7th February Trinity 2019, Sun Within the Sun

February Trinity

(5^th Sunday before Easter)

Matthew 17: 1-13

Transfiguration, Fra Angelico, Wikimedia Commons

After six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, and John the brother of James and led them together up a high mountain apart from the others.

There his appearance was transformed before them. His face shone as bright as the sun, and his garments became white, shining bright as the light. And behold, there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, conversing in the spirit with Jesus.

And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be in this place. If you wish, I will build here three shelters, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.”

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them and suddenly they heard a voice from the cloud that said, “This is my son, whom I love. In him, I am revealed. Hear him.”

When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces to the ground in awe and terror.

And Jesus approached them, and touching them said, “Rise, and do not fear.”

And raising their eyes, they saw no one except Jesus.

Baptism, Verrochio, da Vinci

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus instructed them: “Tell no one what you have seen until the Son of Man has risen from the dead.”

And the disciples asked him, “What is meant when the scribes say, ‘First Elijah must come again’?” He answered, “Elijah comes indeed, and prepares everything [restores all things]. But I say to you, Elijah has already come, and the people did not recognize him but rather have done to him whatever they pleased. In the same way, the Son of Man will suffer much at their hands.”

Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them about John the Baptist.

 7^th February Trinity

March 17, 2019

Matthew 17: 1-13

The rising and setting of the sun create our sense of time, our day and night, season after season. At its highest, the sun is too bright to look at. Only when it is near the horizon can our eyes bear to look at it directly.

Our lives too have their seasons, their rising and setting. In the midst of our lives, it is often not possible to see what shines within them. But near their setting, it is easier to view.

Jesus bore the Christ-Sun within him. In today’s reading, the sun of Christ’s earthly human life is approaching its setting.

The three disciples with Him are granted a glimpse into the Sun-brightness of

His being. He stands in conversation with Moses, the past giver of the Law, and Elijah, the prophet of the future. Christ stands in the middle between them as the ever-present Now, for he has gathered into himself all of time. His earthly life is setting; and yet the Christ Sun will rise again. He is both Alpha and Omega, beginning and goal.

Our lives in Christ, the Christ-Sun in us, is the eternally present Now. He allows us to see the meaning of our lives in clarity, especially in its setting. Christ in us allows us to hope for another rising when this life reaches its close.

For as Angelus Silesius said, we are to become radiant suns:

My spirit once in God will eternal bliss become

Just as the sun’s own ray is sun within the sun.*

---

*Angelus Silesius, Cherubinic Wanderer

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6th February Trinity 2019, Become His Likeness

February Trinity 

(Sunday after Ash Wednesday)

Matthew 4:1-11

Tissot

 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the loneliness of the desert to experience the tempting power of the adversary.

After fasting forty days and nights, He felt for the first time hunger for earthly nourishment. Then the tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, let these stones become bread through the power of your word.”

Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘The human being shall not live on bread alone; he lives by the creative power of every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Tissot

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the parapet of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Again a third time, the devil took him to a very elevated place and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give to you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me as your Lord. “

Tissot

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship [pray to] God your Lord who guides you and serve him only.’”

Then the adversary left him, and he beheld again the angels as they came to bring him nourishment.

6th Feb Trinity

March 10, 2019

Matthew 4: 1-11

  

A tree lives and develops in three zones. It is rooted in the earth where it is nourished by the soil. It weaves and works in air and light; it blossoms and fruits in the warmth of the sun.

In overcoming the three temptations, Christ, the divine human being, clears the three basic areas in which our living souls develop. He reminds us to root ourselves, nourished ‘in the creative power that comes from the mouth of God.’ Matthew 4:4 That is, we are to recognize that we are not fed and sustained by the material nature of bread, but rather by the living power of the universe that God places in the grain.

Tree of Life

While rooted in God’s creative power, we are to weave in the light and air of the divine world and its lawful order, within the divine ‘ordering of space and course of time’. To make one’s ego supreme, to impose one’s own wishes and desires on the world, to test the divine order, is to be like leaves trying to fly—such leaves, separated from the tree, are in fact already dead.

And we are to blossom in the warmth of divine love, not in the heat of overbearing pride. For it is the wise guidance of God that brings us to our full glory and fruitfulness, not our own seeming mastery over the world.

Rooting our souls in God, working and weaving in His light, blossoming in His warmth, we will gradually develop into what God intends us to be—fully and divinely human. Overcoming the basic standard temptations, the temptations of materialism and egotistical pride, our true humanity will blossom.

We were created in God’s image. Through Christ’s strength of overcoming, we will weave and work His purpose, in His daylight. Through Christ, we will blossom into God’s purpose and promise for us: that we become His likeness.

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5th February Trinity 2019, Let It Go

Sunday before Ash Wednesday, 7^th Sunday before Easter)

Luke 18: 18-34 (adapted from Madsen)

One of the highest spiritual leaders of the people asked him, “Good Master, what must I do to obtain eternal life?”

Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but One—God alone. You know the commandments, you shall not destroy marriage, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not speak untruth, and you shall honor your father and your mother!

He said, “All these I have observed strictly from my youth.”

[Jesus, looking at him, loved him… Mk 10:21] When Jesus heard this, he said,  “One thing however you lack: Sell all of your possessions and give the money to the poor; thus will you achieve a treasure in the spiritual world—then come and follow me!

He was sad about these words, for he was very rich. And when Jesus saw him thus, he said, “What hindrances must those overcome who are rich in outer or inner possessions, if they want to enter into the kingdom of God. Sooner would a camel walk through the eye of a needle than a rich man be able to find the entrance to the kingdom of God!”

Those who heard this said, “Who then can be saved?”

He said, “For man alone it is impossible; it will be possible however through the power of God working in man.”

Then Peter said to him, “Behold, we have given up everything to follow you.”

He replied, “Amen, the truth I say to you. No one who leaves home or wife, or brother or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in earthly life, and in the age to come eternal life.”

Then he took the twelve to himself and said, “Now we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything which the prophets have written about the Son of Man will fulfill itself: He will be given over to the peoples of the world; they will mock and taunt him, they will spit upon him and scourge him and kill him, but on the third day he will rise up from the dead.”

Yet his disciples understood nothing of all this. The meaning of his words remained hidden from them, and they did not recognize what he was trying to tell them.

5^th February Trinity

March 3, 2019

Luke 18: 18-34

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are anticipating the richness of spring and the fullness of summer; but below the equator, it is turning into autumn and winter is approaching. This great balance over the whole earth is a picture of a great truth that also exists on the soul level:  over the whole of a lifetime, no matter what our inner or outer riches, we must pass through loss and death to arrive at a new life.

In the gospel reading, Christ brings this home to the rich young man.

Heinrich Hoffman

The young man is rich, both inwardly and outwardly; he is in the summer of his development.  But Christ is asking him to take the next step—the step into an autumn shedding, the step into a winter sleep. The episode ends before we find out whether the rich one does carry out Christ’s request. At this moment in the gospel story, the young man is very sad—he already anticipates the grief of loss.

But when the young man summons the courage to follow through, he will leave behind his wealth for others and lay down his life. His loss and death will be real and complete. But so will his completely new and unforeseen life. He is to become a Lazarus. Christ will call him forth to a whole new level of being.  And Christ will intimately and continually accompany his further development – through loss and death, and into a further life. 

The recently deceased poet Mary Oliver* says:

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation

….

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

*Mary Oliver, “In Blackwater Woods.”

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