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| Ascension, around 1030, Codex Aureus |
Ascension
John 16:22-33
So you have to suffer pain now. But I will see you
again, and then your hearts will be filled with joy, and no one can take that
joy from you. Up to now, you have not prayed in my name. Pray from the heart,
and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.
All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But
the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures but will tell you openly and unveiled
about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus
will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day, you will ask out
of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf.
For the Father himself will love you
because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth
from the Father. I have come forth from the Father, and I have come into this
world.
I leave the sense world again and return to the
world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”
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| Ascension, Ninetta Sombart |
Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking
in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed
to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes
us believe that you came from God.”
Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your
heart? Behold, the time is coming and has
already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will
then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally
united with me.
All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may
find peace. In this world, you will have
great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”
Ascension
May 24, 2020
John 16: 22–33
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| Contemporary Resurrection Icon |
At night we may be troubled
with bad dreams. But in the morning, we rise into our day-waking consciousness.
Our awareness overcomes the dream state
and we understand that what troubled us was only a dream.
Our earthly lives can have
something of the quality of a dream. We may be troubled by an occasional or
even continuing ‘nightmare’ situation. But we can make efforts to awaken, to rise beyond even our ordinary dream-like day-consciousness.
Christ lived the nightmare.
He suffered and died. He descended into hell. He rose on the third day. And then
at His Ascension, he rose even further—and descended even deeper. For at His Ascension,
His loving consciousness, His Life, spread out over the whole world. The Buddhist teacher Jack
Kornfield said, “The unawakened mind tends to make war on
the way things are.” Christ the Awakener has aligned Himself with the world, in
loving acceptance of what is. That is
the first step toward transforming the way things are into the way they can be.
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| Ascension, Sombart |
In our moments of earnest
prayer, we rise toward Christ, who stands embracing the world with His peace. “Pray
from the heart and it will be given to your heart,” He says. “Feel my power in
your heart….so that you may find peace.”(John 16:1, 31, and 33) Only by awakening to a higher level of awareness can
we, like Christ, embrace what is, in
love, and with courage. With Him we can recognize that our own lives are enmeshed
ultimately with the life of the whole world; and that only through Christ’s
power of transformation can the nightmare be overcome.
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