Tuesday, May 27, 2014

4th June Trinity 2013, Open Secret

June Trinity
John 6: 53-69

Jesus answered, ‘Yes I tell you, if you do not eat the earthly body of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood has life beyond the cycles of time, and I give him the power of resurrection at the end of time. For my flesh is the true sustenance, and my blood is the true draught. Whoever truly eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him. As the life-bearing Father sent me, and as I bear the life of the world by the will of the Father, so also he who makes me his sustenance will have life within him through me. This is the bread which
O. Shuplyak
descends from heaven. It will no longer be as it was with the fathers who ate of it and died. Whoever eats this bread will live through the whole cycle of time.’ He said this in his teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
            Many of his disciples who heard this said, ‘These are hard and difficult words; who can bear to hear them?’ Jesus was aware that his disciples could not come to terms with this and he said to them, ‘Do you take offence at this? What will you say when you see the Son of Man ascending again to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life; the physical by itself is of no avail. The words that I spoke to you are spirit and are life. But there are some among you who have no faith.’ For Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him. And he went on: ‘This is why I said to you: No one can find the way to me unless it is given him by the Father’.

4th June Trinity
June 16, 2013
John 6: 53 – 69

The story of the creation of the world makes evident that the Creator provides. Step by step the world was created until everything was in place to receive and nourish the final creation: the human being.

We count on this providence, this foresight of God, even today. We know that we must plant in order to harvest, for that is how God made the world; that we must care for the animals in order to have the food that they produce and to maintain the balance God created in nature.

In today’s reading Christ talks about another level of providence. He is speaking ahead of time about nourishing and sustaining, not physical bodies, but human spirits. For this He will give of Himself as food for our spirits. His body as bread will heal our ills; his blood as wine will give us the strength to clean up our messes, and to deal with what is coming in the future.

At His Last Supper, He performed the actual event that turned bread and wine into His body and blood. He poured His soul, His love, His life into bread and wine. And he gave his disciples, all who will come to Him and learn from Him in future ages, the power to do the same, out of their remembrance of His deed and through their hearts’ connection with Him.  In His providence he created something that makes it possible for our spirits to be healed, nourished and strengthened even today. For as a poet said:

Juan Carreño de Miranda
….The Four Kingdoms of Earth
Prepare the Way-Bread for healing.
Let us now harvest and press,
Let us grind and bake
And consecrate everything that needs it.

Then Man the Consecrated approaches the Grave-Table,
And with him the folk and the circle
Experience creating the Open Secret
That He gives to them time upon time.[1]


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[1]Sebastian Lorenz, „ Menschen-Weihe“ in Die Christengemeinschaft 10_06, pg 507. Translated by C. Hindes. 

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