5th November Trinity 2019, Power to Create

November Trinity

The end of the Book of Revelation 22: 12-21

Jean Fouquet

“Watch, I am coming soon, and I will have my rewards with me so as to give to each person what his deeds amount to. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the goal.”

Blessed are those who cleanse their garments so that they will have power in the realm of the Tree of Life, which overcomes death, and may go through the gates into the Holy City. Outside shall remain those who are bound to low senses, those who serve evil powers, who walk impure paths of soul, who spread death around them, who give themselves up to demonic forces, and who, through their ways and deeds, falsify their true being.

“I, Jesus, sent my angel to report these things to your assembled communities. I AM the root and stock of David, the star who unfolds his brightness in the morning”.

And the Spirit and the Bride, the Holy City, say, “Come!

And may he who hears also say, “Come!” And may the thirsty come and may everyone wh

Maronite

o wants it get to drink the Water of Life freely, as grace.

Everyone who hears can find his inmost being strengthened in the prophetic words of this book. Whoever does not yet sense its greatness and truth, God will lead him to full knowledge through the trials of destiny which are written in this book.

And whoever diminishes the words of this prophecy, God will remove from him his share in the Tree of Life that overcomes death, and his share in the Holy City written about in this book.

He who lends these words their power says:

“Yes, I am coming quickly!”

Ye, so be it. Amen:

Come, Jesus our Lord

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all!

5^th November Trinity

November 24, 2019

Revelation 22: 12-21

When we go through an airport, there are certain items that are not allowed. If we have thoughtlessly brought them, we have to leave them behind before we can proceed on our journey.

Merlaya Allwood

The gospel reading speaks of certain human qualities of soul, soul baggage that we have to leave behind at the gates of the Holy City. These soul qualities are not allowed to enter, for they serve the forces of mortality and death. They cannot enter, because the Holy City, the city of mankind’s future existence, is a realm of life. It is a realm where the Tree of Life grows and blossoms and bears fruit; a realm where the Water of Life flows freely and endlessly; where the Star of the Morning shows illumines all.

This is the last week of the church year. We have come to a kind of portal. We are about to enter a new beginning. What baggage shall we leave behind?

At this threshold we meet the One who calls Himself the Door. We enter through Him. He calls himself both the beginning and the goal. He is the place where endings and beginnings come full circle and meet. He encourages us to wash our garments, to continue to purify our souls through prayer and sacraments and meditation, to purify our life’s bodies through our striving to overcome the death forces in ourselves and to create habits of virtue.

He is the root and the star. He is the source out of which we all grow and blossom and become fruitful; He is the morning star which announces the beginning of a new day. ‘Come’ He calls. ‘Let go of the old; enter into My realm of the ever-flowing, ever-creating newness. For I wish to give you My power to create.’

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4th November Trinity 2019, Overcoming the Beast

       

Nov. Trinity

Revelation 14, 1-20         

And I looked, and there was the picture of the Lamb, standing atop Mt. Zion and with Him one hundred forty-four thousand having his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.

           

And I listened and heard a voice from the heavens, a voice like a mighty rush of waters, and like a mighty thunderclap—the voice I heard was like the voices of harpists playing on their harps.

And they all sing a new song, there in front of the throne and in front of the four creatures and the elders, and no one could learn the song but the one hundred forty-four thousand ransomed from the earth. These are the ones who did not defile themselves by the straying, through which the spiritual in man is betrayed; they have remained virginal [pure] in their inmost being and follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were ransomed as the seed of a new humanity which belongs to the Father God and the Lamb. Deceit and lies are not found in their mouths; pure and unblemished are they in their innermost being.

Bamberg Apocalypse

And I looked and saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, bringing the good news which is good news forever to those living on earth—to every race and nation and every tongue and folk. And the angel cried out with a great voice, saying:

“Stand in awe of God and turn to honor him. For we have come to the hour of his divine decision. Raise yourself in prayer to him who in truth created the heavens and the earth and the sea and all the springs of water.”  

And a second angel followed, who said, “Fallen, fallen is the great city of Babylon, who made all nations drink of the wine of her sacrilege, in order to draw the holy into misuse.”

And a third angel followed them, who cried out with a powerful voice: “Whoever adores the beast and its likeness and accepts its stamp on forehead or hand, he will drink of the wine of God’s anger, thick and strong and undiluted, from the cup of his wrath. And in the presence of the holy angels and in front of the Lamb shall anger be transformed into pain like the pain of fire and sulfur.

Their suffering rises and darkens the encircling air like smoke through the cycles of time. And day and night those who made the beast into their god, who honored its picture as the highest, who took its being into their innermost being, find no peace. In this place however there works the power of the steadfast endurance of those who have taken the healing power of the Spirit into themselves, who have fulfilled the goals of the Spirit, and who have worked trusting in Jesus’ healing deed.

And I heard a voice out of the worlds of Spirit which said, “Write this down: People of heaven are those who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the spirit, let them rest from their efforts and labors, since their good deeds, the fruits of their lives, are not lost along their paths of soul, but have preceded them here.

Ottheimrich Bible

And I looked, and suddenly I saw in the spirit a white cloud, and seated upon the cloud the figure of a son of humanity, with a golden crown upon his head and a sharpened sickle. And another angel stepped forth from the temple crying in a loud voice to the one seated on the cloud:

“Let your sickle go forth and harvest, for the hour of harvest has come; ripe and dry and firm are the crops of the earth.”

And the one seated on the cloud threw his sickle down upon the events on earth, and the earth’s crop was harvested.

And again, another angel came out of the temple in the heavens; and he too held a sharpened sickle. And a further angel came out who tended the fire at the altar. He cried out with a mighty voice to him who held the sharpened sickle and said, “Let your sickle go forth and harvest the grapevines of the earth, for their grapes have reached their prime.”

So the angel threw his sickle down to the events on earth, and he harvested the earth’s vineyard and threw the grapes into the great winepress of God’s anger. And they took the winepress outside the city and trampled the grapes. Blood flowed from the winepress that reached to the muzzles of the horses for sixteen hundred miles around.

4^th November Trinity
November 17, 2019
Revelation 14: 1-20

Photo Adam Carr

From mythology, we have the image of the centaur. From the waist up, it is human. The lower half is a horse. The most famous of these creatures was a great healer, for its animal instincts contained great wisdom. But its animal nature also harbored great aggression and destructiveness.

The centaur is a picture of the composition of a particular stage in being human. Our physical nature is like the horse, with all its instinctual wisdom as well as its aggression. Our eternal spirit, our true humanness, is wedded on earth to our animal nature. Our self-awareness rises above our animal nature. Our truly human self is meant to guide and direct our animal nature, and ultimately to transform it.

It is humanity’s task gradually, over lifetimes, to make ourselves fully human, to transform the beast in us into something more akin to an angel.

Durer

Today’s gospel reading from the middle of the Revelation to John shows a future division of humanity into those who have achieved this transformation, and those who have not. There is a great crowd in white, standing before God’s throne. They have remained true in developing their pure human core. They have taken the image and activity of the Son of Man into themselves, the activity of the Divine Human Being. What is inside them shines out of their countenance. Therefore they have the name of the Lamb and the Father written on their foreheads. They have become the seed of a new phase of human existence. They sing a new song. What they have achieved, the development of their true humanity will carry over into a new spiritualized world.

What is ripe is harvested. What is no longer of use is destroyed. One day, humanity’s inner ripeness will be tested. Those who have transformed their animal nature into something higher, who have matured their true humanity, will enter the company of the angels. Those who have failed to master their beastly nature, who wear the mark of the beast on their foreheads, will have to suffer the purifying fire. For the beast in us must be overcome.

Through Christ, the Light of the World, we can achieve this transformation. He is the bridge to our true humanity. Connecting with Him, conversing with Him, praying with Him, is the Way.  A medieval mystic says:

No one can be saved

Ghent Altarpiece

without divine light.
Divine light causes us
to begin and thereafter
enables our progress
as it leads us
to the summit of perfection.

Therefore, if you desire
to begin
and would receive
this divine light, pray.

If you have begun to make
some little progress
and would see this light
intensified within you, pray.

And if you have reached
the summit of perfection,
and desire to be super-illumined
so as to remain in that state, pray. *

*Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248 – 1309), “Divine Light,” in Love’s Immensity, Mystics on the Endless Life, Scott Cairns, p. 87

3rd November Trinity 2019, Clarion Call

Trinity November

Rev. 3, 1-6, (Sardis) 

Angel of Sardis, Tiffany

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.

3rd Nov Trinity

November 10, 2019

Revelation 3: 1-6

William Morris

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 a future life. For the letters to the seven congregations are actually addressed to the seven ages of humankind’s development. The letters are an assessment of each age, their strengths, and their weaknesses. Today’s letter to Sardis, the fifth one, is aimed particularly at 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.

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 humankind’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. Humanity needs to wake up.

In the fairytale, when the hundred years were over, the prince passed through

Giambatista Basile

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.*

*Evagrios of Pontos, “Effusions on Prayer,” in Love’s Immensity; Mystics on the Endless Life, Scott Cairns, p. 55.

2nd November Trinity 2019, Seed Sized

November Trinity

Revelation 1, 1-20

This is the unveiling of the being of Jesus Christ, which proceeds out of the divine world for those who would serve him. To them shall be revealed what must of necessity happen in the future and which powerfully presses into world events. God formed this revelation in imagery and sent it through his angel to his servant John. And so John speaks as a witness to everything he saw, that is, to the Divine Word, and to the life of Jesus Christ, which serves as a testimony. Blessed is he who knows how to read the prophetic words, and blessed are those who know how to hear them, and all who take what is written in this book into their souls; for time presses.

John, to the seven congregations in Asia:

Grace and peace to you

From Him who is, and who was, and who is coming

And from the seven creating spirits before his throne

And from Jesus Christ.

By his witnessing, he is the archetype of trust.

He is the firstborn from the realm of death,

He is the leading spirit of the Kings on earth.

He has turned to us in love, and by the power of his blood

He has released us from the spell of sin which lay upon us.

He has established us as true kings and made us into priests

before the divine Ground of the World, his Father.

To him belongs all light of the spirit and all power of soul from aeon to aeon. Amen.

See: he comes in the realm of the clouds.

All eyes shall see him, also the eyes of those who pierced him. And men down the ages will lament about him. Yes. Amen.

I am the Alpha and the Omega,

Thus speaks the Lord our God

who is, and who was, and who is coming

the divine ruler of the world.

I, John, your brother and your companion in all trials and also in the inner kingdom and in the power of endurance which we possess through our oneness with Jesus: I was on the island of Patmos. There it was granted to me to receive a share of the divine Word and to bear witness to the sufferings of Jesus.

On the Lord’s Day, I was lifted up to the world of spirit and I heard behind me a mighty voice like the sound of a trumpet. It said: write what you see in a book and send it to the seven congregations: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.

And I turned to see him whose voice was speaking to me. And as I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands, a figure like that of the Son of Man:

clothed with a long billowing garment,

encircled round his breast with a golden band;

his head and his hair shining white like snow-white wool,

his eyes like a flame of fire,

his feet like burnished bronze glowing in a furnace,

his voice like the rushing of many streams of water.

In his hand he held seven stars;

from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword

and his face shone, as the sun shines in its full radiance.

And when I saw him, I fell at his feet and was as if dead. But he laid his right hand upon me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and look! I am living and I bear the life of the world through all aeons. Mine is the key to the realm of death and of the shades. Write down what you see: what is now, and what is to come.

The secret of the seven stars, which you see in my right hand, and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the picture in the spirit for the angels of the seven congregations, and the seven lampstands are the seven congregations themselves.”

2^nd November Trinity

November 3, 2019

Revelation 1: 1-20

The writer of the Revelation struggles to put into words what he hears and sees in the spirit. Through his words, he creates a picture for us. Through his word-picture, we see the One he sees, hear the One whose voice he hears.

The altar is a kind of re-creation of what John saw. Like John, we are here in the spirit on the Lord’s Day. We see the seven lampstands in the seven candles. And amongst the burning candles is a picture of the One we hear about in John’s vision:

clothed in a billowing garment…

eyes like a flame of fire…

face shining like the sun in full radiance.

The picture painted above the altar is a kind of stand-in, over and against the day when we are able to see the Living One himself there, face to face. For He is indeed there at the altar, amidst the candles. And during the consecration, the transformation, He changes himself in yet another picture. At the altar we are offering to him what He needs in order to transform himself into yet another form, so that there we receive him, clothed in snow-white bread on a silver paten, shining in wine in a golden chalice.

We hear his words as we listen to the Gospel. We gaze at him pictured among the seven candles. We unite with him as he offers himself to us in bread and wine.

In bread and wine he makes himself small, seed sized, so that we can take him into our Selves; so that he can grow in us; so that we may be his community.

All Saints, Nov 1, 2019

1 Thessalonians IV, 13-18

(But) we do not want to leave you ignorant, brothers, about those who have

fallen into the sleep of death, so that you do not distress yourselves as those others do, who have no hope. For as we know in our hearts that Jesus died and has overcome death through resurrection, so also will God lead with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For we tell you this in the word of the lord, that we who are living and are remaining for the revelation of Christ's presence will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord, himself will come down from heaven at the shout of command, at the archangel's call, and at the sound of the trumpet of God, and those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise; afterward we, the living, who are left, will be caught up together with them in a cloud to the meeting with the Lord in the realm of the air. Therefore, encourage one another with words such as these.

All Saints Day

Evelyn De Morgan

November 1, 2019

1 Thessalonians 4: 13-18

We know the story of how the archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would bear God’s son. There is another story that after Gabriel had left, a dark angel, whom Mary recognized as the angel of death, remained behind.  This angel told her that, carrying souls across the threshold of life, he was every man’s faithful companion, be they young or old.

The angel said that even God’s son would have to know death, indeed that He was born so that he would die. These words pierced Mary’s heart like a sword. Filled with grief’s sorrow, Mary could not understand.

So the angel of death took her invisibly to a place where an old woman lay dying. After standing there a while, they heard the woman tell her grieving husband that although she had seen the dark angel of death again, she was no longer afraid to go with him; for a smiling child with shining eyes was with him. The child had touched the angel’s dark wings, and they had begun to shine in all the colors of the rainbow. This was the most beautiful thing she had seen in all of her life.*

Christ came into earthly life, as we do, with death as His faithful companion. With His superabundant life, He transformed this companion of ours, so that by the time of His own death, the angel of death had been changed into a being of beauty and knowledge, a glory that serves ongoing Life even in death. When those who have died look back on the moment of their death, they see it as the most beautiful and inspiring event of their existence.

Sombart

One of the tasks humankind now faces is to find and face the angel of death while still alive here on earth. When our courage overcomes our fear of death, when we take courage and face him, we see that Christ, shining, is holding his hand, touching his wings and turning them into the multicolored beauty of our hope and knowledge of the living world of the spirit. When we face them, we see the faces of all who have walked across the threshold of death with Christ and the transformed angel.

The angel of death gives us the gift of knowledge and understanding on earth.  May those who have gone before us, who have beheld Christ and his companion, send us their inspiration.  May our thoughts, our feelings, our devotion live in the shining life of the Christ Spirit into the times to come.

* from a story titled, “Mary and the Angel of Death,” by Georg Dreissig, in Das Gold der Armen, (The Gold of the Poor) Urachhaus

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