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I saw that I am not a beggar, but his daughter; and that this tired body only hides the glory within.

What a marvel it is that the Word was made flesh, and that we can worship Him with our hearts and minds and bodies.

God gave us life. In His sight, people who misuse or mistreat their bodies are behaving as strangely as people who might use electrical goods for unforeseen purposes: a fridge to store dirty pots, a metal-detector as a flail, a television set as a stool, or an electric drill as a dibber for bulbs!

As the priest looks at his congregation, preparing to preach and teach at Mass, he should remember how needy they are. Their souls are as much in need of healing and nourishment as sick bodies are.

A dense cloud seems to cover those parts of the earth where there is war, which cuts off many people from God. Wherever there is conflict there is danger for souls as well as bodies. Except amongst those who stay close to God, there is immorality or hatred or revenge or other evils being worked bodily or within souls.

The food God makes available to us should be seen as fuel for our journey on earth. We should have neither too much nor too little; and if it is of the wrong sort we shall damage our bodies as surely as a car is harmed when the wrong liquid is poured into the petrol-pipe.

When the bread and wine are consecrated by a Catholic priest, they are changed into the Sacred Body and Blood of Christ; and Christ transforms the Communicant, by His Divine life. It is no small matter, that many people, perhaps through no fault of their own, or through not knowing the truth, receive only bread and wine, in Christian bodies which do not have valid Orders.

It is no small matter that many Christian bodies do not have the 'fullness of the means of salvation' which the Catholic Church has, as the 'one true Church'. In a matter of life and death, in bodily care, people take the tablets which are of known origin, proven efficiency, and correctly proportioned good ingredients. And so, for the spiritual life, for Eternity, we take 'medicine' from the Church of known origin - coming from Christ, known to have saints, and with valid sacraments.

Christ our God acted with the Father and the Holy Spirit, to give life to us. As human beings, each person consisting of body and soul together, we can be certain that Christ likes us to value our bodies, and the loveliness of human beings, though not to give in to self-worship.

There is a smiling face put on the 'treatment' of women wanting abortions. Yet the results are the same, day after day and year after year. There are dead bodies to be disposed of: tiny bodies, but the real mortal remains of thousands of tiny babies, ripped from the womb before birth, unwanted.

Whole societies allow the barbarity of abortion to continue, because it is hidden away in clinics and hospitals, behind smart facades and smiling faces; but the truth is that from those smart places leaves a pile of small, dead bodies - in whatever way they are disposed of.

It is astonishing that in an age when people boast about progress, in an 'advanced civilization', some of the waste products in a hospital consist of the little bodies of babies who have been torn from the womb and discarded, at the request of their own mothers.

Some pro-abortion campaigners deny that abortion is the killing of little children. They speak of clusters of cells, blobs of tissue, or 'termination of pregnancy', pushing aside the truth, which is that wherever arrangements have to be made for the disposal of bodies, there has been death: in these cases, deliberate killings of millions of unborn, innocent human beings.

There are people who deny that abortion involves the taking of human life; yet in every abortion clinic there are little dead bodies to be disposed of daily: treated as so much hospital waste, with no respect; and where bodies are, there has plainly been either illness or accident or a deliberate killing; and abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.

The Catholic Church is a visible body on earth, that cannot be mistaken for any other. It is not possible for her to water down her teachings in order to placate Christians in other bodies; yet her Bishops and other clergy can speak, side by side with other Christians, about matters in secular society on which all Christians agree.

A woman's body, instincts, heart and mind are designed to enable her to cherish life within herself, should she conceive. A woman who seeks an abortion is seeking an evil act that will harm her as well as her baby. To have an abortion is to act against her own body, even if she persuades herself otherwise. Her heartache will begin.

We are wise if we adopt a habit of prayer, shutting the door so that we can pray in our 'secret place', as Christ suggested. It is a good preparation for fruitful prayer at Mass. It can also mean that we worship God with our bodies, too, as we feel able to bow, or prostrate ourselves in private before our all-holy God and Saviour.

God looks on us with gladness whenever we pray for victims of oppression, whether for people in danger of injustice or death for political or religious reasons. God sees those forgotten millions whose bodies are dumped in mass graves, just as He sees the tragic sight of abortion, by which millions of tiny babies have been killed in the wombs of their own mothers, usually at her request.

How watchful are we about our everyday habits? Much of what people feast upon today is actually damaging to their souls. It can 'poison' their spiritual lives. By gossip, or pornography or other evils it's as if people feast, like the rats that eat the pellets in the corner of a barn. They feel full, but will poison their souls just as the rats poison their bodies.

It is a tragedy, when Christian bodies vote to discard long-standing Christian doctrines and offer a truncated version of Faith, having abandoned efforts to believe or share God's laws. Various leaders jettison - as if from a ship, into the deep - the truths that the Catholic Church still teaches about holy, indisoluble marriage, about sexuality, chastity, a male-only priesthood, and other matters.