2nd Michaelmas 2022, Pure Spiritual Strength

Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 6:10-20 

What it comes to in the end is this: grasp the power that streams to you in the experience of Christ in the soul and the powerful regency of his pure spiritual strength. 

Put on the power of God as one puts on full armor so that you may stand against the well-aimed attacks of the adversary. For our struggle is not to fight against powers of flesh and blood, but 

against spirit beings mighty in the stream of time,

against spirit beings powerful in the molding of earth substance,

against cosmic powers whose darkness rules the present time,

against spirits who carry evil into the realms of the spiritual world. 

Therefore take up the full armor of God that you may be able to stand your ground on the day when evil unfolds its greatest strength and victoriously withstand it. 

Arild Rosenkrantz

Stand firm, then, girded with the truth, like a warrior firmly girded. Connect yourself with all in the world as is justified in the spiritual world, and this connection with the Spirit will protect you like a strong breastplate. 

And may Peace stream through you, down to your feet, so that on your path you spread Peace, as the message that comes from the realm of the angels. 

In all your deeds, have trust in God. This trust will be like a mighty shield; with it,  you can quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 

Take into your thinking the certainty of Christ’s healing deed. It will protect your head like a helmet. 

And the Spirit, which has become living in you, you shall grasp as one grasps a sharp sword. The sword of the Spirit is the working of the Word of God. 

May this armor clothe you in all your prayers and supplications so that in the right moment, you raise yourself in prayer to the Spirit. To this end, direct your spirit-strength in all your efforts of soul and your intercessions for all who would know Christ’s healing power. 

Feel yourself united in prayer with all other bearers of the Spirit. Take me into your prayers so that when I open my mouth, the strength of the word will be given to me.  Then I can courageously and openly bring the knowledge of that holy mystery that lives in the message of the Gospel, for which I am a priestly messenger enchained. Out of the Gospel itself, there streams to me the free strength to speak with the courage I need.

 2^nd Michaelmas

October 9, 2022

Ephesians 6:10-19 

“Grasp what streams to you in the experience of Christ in the soul, in the powerful regency of his pure spiritual strength.” 

When do we experience Christ in the soul? Some may wonder if that has ever happened to them. But we have all had Christ moments: 

Annael

We experience Christ in those moments when our intentions move us toward healing, toward wholeness and integration; when our intentions seem to be impelling us toward our own future development. Sometimes we only recognize such moment with hindsight. But they are moments when we sense the rightness of our path, that despite pain and confusion, we are moving in the right direction. These moments create in our soul a dynamic peace of will.               

We experience Christ in moments when our feelings are those of courage, of love, and of hope. These moments are Christ working in our soul. They create in our soul a warm and expansive feeling of peace through his love blossoming in us. 

We experience Christ in those moments when our thinking is clear, ordered, insightful, even inspired. These moments create in our soul peace-giving thoughts of trust and faith in ourselves and in the world. 

When our thinking is full of trust in the divine order, supported by our love for Christ and hopes for our future together with him; when our intentions, our motive force moves us toward healing, wholeness, integration, we are moving toward becoming the human being of the future who has chosen to evolve into what God intended for human beings to be—the human being who has evolved into the image and likeness of the Trinity. 

In the Act of Consecration we warmly, intentionally and consciously offer the contents our souls to the Divine. We pray: 

May my will turn toward healing

May this will toward healing arise from my love for Christ

And may I live with the Father consciously through Christ, my thinking enlivened and irradiated by his Spirit. 

This is the requirement that we must fulfill, the toll we must pay in order to enter into the Kingdom of Peace. We offer our souls’ best, which is him in us, 

  

so that our soul’s bodies may worthily receive his bright Body

  so that our soul’s life may stream with his Lifeblood

  so that our souls themselves may receive the Peace he wants to give us. 

Then will our souls feel, think, and will peace. Then will we be able to stream peace from above, all the way down through us to our feet, so that we walk with Christ in peace, along his ever-evolving path of peace. 

“Grasp what streams to you in the experience of Christ in the soul, in the powerful regency of his pure spiritual strength.” 

 

wwww.thechristiancommunity.org

 

 

1st February Trinity 2019, Set It Free

4^th Epiphany

Kenneth Dowdy

Luke 13: 10-17

Once he was teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit weakening her for eighteen years: she was bent over and could not stand upright [lift her head all the way up]. When Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, “Woman, you are released from your illness!”

He laid his hands upon her, and at once she was able to straighten up. And she praised the power of God. Then the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, “There are six days for doing work; on those days you can come and let yourselves be healed—but not on the Sabbath.”

But the Lord replied, “You hypocrites! Does not every one of you untie his ox or his ass from the manger on the Sabbath and lead it away to the water trough? But this daughter of Abraham, who was held bound by the dark might of Satan for eighteen years, wasn’t supposed to be released from her bondage on the day of the Sabbath?”

All his opponents were put to shame by these words, and the people rejoiced over all the signs of spiritual power that happened through him.

1st February Trinity

Feb 3, 2019

Luke 13:10-17

Tissot

Many of us have an appointment calendar or at least a plan for the day. Sometimes everything seems to fall into place. Other times we become annoyed when something unexpected prevents us from carrying out our plans.

The woman who was ill has waited 18 years for just this moment. She has a direct encounter with the loving and healing being of Christ. It is her illness itself that brings her to him in this great moment of destiny. The synagogue leader, too, has a plan. Certain things are to happen on certain days.  He shows no compassion or joy. He can only criticize. He tries to control and limit, according to the schedule.

These two, the woman and the leader, are two archetypes that dwell in every human soul. We all have a part of us that needs healing, a part that longs for a direct encounter with our Creator. And we all have a part of us that says, ‘not now’.

Yes, we need to create and protect our schedules. But the encounter with the Being of Love doesn’t happen by appointment. It happens when it happens; when the moment is ripe; when we are open.

So, as the poet suggests:

Whoever you are: step out of doors tonight,

Out of the room that lets you feel secure.

Infinity is open to your sight.

Whoever you are,

With eyes that have forgotten how to see

From viewing things already too well-known,

Lift up into the dark …

….

And when at last you comprehend its truth,

Then close your eyes and gently set it free.*

---

*Dana Gioia, "Entrance (After Rilke)", in Interrogations at Noon

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4th Epiphany 2019, Requirements of Destiny

4^th Epiphany 

Matthew 8: 1 – 13

When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. Then Jesus said to him, “Take care that you speak to no one about this. But go, show yourself to the priests. Make the gift of offering that Moses prescribes, as a proof to them.”

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman officer, a centurion came to him, asking for help. “Lord,” he said, “my boy lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.”

Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The centurion replied, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Speak just one word, and my boy will be healed. For I myself am a man with people above me, and with soldiers under me. If I tell this one, ‘Go,’ he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness of external existence where human beings live, wailing and grinding their teeth.”

Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go now! According to your faith, so let it be.” And in that same hour, the boy was healed.

4^th Epiphany

January 27, 2019

Matthew 8: 1-13

These two human beings, the leper and the centurion, show us different sides of the ideal human relationship with Christ.

With the leper, the desire for his own healing is balanced by an implicit and humble acceptance of God’s will. “If you are willing,” he says. And the Son of God answers, “I am willing.” 

God is always willing to heal. But healing is not the same as a cure. Conditions need to be met from the human side—then healing is possible, even when no cure can be found. Perhaps, in this case, the man’s humility, his awareness that his own desires were not necessarily sufficient reason for a cure, was what was necessary for both a healing and a cure.

With the centurion, too, there is humility. Now it is coming from someone who is not only himself in a position of power, but also from one who is asking on behalf of someone else. The centurion recognizes a power stronger than his own, one that transcends time and space. It is evidently his implicit and full trust in that higher power which allows his request to be fulfilled.

Christ himself lives both sides, the active healing side, and the receptive,

Gethsemane, Karl Bloch

suffering side. God, in a human body, was learning about human prayer from those he encountered. And their attitudes of soul he would elevate to a kind of perfection in the garden of Gethsemane. There, he was no longer able to keep body and soul together. He was dying. And he asked his Father for a cure, for just one more day, in order to fulfill what he understood to be his mission to die on the cross the next day. “If this cup of death can pass from me today—if it can wait until tomorrow—but—whatever is fitting, according to your will.”

He is our greatest example. “Lord,” we can say, “my trust in you provides the connection through which healing can flow from you. My awareness of the laws of destiny lets me know that in all humility, I am perhaps not the best judge of what I, what others, what the world needs. Only if the requirements of destiny have been fulfilled will a cure be possible. But whatever happens, nonetheless you heal, you make whole. Your will be done.”

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3rd Epiphany 2017, Love Thaws

3rd Epiphany

Matthew 8, 1-13

When he came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him. And behold, a man with leprosy approached him, and kneeling down before him said, “Lord, if you are willing, you are able to make me clean.”

Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.”

And immediately he was cleared of his leprosy. And Jesus said to him, “See that you tell no one. But go and show yourself to the priests and offer to them the gift that Moses commanded as a testimony of your cleansing.”

When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a Roman captain, leader of a hundred soldiers, approached him, pleading with him and saying, “Lord, my boy lies at home, paralyzed, suffering great pain.”

Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.”

The centurion answered, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof. Just say a word, and my boy will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. If I say one word to this one—‘Go, ’ he goes, and if I tell another ‘Come,’ he comes. If I tell my servant ‘Do this,’ he does it.

Hearing this, Jesus was amazed and said to those following him, “Amen, the truth I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great power of trust. And I tell you, that many will come from the east and from the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of the heavens. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the darkness of [godforsaken] external existence, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

And Jesus said to the centurion, “Go home.  Let it be done to you as you have believed.”

And the boy was healed in that hour.

3rd Epiphany

January 22, 2017

Matthew 8, 1-13

Today we hear of two different healings. The leper asks for his own healing. The centurion asks for the healing of another's suffering and paralysis. Furthermore, the centurion humbly asks for a healing at a distance. Christ responds, both with a healing and with warm praise for his trust.

We, too, like the centurion, are used to controlling certain things, making them happen. And at other times, especially when praying for another, we recognize that Christ can work at a distance.

In the Act of Consecration, we, like the centurion, are humbly aware of illness. It this case, it is the illness of our own soul and bodily constitution. Before communion, the priest acknowledges that Christ is entering a dwelling that is sick. And at the same time, there is humble trust in the power of Christ's Word of Healing.

Jane Delaford Taylor

Christ heals because He loves. He stands respectfully at a distance, waiting for us to approach. It is our trust in Him which allows Him to ease our suffering and paralysis of soul. 

As Theresa of Avila says,

And God is always there, if you feel wounded.  He kneels

over this earth like

a divine medic,

and His love thaws

the holy in us.*

St. Teresa of Avila, "When the Holy Thaws," in Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West --versions by Daniel Ladinsky

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1st Epiphany

Matthew 2: 1-12

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea—during the time of King Herod—behold: wise priest-kings from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,

               

Albani Psalter

“Where is the one born here King of the Jews? We have seen his star rise in the east and have come to worship him.”

               

When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. And he assembled all the high priests and scribes of the people and inquired of them in what place the Christ was to be born.

And they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it was written by the prophet:

And you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,

Are by no means the least among the rulers of Judah;

For out of you shall come forth the ruler

Who will be shepherd over my people, the true Israel.”

Then Herod, secretly calling the Magi together again, inquired from them the

Herod consulting the Three Kings, Tissot

exact time when the star had appeared. He directed them to Bethlehem and said, “Go there and search carefully for the child, and when you find him, report to me, that I too may go and bow down before him.”

After they had heard the King, they went on their way, and behold, the star that they had seen rising went before them, and led them in its course over the cities until it stood over the place where the child was.

Evangeliar Altomünster

Seeing the star, they were filled with [there awakened in them] an exceedingly great and holy joy.

Entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; they fell down before him and worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures and offered him their gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh.

And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed to their country by another way.

1st Epiphany

January 6, 8, 2017

Matthew 2: 1-12

The three priest kings are on the watch for the appearance of a new kingly

artist unknown

being. And this kingly being shows himself to them at a distance. He appears in the realm above the earthly in the form of a star, which guides them to himself. They are overjoyed when the star of the one they love and revere leads them to a house with a mother and child.

They offer him the durable and radiant gold of their wisdom, the sweet frankincense of their devotion, and the bitter myrrh of healing. The child absorbs these spiritual components, which he then in turn, later, offers to the salvation of humankind.

We each have a star of destiny guidance. It shines above our heads at birth. It dives down into us at maturity, working from within, as inklings and intimations, as dreams and conscience.

artist unknown

Can we develop an eye for the destiny guidance, the star that lives in another? Do we feel a reverent joy when we glimpse it? Are we willing to offer our wisdom, our reverence, our capacity for healing in support of their path?

A traditional prayer from another part of the world says:

Journeying god,

pitch your tent with mine

so that I may not become deterred

by hardship, strangeness, doubt.

Show me the movement I must make

toward a wealth not dependent on possessions,

toward a wisdom not based on books,

toward a strength not bolstered by might,

toward a god not confined to heaven.

Help me to find myself as I walk in other's shoes.*

*Prayer song from Ghana, traditional, translator unknown

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8th September Trinity 2015, Fog of Old Unease

8^th September Trinity

Ten Lepers, James Christensen

September 13, 2015

Luke 17: 11 – 19

 And it happened as he was on the way to Jerusalem that he passed through the middle of Samaria and Galilee.

And as he was entering a certain village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and they raised their voice, saying

“Master, Jesus, have mercy on us!”

And seeing them he said, “Go, and show yourselves to the priests.” And it came about that as they went on their way, they were cleansed.

Now one of them, when he saw that he had been healed, turned back, glorifying God with a loud voice, and fell on his face at his feet, and thanked him--and he was a Samaritan.

And Jesus responded and said, “Were not all ten cleansed? And the nine—where are they? Was no one seen returning to praise the revelation of God’s working in this event except this foreigner?”

And he said to him, “Rise, and go your way. The power of your trust has made you strong.”

8^th September Trinity

September 13, 2015

Luke 17: 11 – 19

Leprosy is a disease that is obvious to everyone, for it sits on the surface. And because of contagion, the lepers of Jesus’ time were sent away from their religious and social community.

In our time, it may be that we suffer from a kind of inner leprosy. It may be that our souls show a certain deformation, obvious to all – a deep and abiding anger, or an irresponsible flightiness, or an excessive degree of self-preoccupation. Or as one wisdom teacher puts it, Certainty can become an illness that creates hate and greed.[1] Aware of it in us, others are unable to maintain community with us, and we feel isolated.

The first step is to become aware of our inner illness. And then we can ask Christ, the Master Human Being, to help us. And like the lepers in the story, he will send us back to our religious community, to show that we are aware of our flaws and are working to change them. For the ills can only persist when we are unaware.

But before anything else, the true source of our soul healing lies the strength of our trust, and results in expressing gratitude, in a loud voice, and with deep humility. Thanks to our community for our awareness of soul sickness. Thanks to God for his merciful attention to our need for help in overcoming the sickness of sin. Thanks to our angel for progress made on the way back into the community of those who are aware of the health-giving power of Christ.  As the poet John O’Donohue says,

Leper Healed, Adriaen Collaert

May you use this illness

As a lantern to illuminate

The new qualities that will emerge in you.

May your fragile harvesting of this slow light

Help to release whatever has become false in you.

May you trust this light to clear a path

Through all the fog of old unease and anxiety…[2]

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---

[1] “Certainty”  Tukaram in Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West, versions by Daniel Ladinsky

[2]“ A Blessing for a Friend on the Arrival of Illness”, John O’Donohue, in To Bless the Space between Us, p. 60

3rd Michaelmas 2014, She is Vulnerable

3^rd Michaelmas

October 19, 2014

Revelation 12: 1-17

And a momentous image was unveiled in the world of spirit: a woman, clothed with the radiant power of the sun, the moon under her feet, her head adorned with the crown of the twelve stars of heaven. And she is with child and cries out in the labor and pain of giving birth.

And at the same time a second image was revealed in the heavens: a great fiery-red dragon with seven heads and ten horns. On its head it has seven crowns and its tail is sweeping a third of all the stars in heaven and dashing them onto the earth. And the dragon is standing before the woman about to give birth, so that when she bears the child he can devour it. And she bore a child, a son “who would shepherd all nations with a rod of iron.” And the woman’s child was caught up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place that God keeps ready there, so that they can take care of her for days numbering one thousand two hundred sixty.

Michael, Durer

And a war flared up in the spirit world. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the dragon fought in the midst of his own angels, but he was not strong enough, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. Down came the dragon, the giant, the serpent, the evil one called both Satan and the devil, deceiver of all the world. Onto the earth he came hurtling down, and all his angels with him.

And I heard a great voice in heaven, saying:

Now can begin the working which proceeds from our God—

The power to heal the world,

The power to transform all being,

The power to draw everything into godly being.

Arisen is the spirit leadership of his Christ.

Overthrown is the accuser of our brothers,

He who accused them night and day before the countenance of God.

They have overcome him through the blood and the sacrificial power of the Lamb

And by the divine Word to which they bore witness.

They did not love their own lives too dearly, nor did they fear death.

Therefore, rejoice you heavens

And all who lodge therein!

But woe to the earth and the sea:

For the Adversary has come down to you,

And he seethes with measureless fury,

For he knows that his time is short.

And when the dragon recognized that he had been cast onto the earth, he began to persecute the woman who had borne the son. Then the woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she could fly into the desert to her appointed place, where she is to be nourished for a cycle of time, for cycles of time, and for half a cycle of time, far from the face of the serpent.

And the serpent opened his mouth and spewed out a river of water after the woman so she would be swept off her feet by the river. But then the earth came to the woman’s assistance; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon spewed from his mouth. And the dragon burned with fury against the woman. He stormed away to make war on the rest of the woman’s seed, people who keep to the divine world aims and who are united with the destiny and witnessing of Jesus. As I saw this I was standing on the sandy shore of the sea.

3^rd Michaelmas

October 19, 2014

Revelation 12: 1-17

When we undertake to create something new, something that has never before existed, there is a period of laboring. And in this creative struggle, we are vulnerable. We can become anxious about whether we can achieve the new; we can be anxious about whether our inner and outer resources will suffice; we can experience inner and out opposition to what we are trying to achieve.

Humankind is struggling to give birth to a new way of being. The cosmic woman in the gospel reading is crowned with ideals from the realm of the stars. She is clothed with sun-radiant loving kindness; she stands upon earthly deeds done in justice, in accordance with reason and God’s higher purposes. She is the soul of humanity.

Glorification of the Virgin, St. Jans

She is vulnerable. She is being attacked by the universal many-headed dragon of fear and doubt, of hatred and greed. For the dragon and his minions have been cast down onto the earth by the progressive powers that serve the good. Michael and his angels have cleared the heavens of pollution, so that from there they can send us powers of healing, powers of transformation, powers of spiritualization. It is these powers for the good that humanity is trying to gestate.  These are the powers of Christ in us.

Yes, we are persecuted by powers of destruction. But at the same time, we are protected. We have been given the wings of prayer, the wings of meditation, the wings of the sacraments and community life. They bring us to the protected place, the place of divine nourishment. And we can know that the dragon’s persecution is ordained by God to last only for a short time. This is why the dragon ‘seethes in measureless fury.’ For his time is short. And his power to destroy everything is thwarted.

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