1st Michaelmas, Sept 29, 2013, Courageous Humility

1^st Michaelmas

Matthew 22, 1-14

And Jesus continued to speak in parables to them:

The kingdom of the heavens arising in human hearts is like a man, a king, who prepared a marriage feast for his son. And he sent out his servants to call the guests who had been invited to the marriage, but they would not come.

Then he again sent out other servants, and said , “Say to those who have been invited, ‘Think, I have prepared my best for the banquet, the sacrificial oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered; everything is ready. Come quickly to the wedding.”

But they were not interested and went off, one going to his field to be his own master, another falling into the hectic pace of his own business. The rest however took hold of the servants, mistreated them and killed them.

Then the king grew angry; he sent out his army, brought the murderers to their destruction and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, “Although the marriage feast is prepared, the invited guests have proved themselves unworthy. Go out therefore to the crossroads of destiny and invite to the wedding whoever you can find.”

And the servants went into the streets and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.

Then the king came in to see the guests, and among them he noticed a man who was not dressed in the wedding garment  which was offered to him. And he said to him, “My friend, you are sharing the meal; how is it you came in here without putting on the wedding garment that was offered to you?”

But the man was speechless.

Then the king said to the servants, “Bind him hand and foot and cast him out into the darkness, where human beings wail and gnash their teeth. For the call goes out to many, yet only a few make themselves bearers of the higher life.”

1^st Michaelmas

Collot d'Herbois

September 29, 2013

Matthew 22:1-14

After the heat and busyness of summer, we can feel ourselves coming to ourselves, reawakening within ourselves. We take heart in the face of the coming winter’s work (or, in the Southern Hemisphere, summer’s work).

Our hearts are the crossing point between the inner world and the outer. It is there that we enact the consecration of the human being. It is our heart that turns toward Christ. It is in our heart that the fire of creative live will be enkindled. Our heart will become aware of the light of the spirit.

This is the time of the year when the call goes out to the heart. We are invited to join in the wedding feast of humankind. The Soul of Humanity is wedding the King’s Son in the kingdom of the heart. We can ignore the call; we can rush in, unprepared. Or we can approach the inner hall with earnest intent, ready to encounter Michael the Archangel at the threshold. As the poem says:

With hearts aglow men mark the changing fresh world,

When from the stars Michael's spear is hurled.

Sleepers awake, hark to the word of the world

Breaking old summer's dull drowsy spell,

Show us the way,  go with thy spear before,

Forge us the future, thou Michaël.[1]

At the threshold Michael will give us our wedding garment: the garment of courageous humility.  In this garment we will be ready to greet the King and His Son.

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[1]A. C. Harwood,  "St. Michael Poem" 

9th September Trinity 2007, Tender Seed Bed

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6:19-34

“Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will  put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s demon of riches [mammon].

“That is why I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much more for you, o small in faith?

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today."

9^th August Trinity

September 16, 2007

Matthew 6: 19-34

Sometimes an outwardly lovely rose blossom opens, and one can see that its center has been eaten away. The tender seed bed, the source of continuing life, is gone.

Our heart is the center, the core of our being. It is the treasure house of our soul, wherein we store everything that is important to us, everything we have connected ourselves with and worked on in our lives. All the people and things we love are treasured in our hearts. Our hearts contain the seed bed for continuing life.      

Today, on our 9^th step toward our encounter with Michael at the threshold, Christ encourages us to look inward and to assess what it is that we treasure. Do we love to shop for and prepare elaborate meals? Do we work long hours so that we can afford to have lots of great clothes, a great home, a terrific car? Then clothes and food and cars are the treasures of our heart. In and of themselves these are not bad things. It is the subtle edge of anxiety that creeps into the treasure house, the worry and concern that eats away at our heart when these things form a large portion of our treasure store. For deep down we know that these treasures cannot cross the threshold with us. Fear of their loss then eats away at the core of our being.

           

Christ encourages us first of all to store up the treasures of His kingdom in our hearts. Its treasures are interconnected, alive with the life that will cross over with us. What are these treasures? They are His words, His deeds, His continuing presence. We can treasure them up in our hearts by reading and contemplating them, even a little bit, daily. We treasure Him by taking in His words in the sacraments, by searching for Him in other people, by finding His works in the world.

           

Christ further encourages us to concentrate on today, to spend time in His eternal Now; for living in trust of the spirit, moment by moment, will show us the most important things to love and treasure. Then the rose of the heart, instead of being eaten away by fear, grows strong and beautiful, full of the seeds of new, vital and everlasting life.

www.thechristiancommunity.org 

9th September Trinity 2008, Seed of Future

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6: 19-34

 “Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will  put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s demon of riches [mammon].

“That is why I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much more for you, o small in faith?

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today."

9^th August - September Trinity

September 21, 2008

Matthew 6: 19 – 34

At harvest time, fruits grow ripe. They enclose the seed that will ensure next year’s life. The fruit will eventually disintegrate. But the seed lives on.

We have arrived at the soul time of the year when the soul too is inwardly ripening. We are preparing for the harvest, preparing to separate the seed from the chaff. It is no coincidence that the Muslim Ramadan practice of prayer and fasting occurs now;  or that the fall Hebrew celebration of the ten Days of Awe end in Yom Kippur, a day of intense prayer and fasting. These are practices that teach the soul that it can continue to live, despite the falling away of its usual outer bodily supports.

In today’s reading, Christ speaks directly to our soul’s seed nature – to that which lives in the core of our hearts, that which is destined for further life. And he warns us to be aware of what it is into which we are investing our heart’s energy. We can pour our heart’s energy in an excessive way into acquiring the temporary things of earth, such as wealth or food or clothing. Food, clothing, money are of course things that have their rightful function - they help us stand on the earth. But they are like the fruit that encloses the seed; they are temporary, a means of life, not the purpose itself of life. We cannot devote ourselves exclusively and anxiously to these things, or our hearts will eventually shrivel and die. The seed nature at our heart’s core needs the freedom to be able to grow and rise into the light.

The seed is the important thing. It is our future. The seed that dwells in the depths of our heart is the seed of the divine in us. It is God’s seed of love, the Christ in us. We need to become aware of the Christ in us. He is the seed of further life, the seed of love and peace that we need to nurture and grow in our hearts.

An early saint said,

Put fear aside. Now

that He has entered…,

all who live

As seeds cast to the earth…,

will not perish,

but like those seeds

shall rise again…

by love’s immensity. [1]


www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] St. Athanasios, (298 – 373), “The Death of Death”, in Love’s Immensity, Mystics on the Endless Life, by Scott Cairns, p. 14. 

9th September Trinity, 2009, Welcome the Future

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6:19-34

“Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole

body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will  put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s demon of riches [mammon].

“That is why I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much more for you, o small in faith?

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

9^th August Trinity

Sept 20, 2009

Matthew 6: 19 -34

In the agricultural world, it is the time of harvest, of storing in barns. We ourselves are buying boots and warm sweaters. There is a strong return to the earthly as we prepare for winter.

The gospel reading encourages us, along with these preparations, to awaken our self-awareness. We are to notice the soul mood that now creeps in. For there is a tendency toward a darkening of the soul’s inner light through worry; there is a fear that spreads beyond the moment to poison the future; there is an anxiety that causes us to enslave ourselves to the monetary.

He encourages us instead to notice that we do not have to do everything for and by ourselves. We belong to a large community of living beings. This community consists of the light, the birds, the plants. They, and we, are all carried in the Father’s warm living hand. Though the outer light is starting to withdraw, and nature is dying back, this is no cause for over-concern. There is an orderliness to this process, a larger rhythm that allows us to know that this is not permanent. We can see beyond today and know that what the future brings is part of a greater plan.

And so at any moment, in-self awareness, we can remind ourselves to welcome the future: may the events, the people, the spiritual beings that are approaching us, come. May they find in us quiet minds, understanding hearts and clear souls. We can achieve this inner state by ever and again calling to mind that we are grounded in the Father’s peaceful life, embedded in the Christ’s creative love, surrounded by the Spirit’s healing light.[1]

 “So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ …your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.”  Matthew 6: 32, 33.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Against Fear

Adam Bittleston, in Meditative Prayers for Today

May the events that seek me

Come unto me;

May I receive them

With a quiet mind

Through the Father’s ground of peace

On which we walk.

May the people who seek me

Come unto me;

May I receive them

With an understanding heart

Through the Christ’s stream of love

In which we live.

May the spirits which seek me

Come unto me;

May I receive them

With a clear soul

Through the healing Spirit’s Light

By which we see.

9th September Trinity 2010, Fortune-Telling

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6; 19-34

“Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will  put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s demon of riches [mammon].

“That is why I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much more for you, o small in faith?

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

9^th August/September Trinity

Sept. 19, 2010

Matthew 6: 19-34

The time from St. Johnstide in June to Michaelmas at the end of September is a time of being outward bound. It is traditionally the time for vacations, for travel, for time outdoors in nature and with family. It is also often the time when people move, to take on a new job, to start school.  But even if nothing changes outwardly, inwardly this is the time for the soul to tread a path; a time to open the soul, to see and hear freshly, and on new levels. It is a time for the healing our inner ills.

St. John the Baptist urged us to change our hearts and minds. With today’s reading, Christ urges us to take a closer look at our own interior landscape, to look at how we think. For the quality of our thinking, the quality of our hearts, seriously shapes our progress on the path of our healing.

We can entertain thoughts that are healthy, or those that are unhealthy. One unhealthy form of thinking is called, by those in the soul-work field, fortunetelling. This is our human tendency to extrapolate, to project what is happening today onto the future. It may well be naïve to assume that since everything is fine today, it will be fine tomorrow as well. But it is downright destructive to our mental and spiritual health to assume that since today is troubling, I have to worry and stress about tomorrow's troubles, and the next day’s, and the next as well.

Such unhealthy thinking is based on an untrue assumption—that I can already know what the future will bring. And it is supported by another sneaking suspicion—that I won’t be able to handle what the future brings without continuous rehearsals for supposed disasters.

Corrie Ten Boom

Corrie Ten Boom[1], whose family harbored Jews in Holland during the War, tells the story her own father used, to illustrate the wisdom of staying in the now, in the moment. When as a young girl she began to stress about the future, her father asked her to recall their train trips together. 'When do I give you your ticket?' he asked. 'When the train pulls into the station,' she replied. 'Indeed. I don’t give you your ticket when the train is still miles away. I give it to you when you need it, when the train arrives. When you worry, it is as though you grab your ticket long before the train is due, and run miles up the track to try to catch it before it arrives. God will give you your ticket for the future when the future arrives.'

We can be sure that we will meet the future with ripened capacities, especially if we can concentrate our efforts at solving today’s troubles, doing today what we can do today. For no pit is too deep that the love of God is not deeper still.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Corrie Ten Boom, Her Story, (The Hiding Place, Tramp for the Lord, Jesus is Victor)—three biographical stories in one volume. 

9th August Trinity 2011, Wholesomeness

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6; 19-34

   

  “Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will  put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s demon of riches [mammon].

“That is why I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and

drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much more for you, o small in faith?

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

9^th August Trinity

September 18, 2011

Matthew 6: 19-34

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we are in the time of diminishing light. The days are shortening; the dark is rising. And what can follow in our souls, unconsciously, is the rising of a subtle level of anxiety.

Once again the gospel reading addresses our human tendency to worry, our fear of insufficiency. Christ encourages us not to diminish our focus, the range of our attention, through concentrating only on food and drink, clothes and riches. Rather we are to pay some attention to our own powers of perception. ‘If your eye is wholesome, your whole body will be filled with light’, He says. That is, if our way of seeing, our way of picturing the world is wholesome, then our body and our way of working in the world will be filled with light, radiant with love. What does a wholesome way of seeing the world consist of?

It consists of looking at what has already happened through the lens of gratitude. Gratitude expands and enlightens our vision. It widens the angle of what we see.

Wholesomeness also consists of imaging the future through the lens of trust; trust in God’s harmonious ordering of events, trust in the beneficence of His guidance. Correcting our vision with lenses of gratitude and trust lets the light into our bodies so that the light in us can radiate out into the world.

In the words of Anne Sexton:

 

….So while I think of it,

let me paint a thank-you on my palm

for this God, this laughter of the morning,

lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,

dies young.[1]


www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Anne Sexton, in The Awful Rowing Toward God

9th September Trinity 2012, Against Fear

9th August Trinity

Matthew 6: 19-34

  “Do not save up your treasures on the earth, where moths and rust eat away at them and thieves tunnel in and steal. Save up your treasures in heaven, where no moth and no rust consumes and thieves do not tunnel in and steal. Because where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

“The lamp of the body is the eye. So if your eye is wholesome, your whole body is lighted; whereas if your eye is bad, your whole body is in darkness. So if the light inside you is dark…what great darkness!

“No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will  put up with one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and greed’s demon of riches [mammon].

“That is why I tell you, do not trouble your heart about what you will eat and drink or with what you will clothe your body. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothing? Look at the birds in the sky: they do not plant, do not harvest, and do not fill barns, and your heavenly Father still feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Can any of you, by being vastly concerned, add one moment to the span of your life?

And why do you worry about clothing? Study how the lilies of the field grow: they do not work, and they do not spin cloth. But I am telling you that not even Solomon in all his glory was ever arrayed as one of these. If that is how God clothes the wild grass of the field, here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, will He not do much more for you, o small in faith?

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What will we drink? What will we wear?’ It is the nations who ask for all these things, and indeed, your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. Ask first for God’s kingdom and its harmonious order, and these other things will be delivered to you as well.

So do not worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow can worry about itself. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

9^th August Trinity

St George and the Dragon, Arild Rosenkrantz

September 16, 2012

Matthew 6: 19-34

Here in the North, the days are noticeably shorter. And with the growing darkness there arises a subtle measure of anxiety. Will I get everything done? Am I sufficiently prepared for what is coming? Will there be enough?

Fear and anxiety are part of the equipment that comes with being in a body. They help ensure our bodily survival. But when anxiety begins to grow and to infect our souls and gnaw at our spirits, it endangers our true life. We need to counter its working by remembering to trust in the growing kingdom of God within our hearts, by recalling God’s harmonious order, by trusting in His beneficence. God knows what we truly need. If we align ourselves with His higher purposes, then what we truly need comes to us. And the body survives as well.

Adam Bittleston gave us a prayer against fear. It helps us align ourselves with what God wants to send to us. It can be an antidote to our rising anxieties:

May the events that seek me

Come unto me;

May I receive them

With a quiet mind

Through the Father’s ground of peace

On which we walk.

May the people who seek me

Come unto me;

May I receive them

With an understanding heart

Through the Christ’s stream of love

In which we live.

May the spirits which seek me

Come unto me;

May I receive them

With a clear soul

Through the healing Spirit’s Light

By which we see.[1]


www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Adam Bittleston, "Against Fear" in Meditative Prayers for Today. Available at http://steinerbooks.com/Books/SearchResults.aspx?str=Meditative+Prayers