2nd Trinity November
Rev. 3, 1-6, (Sardis) or
Rev. 3, 14-22 (Laodicea)
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| Escorial Beatus |
Rev. 3, 1-6, (Sardis)
And to the angel who penetrates the congregation of
Sardis write:
Thus speaks he who has power over the seven
creating spirits of God and over the seven stars: I know the consequences of
your deeds, for one says of you that you live, and yet are dead. Awaken, and
strengthen what remains in you, that is otherwise about to die, for I have not
found that your works possess reality before my God.
Remember how you were once receptive for all the
workings of the spirit, and for all words which came from the spirit. Care for
them in your soul in inner loyalty. Change your heart and mind.
If however you do not awaken, I will come over you
suddenly like a thief, and you will not know at which hour I will come over
you.
But you have some names in Sardis whose souls have
not been darkened by illusion and addiction to the senses. They will walk with
me in white garments, for they are worthy of them.
He who overcomes, he shall be clothed with white
garments, and I will not wipe out his name from the Book of Life. I will speak
out his name and acknowledge him before my Father and his Angels. He who has
ears to hear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.
2nd Nov Trinity
Revelation 3: 1-6
In the fairytale of Sleeping Beauty, the twelve good fairies
bestow their gifts on the child at her christening. Before the twelfth fairy
can offer hers, a thirteenth, angry at not having been invited, storms in and
predicts the child’s death at fifteen. The last twelfth fairy cannot undo the
curse, but can soften it. She changes the death sentence into a sleep of a hundred
years.
The writer of the Revelation also demonstrates this activity
of past predictions reaching into future life. For the letters to the seven
congregations are actually addressed to the seven ages of mankind’s
development. The letters are an assessment of each age, its strengths and
weaknesses. Today’s letter to Sardis ,
the fifth one , is aimed particularly to our present age. The warnings are a
matter of life and death. “One says of you that you live, and yet you are
dead.” Rev 3:1 For we human beings have indeed been asleep
for a long time, unaware of those spiritual beings that constantly surround us
as we sleepwalk through our lives. If we continue in what John calls our
illusion and addiction to what the senses convey of the material world, then
our own souls and spirits will indeed die.
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| Burne Jones |
The cure for this sleep, this sickness unto death, is to
wake up. For our souls and spirits live and are fed through wakeful
consciousness; their very nature consists of conscious awareness. In mankind’s childhood, we received the gifts
and blessings of the divine world, because we were open and receptive. But then
we fell into a long sleep, in which we no longer received the gifts, no longer
even remembered the givers. The time of sleep and forgetfulness is over.
Mankind needs to wake up.
In the fairytale, when the hundred years were over, the
prince passed through the thorny hedge that protected the sleeping kingdom and
awakened the princess with a kiss. In our time, the Prince of our soul is kneeling
beside our sleeping spirits, waiting for us to wake up out of our own freedom
and initiative. If we refuse, the awakening will come, but will appear as doom,
fearful and frightening.
John’s letter to the fifth age is a clarion call. Wake up
and live! Wake up and converse with your Prince! Live in loyalty to the Spirit
who loves you.
This conversing with the spirit of love we call prayer. An
early mystic wrote:
The Holy Spirit has compassion on
our weaknesses,
and though we remain impure, He
often comes to visit us.
When He finds our spirit praying to
Him in love,
He immediately dispels the
marauding horde of thoughts
that keep it hobbled. And then he
bids it forward
to the delicious works of spiritual
prayer.
When the angel of the Lord arrives,
he scatters by his word alone
every force that acts against us,
and brings to our spirits that
light
that shines without deception.[1]
[1]
[1]
Evagrios of Pontos, “Effusions on Prayer”, in Love’s Immensity; Mystics on the Endless Life, Scott Cairns, p. 55.
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