to say about this. I am referring to Suffering.

In previous sections we have dealt with what I referred to as the "Means given to Us by Jesus to enable Us to maintain our Share in the Divinity of Jesus as a Living Share". We have dealt mainly with Three formal and well-defined Means - the Sacrament of Reconciliation, Holy Communion of The Eucharist and Attendance at The Holy Mass. We have also mentioned the less formal, but very personal, practice of just being in the presence of Jesus in The Eucharist.

This is still the preamble. The principle practical aspect of keeping Our Share in The Divinity of Jesus alive and well is diffused through every moment of our lives. It is one of the central aspects of being a Christian - namely, being Good and Benevolent to all other people in thought, word and deed on Jesus' behalf; letting Him operate in this Universe through Us. Being 'nice' to every person. Being a "well-balanced" Member of The Mystical Body of Jesus Christ.

To return to my strange question - "Is there an Eighth Sacrament?". Just as we can integrate our Goodness and Benevolence into that of Jesus, we can also integrate any suffering that comes our way into the Suffering that Jesus experienced while He was here in this Universe. Not only His Goodness and Benevolence but also His Suffering are phenomena in the Supernatural History of God and Us which exist outside of Time and Space and these, including His Suffering, are available for Us to participate in, if we choose to do so.

Suffering is almost like an Eighth Sacrament because, if freely accepted and consciously joined to Jesus’ Eternally Existing Suffering, it too, like all of the actual Seven Sacraments, is joined to something which was commenced or activated in this Universe by Jesus and which continues to exist eternally outside of Time and Space to every Human person ever - including those of Us who have died, those who are here now and those who have yet to come in the future.

God does not "cause" any Suffering. Nor does He "allow" it. It is in the nature of this temporary transitional life that He has disempowered Himself from being able to do anything about it. This disempowerment is part of His absolute guarantee of no prejudice to our choosing freely whether to accept or to reject our Shares in Jesus' Divinity and all that that entails.

Choosing to endure unavoidable Suffering for and as Jesus makes you part of the actual Salvation Process as opposed to just availing of the "fruits" of that Process. Suffering is the ONLY means by which you can physically participate in the Salvation Process. Since it relieves Jesus of some of His Suffering, it is the most "rewarded" Human action. But God does not "want" us to suffer; because of this, your suffering helps Jesus only if you cannot avoid it.

A final point about Suffering. You have some control over how the benefit of your Suffering is used by God. You can choose to have the benefit applied to those who are in Purgatory and you can at the same time choose to apply the benefit to your own debt of Temporal Punishment. If you are suffering, then Jesus allows you to choose to apply His Suffering to the Souls in Purgatory.

87. The Holy Spirit, the Third Person in God, arrived in this Universe shortly after Jesus returned to Heaven with His Nature of God/Human. Jesus, before He returned to Heaven, said that He and God the Father would send The Holy Spirit. This very important Event in Supernatural History is described in the Acts of the Apostles (q.v. Gideons New Testament). Symbolic but visible flames were seen to come down over the heads of a group of Jesus’ main followers. Christians refer to this event as The Descent of the Holy Spirit.

Strange and unusual things were done by these followers for a short time after the event in question. They were given great confidence to do what needed to be done to spread Jesus’ teachings and to invite other people to accept their Shares in His Divinity. Some worked miracles. When they spoke in public, some of their listeners say that they could hear them speaking in their own language. These effects lasted for only a short period; just long enough for them to confidently realise that the Holy Spirit had indeed been sent to Us by Jesus as He had promised He would.

The coming of the Holy Spirit to this small number of people was an Eternal Event in Supernatural History in which all Baptised Christians can also participate. The specific Means by which we do participate is referred to as the Sacrament of Confirmation. After our Confirmation we are totally integrated into the Divine Trinity in the same manner as Jesus is. This is a further change in our God/Human Nature and it is NOT reversible.

The Holy Spirit, the Holder of All of God’s Power, is our All-Powerful Protector, our Advocate (here with Us) before God, our Chief Adversary of Satan, the Empowerer of the rôle we are asked to assume as Agent and Messenger of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is the Co-ordinator and Implementer of God's strategies. He exists primarily in Christians in this Universe by virtue of their Share in Jesus' Divinity. But His Power in a Christian is dormant until it is awakened by the Sacrament of Confirmation. This Relationship with the Holy Spirit helps Christians to fulfil their rôle, and to carry out their tasks, as Sharers in the Divinity of Jesus.

88. It is Jesus who brought about our ability to commence a Relationship with the Holy Spirit.

It was while Jesus was physically here in this Universe that He "set up" or "established" Our Relationship with Himself and with the First Person in God, the Father, when He instructed His Cousin, John to Baptise Him. But He did not, while here in this Universe, "set up" Our Relationship with the Third Person in God, the Holy Spirit. Everything else had to be done first, up to and including His return bodily to Heaven. Jesus' final task for our benefit at that time was, with God the Father, to send the Third Person in God, The Holy Spirit, from Heaven and into this Universe to be with Us until He returns. This was the "Promise of the Father" that Jesus had spoken about.

The Acts of the Apostles records what happened at the moment of the Holy Spirit's arrival - a sound like a great wind was heard and tongues of fire appeared over the heads of Jesus' main followers. This moment of the Descent of the Holy Spirit exists continually outside of Time and Space. We commence participation in The Descent of the Holy Spirit during the Sacrament of Confirmation. From the moment of our Confirmation we are in the fullest Relationship with the Divine Trinity.

89. Satan, the Supreme Evil Being in opposition to God, has a pivotal rôle in Our Relationship with God. Satan has this dreadful rôle because of his own choice and not by the Choice of God. We have referred previously to certain Free Choices which Jesus had to make for our benefit. Jesus would have had to make many decisions affecting God's Plan. Satan would have had many opportunities to try to corrupt and injure Jesus during His Temporary Transitional Life in this Universe, in exactly the same way that he currently has such opportunities to corrupt and injure Us. He even appeared to Jesus at least once and directly tried to influence Him. But he failed. Satan then co-ordinated, through co-operating people, the murder of Jesus whom he knew to be God the Son. The Death of Jesus was Satan's greatest ever attack on God, and on all of Us Humans too because we are meant by God to be Sharers in Jesus' Divinity.

The Resurrection of Jesus from the Dead thus became in turn Satan's greatest ever defeat by God, and Satan would never again be given an opportunity to strike at God directly. But he can still strike at God indirectly by influencing Us, who are meant to be Sharers in Jesus' Divinity. He can influence Us -

But it is We who Choose. Choose on God’s behalf. Try not to make a mess of it.

90. We should identify everything we do with Jesus. The Seven Sacraments and The Holy Mass, and being benevolent, and enduring suffering, will not be efficacious for Us unless we know what they are about - what is involved - and unless we are fully co-operating and participating in them and identifying them with Our Relationship with God. We must deliberately identify what we are doing with Jesus’ Wish to live through Us in this Universe.

For example, we obtain our Personal Share in the Divinity of Jesus in an event referred to as the Sacrament of Baptism. This Sacrament will succeed only if we genuinely and freely want to absorb our Share in the Divinity of Jesus into our person, and so become God/Human, and only if we are committed at the time of being Baptised to demonstrating in our lives until our death that we will do our best to be channels of Jesus' Infinite Benevolence, on His behalf and on our own, towards God and towards all other people, and that we will be His Agent and Messenger.

91. There is a Unity between all things in Our Relationship with God. This is an important perspective on The Holy Mass, the Seven Sacraments, such things as the ordinary living of our lives and our Suffering. It is not very meaningful, nor indeed intelligible, to comprehend any one of the Sacraments in isolation from the others. Nor The Holy Mass in isolation from the Seven Sacraments. Nor The Holy Mass and the Seven Sacraments and our understanding of our Relationship with God in isolation from The Church Nor our Goodness and Suffering in isolation from The Holy Mass and the Seven Sacraments. Nor The Holy Mass and the Seven Sacraments in isolation from all of Supernatural History. Nor Supernatural History in isolation from Us living our Shares in the Divinity of Jesus. They are a Single Indivisible System.

92. I will say only a few further words about The Three Specialised Sacraments - Holy Orders, Marriage and the Sacrament of the Sick.  This is because they are not part of the ordinary living of ordinary lives by ordinary people as Sharers in the Divinity of Jesus, the Second Person in God, which is the focus of this Document. (however, see also section 23).

Holy Orders is the appointment or ordination of a Sharer in Jesus' Divinity to be a Priest to minister most of the Divine Gifts to all Sharers in His Divinity on behalf of and in the person of Jesus, the Second Person in God. It is, for that Person, a further development of a Relationship with God, but it does not add anything extra to the Person's integration into the Divine Trinity. The Ordained Priest accepts terrible responsibilities to act as a bridge between God and All Members of the Mystical Body of The Second Person in God, Jesus Christ. The Sacrament of Holy Orders is ministered by a Bishop.

Marriage is the bonding of the Souls of a Man and a Woman within the Mystical Body of Jesus. God has raised the union of a Man and a Woman who are both Sharers in Jesus’ Divinity up into Supernatural History as a Relationship within Jesus' Mystical Body. It will not persist for all Time; it ends with the death of either person. It is a thing of this material Universe only. The Sacrament of Matrimony is not ministered by a Priest. It is ministered by the Man and Woman to themselves. For the Marriage to be a valid Sacramental Marriage, witnesses must be present. The Church expects that a Priest should also be present representing the Church. The Priest must satisfy himself, on behalf of the Church, that the Marriage was validly and freely entered into by the Man and the Woman. The details of the Marriage must also be recorded in an official Register.

The Sacrament of the Sick is primarily intended as a final Divine Gift to any Sharer in Jesus' Divinity whose temporary transitional life is thought to be about to come to an end. Its official name is the Sacrament of Extreme Unction (The Last Anointing). We are also anointed during the Church’s official Rites of the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation.

93. Now we will discuss Original Sin. Chronologically, you might say, Original Sin should be dealt with near the beginning of this Document. However, I am satisfied that this is the point at which to discuss it. To understand what Original Sin is, you need to have some understanding of how God has dealings with Us and how We have dealings with God. That is where we are now in this Document.

We need, firstly, to re-cap on some aspects of our dealings with God -

Original Sin was the downgrading of Human Nature from the status at which God would have Chosen to create it down to a much lower status determined by Us. This downgrading was "realised" by one single human person selected by God for that purpose.

The downgrading of Human Nature happened during God’s first ever direct engagement with Us Humans. This first ever direct contact involved four Persons, God and Satan and two Human Beings (who, we are told, had the names Adam and his wife Eve). There were a series of conversations between these four persons which were of an "Apparition-like" character. These conversations occurred perhaps about 6,000 years ago.

Time and Space are brushed aside and, therefore, the negative outcome of these conversations applies to all Humans past, present and future.

Human Nature itself was downgraded for all Humans by a specific Choice of Adam to disobey a simple but serious prohibition which had been stated to him personally by God. This downgrading had to happen in reality (had to be "realised") in a single identifiable Event in Supernatural History in this Universe, by just one human person. Adam had the dreadful privilege of being that one human person. Adam would have been intelligent, healthy, articulate, educated, possibly literate and would have understood that it was God the Creator, the Supreme Being, Who was speaking to him. He would have understood the concept of good and evil.

94. God did not design Human Nature at this downgraded level. It had to actually be downgraded by one of Us, by some person who had had things explained to him by God Himself and who fully understood what he was doing. It had to actually happen. It had to be done by a Human, by one Person. Adam was that one Person. God had to be involved directly trying to persuade Adam not to carry out the act. Satan had to be involved directly trying to persuade Adam to carry out the act. Adam was selected by God. Adam was predestined to be that person. It was Adam’s vocation.

Human Nature was always going to be downgraded and would never be capable of being equivalent to what it might have been and, especially, would never be capable of being elevated to Divine Nature. God’s Choice would have been that Human Nature would be in good stead with God. He has counteracted the downgrading by offering Us Shares in Jesus’ Divinity.

But God foresaw, before creating anything, that Human Nature would be downgraded by the evil thoughts and activities of most Humans. He foresaw that the tendency to evil in Humans would be equal to the tendency to good but that our appetites would cause Us to tend more towards evil if We were left without His Help. But He could not presuppose any of this when defining Human Nature. The Inadequate Nature of All of Us Humans is reflected in, even embodied in, the thoughts and actions of those two Humans who had that first contact with God and Satan. In the thoughts and actions of Adam, about 6,000 years ago.

This downgrading of Human Nature was the first event in Supernatural History in which a Human Being had a part. Adam was that person. Eve was involved but was not that person.

Although Satan might appear to have scored a success in prompting Adam carry out the Divinely banned action, it laid the groundwork for defeat after defeat for him. It facilitated the Incarnation of the Second Person in God into this material Universe, Jesus, and it facilitated God’s Offer of of Shares in Divine Nature to All Humans.

The downgraded Human Nature is what we refer to as the state of Original Sin. Human Nature is often referred to as "Fallen". This is the same as what I am referring to as downgraded.

95. Adam and Eve cannot have been our "First Parents". A great number of humans preceded them. God knew that the people who lived thousands of years ago would not have understood the concept of His brushing aside Time and Space and so He allowed the giving of the metaphorical version of what happened between Himself and Adam and Eve and Satan which we are used to (e.g. that they were the first ever humans) and which is told in the first book of the Bible - The Book of Genesis.

But, how did the writer(s) of the first book of the Bible (Genesis) find out about Adam and Eve and their encounters with God and Satan. It is sometimes said that Moses, or one of his direct followers, was the writer of The Book of Genesis. It is unlikely that Moses knew Adam and Eve. It may have been through "visions" or dreams that the writer of Genesis became aware of the stories relating to Creation and to Adam and Eve. We should not consider the idea of such "visions" to be improbable. After all, the last book of the Bible (Revelation) is entirely based on "visions".

The important point for Us was that the downgrading of Human Nature as a result of Adam’s carrying out of an action contrary to God’s explicit prohibition applied to all human beings ever - past, present and future. Human Nature became a new lesser thing!

It could also be said that it is not We who have inherited Adam’s sin, but that Adam was burdened with all of our sins.

Original Sin is now, in essence, the state of being merely Human and of not yet being a Baptised Person who has chosen their Share in Jesus’ Divinity (coincidentally, "sine" is the Latin word for "without").

A final point. The "created" Paradise which God offered to Adam is as if nothing compared with the "re-created" Paradise which is ours through Jesus Christ, the Second Person in God.

That concludes our consideration of Original Sin - the downgrading of Human Nature by Us through Adam.

96. We will now move on to discuss in more detail the infinitely important Rôle of Jesus' Mother, Mary, in God's One and Only Plan. Mary is central with Jesus to God’s Plan and very much so.

97. Mary is the Mother of God. Because the nature of Jesus is one which is inseparably both Divine and Human (God/Human), then Mary, His Mother, is Mother of God and not merely mother of the human aspect of Jesus. However, to say that Mary is Mother of God is primarily a statement about Jesus and how we view His Nature, that He is Indivisibly God/Human, rather than primarily a statement about Her.

But Her Motherhood of God is, nevertheless, an important fact for all of Us who are meant by God to be Sharers in that very Divinity of which She is Mother. When We choose to accept our Share in Jesus' Divinity by being Baptised, then we cannot escape having Her as the Mother of that Share. We should emphatically acknowledge Her as such. She is the Mother of All of Us, both Christians and Non-Christians, because a personal Share in Jesus' Divinity exists and has always existed in the Second Person in God, Jesus, for each person whether they have actually chosen it or not (by becoming a Baptised Christian).

98. Mary, the Mother of the Second Person in God (Jesus), is The Only Perfect Christian - the only one of Us whose living of this temporary transitional life caused Her to be perfectly worthy to be given a Share in the Divinity of Jesus. She is the only one of Us who is "entitled" to a Share; the only one of Us who has earned the right. It is both (a) the goodness of how She lived this temporary transitional life and (b) Her freely accepted direct involvement in essential key events of Supernatural History (especially the Incarnation of God) that makes Her worthy. All of the rest of Us are not fully worthy. There are a number of Important Consequences of this for Her and for Us in the matter of our Relationship with God and especially with Jesus.

99. One of these important consequences for Her was that Mary was conceived already with Her Share in the Divinity of God the Son and was fully integrated into Her Relationship with the Divine Trinity, including the Holy Spirit, even though Her Son Jesus Himself had not yet even been conceived as a human being. (Hence what is referred to as the Immaculate Conception of Mary). Because God foresaw Her as the Only Perfect Christian, and because God also knew that She would freely agree to His request for Her to be Mother of the Divine Son, He anticipated the Incarnation of Jesus and all of Supernatural History -

She was, in effect, conceived both Baptised and Confirmed. Events in Supernatural History are not subject to the constraints of Time and Space. Our Shares, including Her Share, in the Divinity of Jesus have always existed.

Mary is often said to have been "Conceived without Original Sin". While this is correct, it is a considerable understatement. Mary was conceived already with the nature of God/Human.

By reason of Mary’s Immaculate Conception She was and is the Precursor and Promise and Guarantee of Us being given our Personal Shares in the Divinity of Jesus. Her Immaculate Conception set the seal irrevocably on God’s Plan for a Relationship with Us.

100. Mary is God's Pre-eminent Human Co-operator. She made a free choice to allow the Incarnation of the Second Person in God through Her. She could have refused. We would not have had a second chance. With only one exception, She alone among Us had observable, constructive and direct participation in events and phenomena of Supernatural History. (The one exception is John the Baptiser, Jesus' Cousin, who had constructive and direct participation in one event - the activating of the Sacrament of Baptism.)

The fulfilment of God's Plan to allow Us to be Sharers in His Divinity is, by God's Design and Choice, a Joint Effort between God and Mary, and it will continue to be so for ever. Our obtaining a Share in the Divinity of Jesus was caused by God to be totally dependent on Mary's agreement to be His Mother. This Dependence exists to all times and to all places.

101. The most important consequence for Us is that Mary is the Co-Mediator with Jesus of All Graces and Benefits that come from God to Us, but not in the same way that Jesus is the Mediator of all Graces. Jesus is the Giver and Mary is the Sole Recipient and Sole Dispenser. These Graces include especially our Shares in the Divinity of Jesus. Therefore, Mary is present to and is at Our Baptism.

As mentioned previously, Mary is the Only Perfect Christian, the only perfect one of Us ordinary humans. Because of this, God gives all Graces and Benefits to Her alone, even those Graces and Benefits that are intended for the rest of Us. She then dispenses these Graces and Benefits to Us by virtue of Her Motherhood of All of Us.

It is solely by Her choosing, by Her Will, which is perfectly attuned to the Will of God, by Her Will by which She agreed to be the Mother of God for Us, that All Graces and Benefits (including our personal Shares in the Divinity of Jesus) are "made available" to Us. The expression "made available" is more correct than "given" because the Graces and Benefits never leave Her. If they did, they would not come to Us because we are not sufficiently worthy to receive them. The expression "made available" is also a more suitable expression because We still have to deliberately "choose" such Graces and Benefits.

Everything which comes to Us from God comes to Us from God the Father, through The Second Person in God, Jesus, and is received for Us by Mary, Jesus’ Mother. It is in that sense that we can describe Mary as the Co-Mediator of All Graces. Her rôle is quite different to that of Jesus. Her rôle is secondary to that of Jesus, Her Son. God the Father sends, God the Son (Jesus) is the totality of what is sent and Mary receives everything.

102. Mary’s rôle is such that, if Jesus can be referred to, as we do, by the reverential name of Our Lord, then She can reasonably be referred to as Our Lady because all things that were done for Us by God depended on Her free co-operation and they continue to depend on it. Everything is within Her Gift.

103. The Nine Months. There is Important Interlinkage between the following -

A major Event in Supernatural History exists which interlinks these - The Nine Months from the Conception to the Birth of the Second Person in God, Jesus Christ. The most intimate Relationship that can exist between two Human Beings is that between a mother and her unborn child. The child is inside her body for nine months. The child grows and survives from nutrition which has been part of her body. The creation of the new nature of God/Human was a Joint Effort between God and Mary in every sense imaginable. This Nine Months is the most multi-purpose event in Supernatural History - it caused or gave substance to each of the things listed above. Divine Nature entered this Universe through that Nine Months Event - through The Woman.

Very little attention has been given to date to The Nine Months. This is a terrible shame; and it is a problem which needs to be addressed. The Nine Months is symbolically represented in one of the major Marian Apparitions - the Apparition at Knock (Ireland) on 21^st August 1879 in the Diocese of Archbishop John McHale. I have included an Appendix about the Knock Apparition giving my interpretation of what was seen in the Apparition (Appendix A).

104. Another important consequence for Her is that Mary is Our Co-Advocate with the Holy Spirit before God and Co-Adversary of Satan for the same reason and in a similar way that She is Co-Mediator with Jesus of All Graces.

In a sense it could be said that She is our Advocate before God because She is in Heaven and that the Holy Spirit is the Co-Advocate because He is here in this Universe with Us. An incredibly close working association must exist between The Holy Spirit and Mary, Mother of God and Our Mother.

105. Another important consequence for Her and for Us is that Mary has already been raised from the dead and brought to Heaven. Hence what we refer to as the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven. Resurrection would be a more appropriate word to use. Or, perhaps we should use both words as the context permits. By being raised from the dead and being brought to Heaven Mary has shared in the Resurrection of Jesus from the Dead and His Return to Heaven. She is, therefore, the Precursor of our eventual Resurrection. And in the case of Baptised Christians, they will also share in the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus if they live their lives for and on behalf of Jesus.

Because She is the only Perfect Christian, and because She is delegated by God to be Co-Mediator and Co-Advocate, Mary was raised from the dead and brought to Heaven very soon after Her death to enable Her to fulfil those rôles. Without Mary's Assumption to Heaven God's Plan would not work to full perfection.

Mary’s rôle as Co-Mediator of All Graces and Benefits causes Us to share not only in the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus but also, and primarily, in Her Resurrection and Her Assumption into Heaven.

Mary has also been declared to be "The Queen of Heaven". She is also Queen of Purgatory.

At the risk of being controversial, I would say that God’s Gifts to Mary, including raising Her from the Dead and bringing Her to Heaven, are Gifts of infinite proportions worthy only of God’s equal, which She is not.

106. Unlike Mary, the rest of Us have to wait until a time of God's choosing when He will end this temporary transitional life and He will end the process of creating more of Us by ending Time itself for Us. This will be a major event in Supernatural History which we refer to as The Resurrection of the Dead at which all Humans ever conceived will be raised from the dead and, in a future event which we refer to as The Final Judgment will be placed in their chosen permanent life (in Heaven or in Hell), to live there forever. The Resurrection of the Dead and The Final Judgment are the only events in Supernatural History that we know about which has not already occurred.

In Mary's case, God was again not bound by the constraints of Time and so He was able to anticipate these future events in Supernatural History (the Resurrection of All Humans from the Dead and The Final Judgment) and cause them to happen to Her. The Resurrection of Mary from the Dead and Her Assumption to Heaven are, to all Christians, a prophetic statement and proof that Our Resurrection from the Dead and our final allocation to whichever place We have Chosen to spend Our Eternal Life are actually going to happen. These things which have happened to Her makes Her the Living Precursor and Promise and Guarantee of these future events for Us. The seal is set on these parts of God's Plan for a Relationship with Us. They can NOT be cancelled.

Mary’s Assumption to Heaven anticipated and included Her Final Judgment. She has already been a subject of The Final Judgment.

107. Mary's rôle as Precursor is much more extensive than that. Mary was and is the Living Precursor of All Supernatural History and of All Natural History. If God had not foreseen Her free acceptance of the full rôle which He would ask Her to play in His Plan for a Relationship with Us, He would not have bothered to create the Universe - nothing would ever have happened about Us, we would never have come into existence; it would all have been pointless.

By Her Immaculate Conception She was the Precursor and Promise and Guarantee of the Incarnation of God in the Person of Jesus, and of our being offered Shares in the Divinity of Jesus and of the Sacrament of Baptism. By Her being raised from the dead and being brought to Heaven She is the Precursor of all that will happen to and for Us at the end of Time.

The fact that Jesus, the Incarnate Second Person in God, has risen from the Dead makes rising from the Dead possible for all of Us Humans. The fact that one of Us, Mary, has already been raised from the Dead is our irrevocable Guarantee that we too must be raised from the Dead.

Good Baptised People will share in The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus through Mary’s Resurrection and Assumption to Heaven.

108. John, the Cousin of Jesus, is the Co-Precursor, with Mary, of our being offered Shares in the Divinity of Jesus. This is an extraordinary privilege for him. Because of the rôle which he was going to have in the Eternal Baptism of Jesus, he was given his own personal Share in the Divinity of Jesus (in anticipation) while he was still in his mother Elizabeth's womb when she was visited by Mary, her own cousin, while Mary was expecting Jesus - during The Nine Months.

John, because of the importance and nature of the rôle which he has had in giving effect to God's Plan for a Relationship with Us (the activating of the Sacrament of Baptism) was, like Jesus, a prime subject for Satan’s attention. He, like Jesus, was tortured and murdered.

109. Perfection, Salvation, Redemption, Sanctification. Christians will be very familiar with these four words. In fact, they will see these words as pivotal concepts of their Christianity. And they all are. There are substantive differences in their meanings. We do two of them and God does the other two.

It is easy for Christians to see that they are to strive for Perfection and Sanctification. But these are very weak concepts compared with what We are really asked to do - namely, to become Jesus and to allow Him to continue to live through Us in this Material Universe. The words Perfection and Sanctification fail the test of adequately expressing what a Christian needs to do. They express only a small part of what a Christian needs to do.

Salvation and Redemption are words which express "What God has done for Us". These concepts have their origins in the Events in Supernatural History whereby, firstly, Human Nature was downgraded by All of Us through Adam and, secondly, Human Nature was rendered capable by God of, not just being restored, but of being elevated to the new nature of God/Human. If We freely and continuously choose it to be so, then We have been "saved" from being merely Human and We have been "bought back" with the elevated status of "Adopted Children of God".

110. And finally, what of those who are not Baptised. Each of these too has a Personal Share in the Divinity of Jesus, but it is not part of their person until they choose to accept it, with the commitments which that entails, through the Sacrament of Baptism. They remain merely Human and are not God/Human; they are not Jesus in this Universe.

The Share of an Unbaptised Person has been given by God the Father and Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, but It remains solely with Mary, the Co-Mediator of All Graces.

That Share, like those which have been accepted, also lives or dies in accordance with the way the Unbaptised Person lives their temporary transitional life. When an adult is Baptised, their Share comes to them with a history based on their past life and may even be in need of Reconciliation with God. For such a person, Baptism itself produces that First Reconciliation.

For Unbaptised Persons who genuinely do not become aware during their lifetime of the Message about God and how He wants to relate to them, and who live their lives in a way which is acceptable to God, they will not be sent to Hell. But we have no information about how God will deal with them.

A Baptised Person (a Christian) must acknowledge and respect the Share in Jesus’ Divinity of an Unbaptised Person through that Unbaptised Person because it really exists and has always existed, just as their own has.