Holy Nights, Jan 2, 2022, Being Recognized

Holy Nights

1 Corinthians 12:31- 13:13 

Strive to make the best out of the gifts of grace working together.

Yet, I will show the way that is higher than all others.

If I speak out of the Spirit with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, then my speaking remains as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. And if I had the gift of prophecy and could speak of all the mysteries and could impart all knowledge and, further, had the power of faith that removes mountains, yet am without love, then I am nothing. And if I were to give away everything that is mine, and lastly were to give away even my body for burning, yet am without love, then all is in vain.

        Love makes the soul great;

Love fills the soul with healing goodness;

Iris Sullivan

Love does not know envy;

It knows no boasting;

It does not allow falseness;

Love does not harm that which is decent.

It drives out self-seeking.

Love does not allow inner balance to be lost.

It does not bear a grudge.

It does not rejoice over injustice.

It rejoices only in the truth.

Love bears all things,

Is always prepared to have faithful trust.

It may hope for everything and is all-patient.

 

If love is truly present, it cannot be lost. The gift of prophecy will one day be extinguished, the wonder of languages cease, clairvoyant insight come to an end. Our insight is incomplete, incomplete is our prophecy.

But one day the perfect must come, the complete consecration – aim; then the time of the incomplete is over.

When I was still a child, I spoke as a child, and I felt and thought as a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

Now we still see things in dark outlines, as in a mirror. Some day we will see everything face to face. Now my insight is incomplete, but then I shall stand in the stream of true insight, in which recognizing and being recognized are one.

We find permanence that bears all future within it in the exalted triad:

In faith

In hope,

And in love.

But the greatest of these is love.

Holy Nights

January 2, 2021

1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13 

Paul describes love as a soul’s way of being and acting. 

Jan de Kok

He speaks of the loving soul’s open spaciousness, a soul that is aligned with truth, balanced and patient. A loving soul foregoes meanness and selflessly supports decency. In other words, a soul is filled with love is full of goodwill. 

Love works as a healing force, both the love we receive, but more importantly, the love we generate and give. 

Love’s antitheses—spiteful envy, arrogance, and selfishness—bespeak a soul whose will is ill, a soul in need of healing. 

The mystery of the Act of Consecration of Man, the communion service, demonstrates the process of learning how to love. 

First, we receive God’s love by listening, receiving a portion of the life of Christ in the Gospel. Then we undertake to make a real inward offering. We gather our purest thoughts, our most Christ-ened feelings, and our most energetic will, and we pour them into the chalice along with wine and water, offering them all to the Father as a chalice of healing. 

Our modest, meager act of love toward Him is made strong and potent by Christ’s love joining ours. In Communion, the love we offered to the Father returns to us multiplied, as the gracious, peaceful love that Christ embodies in the bread and wine. It is His love that we take in, that enters us. We receive the healing medicine for our will’s illness. 

This is an enactment, a kind of foreshadowing of what will one day be fully realized. Right now, we can only enact love partially, in outline, as in a mirror. But one day, we too will, in goodwill, work face to face with the Master of Love, in Whom recognizing and being recognized are one.

 

1st August Trinity 2016, Unimaginable

Mark 8, 27-Mark 9-1 (Peter’s Confession)

1st August Trinity

And Jesus went on with his disciples into the region of Caesarea Philippi (in the north of the land at the source of the Jordan where the Roman Caesar was worshiped as a divine being). And on the way there he asked the disciples (and said to them), “Who do people say that I am?”

They said to him, “Some say that you are John the Baptist; others say, Elijah, still others that you are one of the prophets.”

Then he asked them, “And you, who do you say that I am?’ Then Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”

And Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

And he began to teach them: “The Son of Man must suffer much and will be rejected by the leaders of the people, by the elders and the teachers of the law, and he will be killed and after three days he will rise again.” Freely and openly he told them this.

Tissot, Get thee behind Me

Then Peter took him aside and began to urge him not to let this happen. He, however, turned around, looked at his disciples, and reprimanded Peter, saying to him, “Withdraw from me; now the adversary is speaking through you! Your thinking is not divine but merely human in nature.”

And he called the crowd together, including his disciples and said to them, “Whoever would follow me must practice self-denial and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever is concerned about the salvation of his own soul will lose it; but whoever gives his life for my sake and the sake of the gospel, his soul will find power and healing. For what use is it to a human being to gain the whole world if through that he damages his soul, which falls victim to the power of an empty darkness? What then can a man give as ransom for his soul? In this present humanity, which denies the spirit and lives in error, whoever is ashamed of me and my words, of him the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the shining revelation of the Father among his holy angels.”

And he said to them, “The truth I say to you, among those who are standing here there are some who will not taste death before they behold the kingdom of God arising in human beings, revealing itself in the power and magnificence of the spirit.”

1st August Trinity

July 24, 2016

Mark 8, 27-Mark 9-1 (Peter’s Confession)

Tissot, The Blind Leading the Blind

Our hopes and expectations can blind us. We picture for ourselves how we hope things will be, how
we want them to be. But these imaginings can cast a veil over what actually is and what will be. They can blind us to what is real.

The people of Jesus’s time had built up images of how the Messiah would be. He would be a great political leader, a new King David to overthrow the Romans. He would be a prophet, the voice of God. He would be a priestly mediator of the divine.

Peter indeed recognizes in Jesus the Christ, the anointed and expected Messiah. Immediately Jesus tries to tell his disciples what his real mission, his real plans are. He tries to clear away the false hopes and expectations. He will not be a political leader. Although he is the voice of God, he will not be an old style prophet only of the folk. He will be a priest, but of a new order. He will be both priest and sacrifice.

C. D' Herbois

He tries to tell Peter that what will be most important is that he will suffer, die, and resurrect – live, die, and live again. He will mediate Life itself, so that we too can live again.

But Peter’s earthly hopes get in the way. His expectations become an adversarial force, an obstacle that Christ must reject. And it is Judas’s false expectation that hand Jesus over to the executioners. Christ’s task is so other, so radical, so unimaginable that even to this day hardly anyone fully understands it.

Yet even though we may not understand Him, Christ is still able to work on his mission, as long as we are open to him; as long as we don’t harbor false expectations of what he can do for us. He works in our hearts to heal; he works in our communities to unite; he works in the world to give peace.

www.thechristiancommunity.org 

10 August/September Trinity 2014, Young One, Arise!

10^th Trinity August September

Luke 7, 11-17

And it came to pass that on the next day Jesus went into a city called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went along with him. And as he drew near to the gate of the city, they became aware that a dead man was being carried out—the only born son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd of people from the city accompanied her.

And seeing her the Lord felt her suffering, and said to her, “Weep no more.”

And approaching, he touched the coffin, and pallbearers stood still. He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise!”

The dead man sat up, and began to speak. And Jesus gave him to his mother. Astonishment and awe seized all who were standing there, and they began to praise God and to glorify what was here revealed, saying,

“A prophet powerful in spirit has been raised among us, and God has come down to us, his people.”

Word about him spread out into all of Judea and all of the neighboring regions

10^th August/September Trinity

Franz Dvorak

September 28, 2014

Luke 7: 11 – 17

Every night we go to sleep. We meet with our guardian angel, our higher self and guide. We are cleansed of our fatigue and together we and our angel look at the events of the previous day. We plan for the coming day, what we need to do, how we will need to act. The next day, we rise to our tasks and inspirations.

When we die, we meet with Christ. We are cleansed of our weariness and ills. With him we look at our previous lifetime. We plan for what we need to do and be, how we shall conduct our next life. After a rest, we will hear his voice, “Young one, I say to you, arise!” And we will be given to our mother.

Our fear of dying is sometimes a fear of not having lived the life that we intended before we were born. For we have all come with a unique mission. We would do well to pay attention to those glimmerings of inspiration, those subtle intentions, the angelic promptings that we bring back with us from sleep. For they are our day by day guide for living the life we truly intended. 

The poet’s words express the hopes of our angel:

May the beauty of your life become more visible to you, that you may glimpse your wild divinity.

…May the light of dawn anoint your eyes that you may behold what a miracle a day is.

May the liturgy of twilight shelter all your fears and darkness within the circle of ease.

 …May you find enough stillness and silence to savor the kiss of God on your soul and delight in the eternity that shaped you, that holds you and calls you.[1]

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] John O’Donohue, “A Blessing for Beauty”, from Beauty – The Invisible Embrace