Whitsun II, Whitmonday
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| Woloschina |
John 14: 15 -26
“If you love me, keep my commands. And I will
ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with
you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it
neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and
will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before
long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live,
you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and
you are in me, and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the
one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too
will love them and show myself to them.”
Then Judas (not Judas
Iscariot) said, “But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to
the world?”
Jesus replied, “Anyone who
loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to
them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my
teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who
sent me.
“All this I have spoken while still with you.
But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will
teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
Whitsun II, Whitmonday
John 14: 15 -26
May 25, 2015
We human spirits are enclosed
in earthly bodies, enclosed in our own skin. This is what gives us a sense of selfhood
on earth – that we and no other can occupy the space we take up. It leads us to
a sense of independence and gives us a taste of freedom. Yet that same sense of
self is an illusion. For we are fully dependent upon the work of others for the
maintenance of our earthly existence.
Their work feeds and clothes us. And we are dependent upon the Divine
for every breath we take, for the very fact that we exist, alive, at all.
The commands of Christ are
simple, yet infinitely difficult for us. Christ asks us to remember the Father
of Life and to send him our gratitude. And Christ asks us to acknowledge with
humble gratitude the importance of others in our lives. Our heartfelt thoughts
of gratitude, our awareness that we are all woven together in a great tapestry
of destiny, that the other is striving and evolving, just as we are, becomes in
us the basis for an objective spiritual love. It creates the potential for a
living circulation of mutual support between us and the beings of the spiritual
world; support between us and all others; and between us and the beings of the
natural world.
Out of this gratitude and
support, which we strive to engender within ourselves, Christ can appear.
Within our striving, the Father’s Healing Spirit works. He stands by us in
every moment. Our gratitude creates a portal for the Spirit of higher Truth to
enter our understanding.
