Ascension 2008, Petals Drop

Blake

Ascension

John 16: 24-33

Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Sunday May 4, 2008

John 16: 24-33

The petals of the blossoms begin to drop. The vision of loveliness falls away. Yet deep at the blossoms’ base, fruit is forming, seeds of a new life. It will be a while before they are ripe. But they are there.

During the forty days of the time after His Resurrection, Christ continued to walk with His disciples. They could see Him in His otherwise transparent Resurrection body. Their deep love for Him, aided by their sorrow and suffering at His death, had opened their souls’ eye. Through seeing Him after His death, they knew that the human spirit lives on after death.

But on the fortieth day, at His Ascension, He dies to them again. Their spirit sight cannot follow Him as He is elevated into yet another form, so their vision clouds over. They experience once again losing Him, this time in an indescribable depth of sorrow.

Sorrow and grief serve to deepen the soul. During the ten days after His Ascension the disciples cocoon themselves together in the upper room. They remember that He said, “Pray from the heart and it will be given to your heart.” Jn. 16:24. So they pray. They go over all their memories of all they had experienced with Him. They remembered that He said, “The hour is coming when I will speak to you, openly and unveiled, so that you can grasp it in full knowing consciousness.” John 16:25.

Although their soul’s eye can no longer see Him, their prayer and sorrow and memories are molding their souls. Their interior awareness is deepening. “Do you now feel my power in your heart?” He asks. “Take courage.” Jn 16:31, 33

Rilke captures some of the mood of Ascension:

In deep nights I dig for you like treasure.

For all I have seen

that clutters the surface of my world

is poor and paltry substitute

for the beauty of you

that has not happened yet.

…Reaching, these hands would pull you out of the sky

as if you had shattered there,

…What is this I feel falling now,

falling on this parched earth,

softly,

like a spring rain? [1]

Christ’s disciples are gestating. A new capacity is forming within them. It will be a little while until it makes itself known. But it is coming.

 www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours, Barrows and Macy, p. 124.

Ascension 2009, Give Wine

Ascension

John 16: 24-33

Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.

Ascension, Benjamin West

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension

May 21, 24, 2009

John 16:24-33

Seed of Life

Our heart is the very center of our being. We can imagine our heart as the center of a series of concentric circles, with all our dear ones in closer circles, our acquaintances further out. Our heart is the center of our universe. Others circle our periphery.

Likewise we ourselves occupy the circles around other people’s hearts. For of course they too have many circles around them. The human world is a labyrinth of interlocking circles, all connected by the famous six degrees of separation.

Today we celebrate Christ’s Ascension. It is the day when He expanded His Being, His Heart, into the greatest and the broadest possible series of circles. The circles of His universe include all human beings, even those who have never heard of Him. Christ’s connection to us actually involves zero degrees of separation, for he has expanded His being in ever widening circles to catch every human heart. The circles of His heart’s love run through the very center of each human heart. And that is where we will find Him—in the deepest, centermost core of our own being, in the innermost core of every human being we encounter.

We have scattered ourselves in division, in loneliness. We ourselves may have placed Christ on one of the circles further out of our own heart, as one of our ‘acquaintances’. But He has connected us directly to His heart. He carries us in His love. So when He urges us to ‘pray from the heart’ (John16:24), perhaps he is showing us the way to find Him. Perhaps when we enter our own deepest core and find Him there, find the One whose being is Love, we will recognize our true identity.

Holman Hunt

As we offer this Eucharistic meal, the words of the poet can inspire:

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, ….

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you have ignored…[1]

Christ is urging us to join our hearts with His, so that we too can love the world as He does.

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[1] Derek Walcott, “Love After Love”, in Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

Ascension 2010, Impregnating Power

Ascension, Laura Summer

Ascension

John 16: 24-33

Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension

May 13, 16, 2010

John 16: 24-33

The blossom opens itself to the sunlit air. Doing so, its beauty and fragrance expand outward. It sends out its pollen and receives in turn the warm impregnating power from without. It becomes fruitful. At its deepest core, seeds of new life begin to form.

The deepest core of our humanity lies in our heart. As we open our heart, we stream forth the fragrant beauty of our gratitude for all that we have received. Through opening in gratitude, we continue to receive what we need for our future existence. We receive from the future the force that engenders new life, a force that settles into our core.

Christ’s love is that impregnating power for new life that we receive into our open, thankful hearts. His is the gentle fire of love, creative of being. His is the power that gives us new, future life. His love in our hearts is the seed-force of a new earth.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

Ascension 2011, Infinite Wishes

Ascension

John 16: 24-33

Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension Sunday

June 5, 2011

John 16: 24-33

Often in fairytales, someone is granted three wishes. How these wishes are granted depends on the character of the person wishing. In one tale, a husband and wife are granted three wishes; but the two exist in such disharmony that they squander their wishes on nonsense. In another tale, a fisherman has to ask for more and more for his prideful wife who wants more and more power and status; at last the bubble bursts and they find themselves back where they started.

At a certain point it usually occurs to older children that their third wish would be to have every subsequent wish come true. Yet we know that a child has not yet the wisdom to handle that kind of power.

Christ says to us: Pray, ask from the heart and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled….Ask out of my power and in my name. John 16: 24, 26.  Here we are being granted infinite wishes! But there is the caveat of wisdom—we must ask out of Christ’s bestowing love and in accordance with the Father’s lawfulness. We must align our wishes with the laws that lead toward the future of the universe.

We ask: lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from the evil. Not my will, but Thine be done.  Luke 22:42  In so doing, we are asking from a place of wisdom. We are asking from the place where all the red threads of human destinies join together. We are asking from the center of Christ’s heart, from the central place in the universe. We may ask where that place is; the poet answers:

Your kingdom of heaven, oh Man, is where you believe and love.

The ascension happens the more you practice love….

You seek Jesus Christ—he thrones not high and far;

He makes the earthly realm into His Love’s Star.[1]

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[1] Rudolf Meyer

www.thechristiancommunity.org

Ascension 2012, Wideness

Ascension

John 16: 24-33

Ascension, Garofalo

Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension

May 17, 20, 2012

John 16: 24-33

The bees fly through light and air. They are collecting pollen grains to feed their young. For the blossoms, however, this visitation signals the beginning of their own death. Once pollinated, the blossom dies away to make way for the fruit.

Christ ascends into the light and air. He is both bee and blossom. He does not leave; He expands. He spreads Himself out both up into the heavens and down into the earth. He becomes the True Vine, the great World Tree, rooted in the earth, leaves reaching into the heavens. The poet describes this event:

Ascension, Mengs

Lightly in His upraised hands

was Heaven, Wideness,

Space, oh space!

Oh, astonished He felt the lavishing

Of this great light. Yet by storm-broken tree

His disciples could not grasp it,

How their Master now in silence, radiant

Now in ever bluer terraces

Climbed this heaven

Exceeded Himself.

Yet already a glance gave Him goal and direction,

And they were amazed, how He found the steps

Until He, in ever deeper light

He himself the light, now disappeared from their view.[1]

He expands into the far reaches of both heaven and earth. For His disciples however, this signals a kind of death—for He whom they love is lost to their sight. For ten days they will grieve the apparent loss. Like all who grieve, they will be absorbed in their memories of Him. But in ten days, at Pentecost, their pain will begin to bear fruit. What is germinating within them through His ever-presence will become in them soul fruits: the fruits of joyful understanding, fruits of tolerance, fruits of love for all fellow human beings.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Gottfried Fischer-Gravelius

Ascension 2014, Embrace What Is

Ascension

John 16: 24-33

Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”
  

Ascension

May 29, June 1, 2014

John 16: 24 – 33

At night we may be troubled with bad dreams. But in the morning we rise. Our day-waking consciousness overcomes the dream state and we understand that what troubled us was only a dream.

Our earthly lives can have something of the quality of a dream. We are occupied within our lives and are immersed in them. We may even be troubled by the occasional or even recurring ‘nightmare’ situation. But we can make efforts to awaken, to rise beyond our immersion in the ordinary dreamy consciousness in life.

Christ lived the nightmare. He suffered and died. He rose on the third day. And he rose even further –and descended even deeper— at His Ascension. For at His ascension, His consciousness, His Life, spread out over the whole world. The unawakened mind tends to make war on the way things are.[1] Christ has aligned Himself with the world, in loving acceptance of what is. 

In our moments of earnest prayer, we rise toward Christ, who stands at peace with the world.  ‘Pray from the heart and it will be given to your heart, He says. Feel my power in your heart….so that you may find peace’. [2]Only by wakening to a higher level of awareness can we, like Christ, embrace what is, in love and with courage. We can recognize that our own lives are enmeshed ultimately with the life of the whole world; and that only through Christ’s power of transformation can the nightmare be overcome.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Jack Kornfield.

[2] John 16:1, 31, and 33.

Ascension 2013, I Will Be

Ascension

Ascension, Reichenauer

John 16: 24-33

Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name. Pray from the heart, and it will be given to your heart, that your joy may be fulfilled.

All this I have given to your souls in imagery. But the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in pictures, but will tell you openly and unveiled about my Father, so that you can grasp it in full, knowing consciousness. Thus will I proclaim to you the being of the Father. On that day you will ask out of my power and in my name. And no longer will I ask the Father on your behalf. For the Father himself will love you because you have loved me, and have known in your hearts that I have come forth from the Father. I have come forth from the Father and I have come into this world.

I leave the sense world again and return to the world of the Father, of which you say that it is the world of death.”

Then Jesus’ disciples said, “Now you are speaking in clear thought and without imagery. Now we know that all things are revealed to you and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

Jesus answered, “Do you now feel my power in your heart? Behold, the time is coming, and has already come, when you will be scattered, each to his own loneliness. You will then also leave me alone. But I am not alone, for the Father is eternally united with me.

All this I have spoken to you so that in me you may find peace. In this world you will have great fear and hardship. But take courage. I have overcome the world.”

Ascension

May 9 and 12, 2013

John 16: 24 – 33

Codex Aurius

In earlier times one needed a letter of introduction in order to legitimately approach someone whom one did not yet know. Through this letter a friend would recommend you and vouch for you. The same thing happens today with letters of recommendation for employment.

Christ Jesus has a secret name. He is the Great I-AM of humanity. His name could more fully be rendered: I am he who was, who is, and who is to come. Or even more dynamically: I will be what I will be. [1] For He is the reality that is ever evolving, ever making real what is potential, ever creating anew.

When He says we are to ask the Father in His name, he means that we are to ask, not for the preservation of the old, but for the strength and courage to develop what is not yet. We are to orient ourselves toward the future, toward making real what is yet only potential, toward creating the new. This is His power in our hearts. This is the power of love that overcomes fear and loneliness. This is the power of courage that overcomes the hindrances of the world.

This creative power of His in our hearts is our ‘letter of introduction’ to the Father; for the Father is the Greater Reality that embraces not only what is, but what will be. Christ’s power in our hearts is His letter of recommendation on our behalf for the tasks of transformation that the Father would give us.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] from Rabbi Rami Schapiro.