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 St. Johnstide 2008, Appalling Goodness

St. Johnstide

van der Weyden

John 1: 19-39

This is the testimony of John, when the Jewish leaders sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” Freely and openly he made confession. He confessed, “I am not the Christ [the Anointed].”

Then they asked him, “Who are you then? Are you Elijah?” And he said, “No, I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said, “Who are you? What answer are we to give to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?”

He said in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “I am the voice of one crying in the loneliness: Prepare the way for the Lord [so that the Lord may enter into the inmost soul [self].”

And those who had been sent by the Pharisees asked him, “Why do you baptize if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”

John answered them, “I baptize with water. But someone is standing in your midst whom you do not know, who comes after me although he was before me. I am not worthy even to untie the strap of his sandals.”

This took place in Bethany near the mouth of the Jordan where John was baptizing.

The next day he [John] sees Jesus coming to him, and says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes upon himself the burden of the sin of the world. He it is of whom I said: ‘After me comes one who was before me, for he is greater than I  [for he is ahead of me].’ [After me comes one who was (generated) before me, for he is the prototype.] Even I did not know him; but for this I have come, and have baptized with water, so that human souls in Israel might become able to experience the revelation of his being.”

And John testified: “I saw how the Spirit descended upon him as a dove from the heavens and remained united with him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend, so that it remains united with him, he it is who baptizes with the [breath of the] Holy [Healing] Spirit [and with fire].’ And I saw this, and so I testify that this is God’s Son.”

The next day John was again standing there, and two of his disciples were with him. And as he saw Jesus walking past, he said, “Behold, the [sacrificial] Lamb of God [through whom humanity’s sense of self will be purified.]”

The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?”They answered, “Rabbi [Teacher], where are you staying [where do you live] [where do you take refuge]?” He said, “Come and you will see!”

And they came and saw where he stayed [lived], and remained with him all that day. It was about the tenth hour [four o’clock].

3^rd St. Johnstide

July 13, 2008

John 1: 19-34

Both illness and recovery are mysterious processes. Out of the blue, it seems, we “catch” a cold. We run a fever. No matter what we do, we don’t recover until the illness has run its course. Then healing, equally mysterious, arrives too, on its own. We can  experience healing as grace.

In the seasonal prayer, St. John the Baptist speaks in words of flame. His flame-words are described first of all as health-bearing; for all human souls are suffering from an illness, the sickness of being separated from their own divine origin. John’s health-bearing flame word is like a soul-fever, designed aid the process of healing.

His flame words are also ‘guilt-conscious’. In the light and heat of the fire of his words, we become aware that we are ill. We were created in God’s image and likeness. This sickness means that we are failing to live up to our truly divine human nature and task. The sickness of sin has laid us low. As one of the mystics describes it:,

When I enter that darkness I cannot

recall a bit about anything human,

or about the God-man.[1]

Mengs

Once awareness arrives, burning shame and guilt are the result.

But John’s words are also ‘grace-divining’. In our state of illness we look for the medicine and the healing. And it has indeed been given us. It is in the descending of the true Spirit of the human being, the Healing Spirit, into Jesus, the Christ. He takes upon Himself the burden of the sin, the separation of the world. He is the medicine for our illness.

The burning fever of the longing for healing is found in the depth of the heart. It is this flame of longing that begins the process of purification, in which the heart rises in love toward our Healer. Health-bearing, guilt-conscious, grace-divining describe the interaction between the human and the divine.

Again the mystic:

The [healing] embrace of God puts fire to the soul,

by which the soul entire is felt to burn

for Christ, accompanied by a light so great the soul

suspects the immensity of God’s appalling goodness. [2]


www.thechristiancommunity.org

---

[1] Blessed Angela of Foligno, “The Darkness”, in Love’s Immensity, by Scott Cairns, p. 89.

[2] Ibid, “His Blazing Embrace” , pg. 88.

Whitsun 2008, Embrace of God

Pentecost

John 14: 23-31

Jesus replied, “He who truly loves me reveals my Spirit, and my Father will love him and we will come to him and prepare with him a dwelling in the everlasting [an eternal dwelling]. He who does not love me cannot reveal my Spirit. And the spirit power of the word that you hear is not from me; it is the speaking of the Father who sent me.

I have said this to you while I am still with you. But he who is called down, the health-bringing Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you everything and will awaken within you all that I have said to you.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid [have no fear].

You have heard how I said to you, ‘I am going away, and yet I am coming to you’. If you loved me you would rejoice because I am going to the Father[ly Ground of the World], for the Father is mightier than I am.

I have told you now, before it happens, so that when it happens you may find trust. I no longer have much to say to you, for soon the prince of this world is coming. Yet over me he has no power.

But the world shall see in this how I love the Father [Ground of the World] and how I act in accordance with the Father’s purpose, as it was entrusted to me. Arise, let us go on from here. [let us be on our way.]

Whitsunday

May 11, 2008

John 14:23-31

A flame is the light and warmth that arises from the transformation of earthly matter. It is the perfect picture for how the flaming light of our awareness arises out the body’s work of transformation of our food. It is also the fitting picture for how warmth arises when this awareness is converted into active, loving deeds of limb.

In the events of Easter, Christ rooted Himself in the earth. At Ascension, Christ, the Tree of Life, expanded His being into the heavens, joining heaven and earth. His expansion into all of the earth means that every human being has a share in His being, in His love, at least unconsciously. For His love is the very life of the earth, the very life in our bodies.

However, it is our task not only to receive His life, but also to become aware, conscious of Christ’s relationship to us, or else this life in us will gradually fade. The Life will be forced to withdraw. Christ’s life in us needs to wake up, rise up, become a flame of conscious in us. We need to join with Him in conscious awareness, in love. We need to join hands with Him, so that our hands become His hands on earth. The food we receive to support His work on earth is Communion with Him. His work on earth is the transformation of the earth itself.

Whitsun or Pentecost celebrates the moment in human history when this wide-awake knowledge of His spirit, the love connection of each individual to Christ on earth, lit up in the awareness of His disciples. They were together in heart and mind, celebrating the meal in remembrance of Him. And suddenly flames appear. In the light of the flames they understood Christ’s mission on earth. They felt the immensity of His selfless love. Into their wills they took the warmth of His intentions, so that His deeds would continue to bear fruit on earth through their deeds. They began to return His embrace of love.

One of the mystics said,

The embrace of God puts fire into the soul.

by which the soul entire is felt to burn

for Christ, accompanied by light so great the soul

suspects the immensity of God’s appalling goodness.

You won’t get used to it, nor will you know its scope.

The effect of this fire within the soul is to render it

certain and secure that Christ is there within it.

And still, what we have said is nothing

compared to what you find in the embrace of God.[1]

His love leads to the light of awareness, to warmth of will. So may we, as Christ gives us the strength to do, become the flames of His love. As He says: “Arise, rise up; let us be on our way.” John 14: 31 Let us transform the earth.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

---

[1] Blessed Angela of Foligno, “His Blazing Embrace”, in Love’s Immensity, Scott Cairns, p. 88.

Easter Sunday 2008, Soul Ablaze

He Qi

Easter Sunday

Mark 16: 1-18

And when the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint Him. And very early on the first day of the week, they went to the tomb just as the sun was rising. And they said to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?”

And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back—and it was very large. And they went into the tomb. There they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clad in a white robe; and they were beside themselves with amazement. And he said to them, “Do not be startled; you seek Jesus of Nazareth the Crucified One. He is risen; He is not here; see, there is the place where they laid Him [his body]. But go, and say to his disciples and Peter “He will lead you to Galilee. There you will see Him as He promised you.”

            And they went out and fled from the tomb in great haste, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and being awestruck, they were unable to say anything to anyone about what they had experienced.

When He had risen early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene from whom He had driven out seven demons. And she went and told those who had walked with Him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, their hearts could not grasp it.

After this He appeared in another form to two of them on the way as they were walking

He Qi

over the fields. And they went back and told the rest, but they could not open their hearts to their words either.

Afterwards He appeared to the eleven themselves as they were celebrating the meal. He reproached them for their lack of openness and for their hardness of heart, because they had not wanted to believe those who had seen Him, the Risen One.

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the new message from the realm of the angels to the whole of creation. Whoever unites his heart with it  [believes] and is immersed in me [baptized] will attain the salvation. But whoever closes himself against it does not let the power of selflessness into his heart [does not let the power of My Self into his heart] will meet his downfall. And spiritual powers [these signs] will stand by those who unite themselves with it and will attend their path [believe]: Through the power of my being [in my name] they will drive out demons; they will speak a new language; serpents they will make upright, and poisons they are given to drink will not harm them. They will lay their hands on the sick, and give healing forces to them.

Easter Sunday

March 23, 2008

Mark 16: 1-18

When we walk out of a dark space into a bright one, the light can be dazzling. For a while we cannot see. We are unable to orient ourselves. It takes a bit for things to clarify and to emerge from the light.

During Holy Week we moved within a cold darkness, in the blackness and loss of the season’s inner space. And suddenly, overnight, everything has changed to brightness and a perplexing joy. We are like the women moving in the dark toward sunrise; the women in a dark sepulchral cave and seeing dazzling forms, hearing incomprehensible words—He is not here; He is risen. He will lead you to Galilee. There you will see Him.

It takes a while to adjust. And an even longer time to understand, to grasp that He who was lost to us has turned up alive and more than well; and furthermore, different. The mind cannot grasp it. But something has changed.

The animal of the body is quicker to apprehend. Its heart beats in jubilation; every breath is comfort and joy. For heart and breath have already been reunited with the Beloved. The mind is slow; the senses slower yet. But heart, blood and breath have changed. For something in the light is different; Someone is living now in light and air. The soul’s doors and windows have been thrown open, and life and light and warmth come streaming in.

One of the saints has tried to describe it:

I saw a fullness and a singeing

brightness with which I then

felt myself so filled

that words now fail to serve….

I would not say I saw a bodily form

but he was as he is in [the] heaven[s]

which is to say, of such exquisite

beauty that I have no means

to speak of it, save to say

He is the Beauty, the All Good

š

Unfailingly I knew that it was Christ

who warmed me, for nothing sets the soul ablaze

As when Christ has entered it and charms it

with His love.

š

The embrace of God puts fire to the soul….

The effect of this fire in the soul is to render it

certain and secure that Christ is there within it.[1]

This fire of love is ignited in the soul by Christ in us, He who lives in our life, whose light is in our daylight. The fire of His love is a fire of offering, a mysterious fire that does not consume, but creates—more light, more life, more love.

www.thechristiancommunity.org.

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[1] Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248 – 1309), in Love’s Immensity, Scott Cairns, p. 86 (“His Entry and Delight”), p. 87 (“A Vision”), and p. 88 (“His Blazing Embrace”).

New Year's Day 2008, New Seeing

The Gospel of John, 1:1-18

transl. Adam Bittleston

In the very beginning was the Word,

And the Word was with God,

And the Word was God.

He was with God in the very beginning.

All things came into being through Him,

And without Him came into being nothing

That has come into being.

In him was Life,

And the Life was the Light of mankind.

The Light sines in the Darkness,

And the Darkness did not grasp it.

John the Baptist, Leonardo da Vinci

There came to be a man, sent from God,

His name Ioannes.

He came for testimony,

That he should testify of the Light,

That all might have faith through him.

He was not the Light,

But came to testify of the Light.

For the Light that in truth endures,

That illumines every man,

Was coming into the World.

He was in the World,

And the World came into being through Him

Yet the World did not know Him.

He came to the separate,

Yet the separate men did not receive Him.

But those who received Him—

To them He gave full power

To become children of God,

Those who have faith in His name.

They have their being

Not from the bloodsteams,

Not from the will of the flesh,

Not from the will of a man,

But from God.

And the Word became flesh,

And made his dwelling among us,

And we saw His glory,

Glory of one born from the Father alone,

With abundance of grace and truth.

Ioannes testified of Him, proclaiming,

That is He of whom I said:

He Who comes after me

Takes His place above me

Because He was before me.

From the abundance of His Being

We have all received

Grace upon grace.

The Law was given through Moses;

Grace and truth came into being

Through Jesus Christ.

God no-one has beheld ever;

The Son Who is born of Him alone

And Who has His Being

At the Father’s breast,

Has come to lead our seeing. 

Holy Nights, New Year’s Day

January 1, 2008

John 1: 1-18

In the beginning, at the first creation in Genesis, God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light, separating itself out from the dark and formless void. Light is the forefront of all existence. After the light is created, come the waters of life, and the separation of the living waters of the heavens from what will become the watery earth below. The first creation was achieved through separation, by division and elaboration. And after a long human history, human beings become blind and God himself seems to disappear from the picture.

Roland Tiller

With the advent of Christ, the creating Word of God speaks again, and a second, new creation begins. What was sundered in the beginning becomes reconnected. The light and the living waters come together again, and a divine human being is created. He is a bright fountain of living light; in Him is a life that is the true first light itself. And the Light reveals—itself, as a God in a human form that we can see.

God enters the picture of the world again. He is a God whose truth is overflowing love. It is this human God, this divine human being, who would rouse us from the sleep of earth, from the illusions and deceptions of the sense-bound world. He would shine upon our day and open our eyes. Through Him, our blindness toward God will be healed. In this way, the abyss that had opened up between God and Man is bridged.

The creative Word of God speaks again, an invitation: “Come, follow Me across the abyss into a new way of seeing.”

And one day we all will say in the words of the mystic:

I saw a fullness, and a singeing

brightness with which I then

felt myself to be so filled

that words now fail to serve,….

I would not say I saw a bodily form,

but He was as He is in Heaven,

which is to say of such exquisite

beauty that I have no means

to speak it, save to say

He is the Beauty, the All Good.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

---

[1] Blessed Angela of Foligno (c. 1248-1309) “A Vision” in Love’s Immensity, Scott Cairns, p. 87.

3rd November Trinity 2008, Pray

3^rd 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 to the Lamb. Deceit and lies are not found in their mouths; pure and unblemished are they in their innermost being.

And I looked and saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, bringing the good news which is good news forever to those live 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 sulphur.

Their suffering rises and darkens the encirling 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 the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the spirit, let them rest from their efforts and labours, since their good deeds, the fruits of their lives, are not lost along their paths of soul, but have preceeded them here.

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.

3^rd November Trinity

November 16, 2008

Revelation 14: 1-20

From myth we know the centaur. From the waist up, it is a human being. 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 for the composition of the human being. 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.

Arild Rosenkrantz

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.

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 the great crowd in white, standing before God’s throne. They have remained true to 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 of 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 our bridge to our true humanity. Connecting with Him, conversing with Him, is the Way.  A medieval mystic says:

No one can be saved

Arild Rosenkrantz

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.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

---

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