2022 Blessing of the Waters

January 9, 2022 Blessing of the Waters
Malachi 3:20-24, Ephesians 5:8-20, John 1:19-34

By Sister Cecelia

“Be careful how you live, not as unwise but as wise, making the most of your time, singing and making melody in your hearts. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” (Ephesians 5)

At the end of our Divine Liturgy today, we have our yearly service of blessing the water. In the book of Genesis, we read that God made all things, drawing forth the Creation from a dark and watery Chaos. We read how the Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters. Here the verb “moved” in Hebrew connotes the behavior of a mother bird brooding over her nest, protecting and nurturing her offspring. The Spirit of God at the Creation of this young world, earth, was caring for it like a hen over her chicks. That is an apt image, as at Christ’s Baptism a bird was seen hovering over Christ when he was baptized and the Father’s words were heard. Only two evangelists relate anything about Jesus’ birth, while all four relate the Baptism of Christ—an indication of its importance to us.

Water is used by John to indicate the person’s cleansing and turning to God—repentance, metanoia.

Water is used in our own baptisms, indicating that we are united as one with Christ.

Water is used for both good and bad, as Br. Luke mentioned on Thursday. This time the symbol of water is good, for in our created world, so much needs water. We do not survive without water.

In the wake of the feast of Epiphany, we receive the waters of chaos turned into the waters of life, and if we bring this blessing into our houses and businesses and offices, for drinking and for sprinkling, we declare our intention to become part of a new creation and to bring our family, our home, and our work into the Reign of God. That is an ongoing commitment that is to be renewed daily. When we receive the water that carries the divine presence, we declare our intention to live no longer according to the laws of survival and self-advancement and pride. Instead, we declare our desire to live according to the rule of love, of mercy, of justice and humility before God and humanity. This is the meaning of the service we do today: our acceptance of Christ as our way of life, and our commitment to following our leader in the time we have been given.

Recently I gleaned a few ideas about the time we have from the writings of Joan Chittister. “We Americans are obsessed with time. We’re a pragmatic, productive people, and time is the national idol. It shows in our language. We spend time, invest time, and need time. We lose time, save time, waste time, find time, gain time, and want time.”

Time, we Americans seem to assume, is for doing something, for producing things, for achieving goals. Our goal is to realize that life is about becoming.

As another year has begun, take time each day to give more serious consideration to what we are becoming rather than to what we are doing. Life is not a package of years; it is a lifetime of opportunities meant to make us everything we can possibly be: gentle, understanding, patient, kind, open, loving, joyful, not envious or boastful, arrogant or rude, not irritable or resentful or rejoicing in wrongdoing but rejoicing rather in truth, being courageous, persevering, and generous.

Make the most of your time, singing and making melody in your hearts.

Christ is in our midst!

 

Sermon 175 Jan 06, 2022 Mt 3:13-17, Ti 2: 11-14, 3:4-8 Ez 36:25-28, 33-36 Theophany

As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Church



In the name of the father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

    When I was a kid, I wasn't good at getting up out of bed in the morning. So, when calling me to get up didn't work, my father would go into the bathroom, get a washcloth, soak it in cold water and then come into my room and put it on my face! Now that was an effective wake-up call. It definitely got my attention. A new day was about to begin and I was going to have to do my part.

    Water can be used for many things beyond drinking, irrigation, and cleaning. This is the time of year when we are inundated with football games leading to championship games, both college and NFL. At the end of a game, it is not unusual for the coach of the winning team to be doused with a huge barrel of water, or more likely, Gatorade. It can also happen in other outdoor sports, including baseball. It seems an odd way to celebrate a win. Being doused doesn't always have a positive connotation.

    Did you ever have the experience of thinking you had come up with an idea or plan that you thought was special and telling someone else about it only to have the whole idea dismissed with the epitaph "you're all wet!" That is the verbal equivalent of someone pouring cold water on your idea. No wonder babies cry or scream when they get baptized! They don't want to get this early preparation for being told their ideas are no good.

    The theme of water is explored from many angles in this feast. Prayers are said to purify the water of any unclean spirits. The purified water of baptism washes away our sins. The texts of the feast fill out the symbolic meaning. Here is the First Lity Sticheron.

    Today, Christ the savior is baptized: * He who wears light as a cloak was pleased to become like us to save us. * Today he is covered with Jordan’s streams. * Though he has no need of cleansing, * by that cleansing he himself receives, he regenerates us. * O what a wonder, that without fire he casts anew, * and without shattering he fashions anew. * And those who are filled with his light are saved by him, ** by Christ the savior of our souls.

    Today's celebration reminds us of our own baptism when we were submerged in water to symbolize dying and then rising to new life in Christ. Indeed, the Good News of the New Testament is about new beginnings, transformations from one state of being into another, transitioning from one life to an even better life. And indeed that is what our baptism represents, our entering into a new life with the promise of life eternal.

    The symbol of the voice of God descending like a dove and revealing the ultimate truth about Jesus is a message to all of us with more than one dimension. The truth spoken is: "This is my beloved, pay attention to him." And if we pay attention to him, we too become the beloved of God. Indeed, we are created as the beloved of God, but we do not necessarily always believe it, maybe because we, too often, have been doused with the negative message that we are not good enough to be God's beloved. We may have come to believe that God doesn't even know us or pay attention to us or care about us. Today's feast reminds us that God does care about us, so much so that he sent his only begotten Son to lead us back into that knowledge of God's love for us.

    Our joy on this festive day is waking up to the reality that out of love for us, God is always providing a new day for us, a new opportunity to grow in the likeness of Christ.

    Glory be to Jesus Christ!

Homily for New Year: January 1, 2022

 by Sister Rebecca

 

     Today: Another New Year.  We greet each other:  Happy New Year!  And we truly mean it: May it be a good year for you.  Last year at this time we thought: Oh! Finally 2021—a good year!  Then, the vaccinations were promised, and we could hope to get back to normal living.  Well, by now we are pretty much aware that there is no going back to a ”past normal.” We are facing the reality of the unknown future on numerous scores.  Doesn’t this sound to us like bad news?  Here I will share a story I heard from a Jesuit priest many years ago:

Good Luck? Bad Luck? Who Knows?

There once was a simple farmer who lived and struggled alongside his neighbors and friends, trying to exist and fulfil a peaceful life. One day news arrived, from far away, that his old loving father had died. His neighbors gathered to grieve, but the farmer simply said, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

In time relatives brought a very fine horse of great cost and fine breeding, left to the farmer by his father. All the villagers and neighbors gathered in delight with him to celebrate his good fortune, but he just said, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

One day the horse escaped into the hills, and when all the farmer’s neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

A week later the horse returned with a herd of wild horses from the hills, and this time the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was “Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?”

Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this was very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was “Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?”

Some weeks later the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer’s son with his broken leg they let him off. Now was that good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?

 

In some way, to judge, label, and categorize the year as either good or bad is to fragment reality.

 

This is not to say that some aspects of one year or another are not more challenging than others, not as fulfilling as another year, more happy or less happy.  The story doesn’t tell us to be passive, to say “I give up” and just roll with the dice. Rather, it means we must trust the mystery of life more than our assessment of life by thinking and analyzing.  God reveals to us that our life is neither found IN nor determined BY its circumstances, but IN and BY Jesus Christ, God with us: Jesus, the one whose name means “God saves.”  How does God save? By inviting us, challenging us, calling us to a metamorphosis, to transformation. And when God “calls,” “invites,” the call and the invitation include a promise.

A good metaphor is that of the butterfly, which is formed within a dark cocoon, like a cave, a grotto, but totally closed!  Nothing seems to be happening.  All is dark, but new life is being formed untampered by human hands.  Likewise, it is in these dark times—all the while cutting back on all that fragments us and distracts us, spending more time in silence, and solitude, and contemplation—when our covenant in God grows deeper, more luminous.  We are not destined to be like cocoons shrouded in the dark, at the mercy of dismal forces of nature.  Rather, we are meant to be transformed, our consciousness awakened, enlivened, to see luminosity within these somber times. We let God BE, allowing God’s Spirit to transform us into who we are meant to be. We call this theosis: becoming God-like. St John of the Cross said, after a life of many hardships and graces, “I have no other light than the one shining in my heart.”

On this New Year’s Day, let us pause before the coming days give rise to new challenges and deep joys. May we soak in the rich poetic lines below, for the lean days will one day sprout wings.

 

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O'Donohue
From: To Bless the Space Between Us

Homily November 7, 2021 1 Samuel 20:1-6, 2 Corinthians 1:18-22, 2:14-16, Luke 6:1-12

 As Preached by Sister Cecelia

Holy Wisdom Church

The two incidents we heard in this morning’s Gospel show the Pharisees coming out into the open in opposing Jesus. In one story, they clearly charge Jesus that he and his disciples are breaking the Sabbath laws. But they were not breaking any law against stealing or theft, because one of the merciful laws of the Hebrew testament is that anyone was free to pluck the grain from the fields, provided they did not use a sickle, except on the Sabbath.

Jesus and his disciples had broken four Sabbath laws. They were guilty of reaping by plucking the grain. Guilty of threshing by rubbing the grain in their hands. Guilty of winnowing by flinging away the husks. By eating the grain, supposedly they had prepared the food.

Jesus defended his followers by using an example the Pharisees all knew quite well from their education in the Hebrew testament: David provided his hungry followers with the sacred bread, which generally only the priests were allowed to eat. Jesus asked the Pharisees: “Have you not read what David did?” Their answer was “yes,” but it seems they never knew what that action meant. The Pharisees considered that their codes of conduct and rituals were essential to the daily life of religious observance. Jesus’ real concern was not the external behaviors but what is in the heart.

We also have codes of conduct and our rituals, so in many ways we are like the Pharisees: we have prescribed rituals for how to celebrate the Eucharist, how to pray the liturgy of the Hours or other devotions, how to live as a Christian, layperson, or professed religious. Many of these codes and rituals can be readily seen when they are carried out or when they are broken. Most of these rituals are based on our Scriptures. It is possible to know the scriptures from cover to cover and be able to quote from them verbatim, but completely miss the real meaning of any of it.

When we read Scripture we must not say, “Listen, Lord, for your servant is speaking” but rather, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

In listening, what do we understand about the rituals surrounding the Eucharist? The Eucharist is not only the center of our worship, but the center of our concern for our quest for the value and meaning of human life. What we need is to see in Christ the model of what it means to be a human person, fully alive, and to recognize in others the image of God.

In the next story we heard this morning, Jesus knew he was being watched. Without hesitation, he beckoned the man with a withered right hand to come to the center for all to see. What do we see in the heart of Christ, and what do we make of the hatred in the hearts of the Pharisees? The absence of love is the greatest poverty. Jesus asks, “Is it a good thing to do good on the Sabbath? Is it good to save rather than to destroy?” Luke points out that it is the right hand of the man that is withered. Perhaps the man is a right-handed stonemason who cannot work because of to his withered hand. Kindness and goodwill are indispensable attributes of the heart that human beings need to be fully alive. The absence of love is the greatest poverty.

The need for all of us to pray is clearly indicated by this morning’s Scripture.  Jesus frequently went to a mountain and prayed. After one particular night spent in prayer, Jesus chose his twelve apostles from his many disciples. These were ordinary men, not an influential person among them. In fact, they were quite diverse in their occupations and personalities. Peace and harmony are attainable if we look to Jesus to lead us. In Christ even the most opposite people may be united in their love for him. If we really love Christ, we learn to love one another.

Christ is in our midst!

 

 

 

 

 

Homily: Matthew 25:14-30

Parable of the Talents    October 17, 2021
by Sister Rebecca
Holy Wisdom Church

 

In this Gospel we have the well-known Parable of the Talents. Jesus said that the Kingdom of heaven is like a man who goes on a trip and entrusts his goods to three of his employees.  The first two immediately go to work.  When the owner returns, they bring him the results: each one has doubled the talents he was given. Their work is generously rewarded because they were responsive to the master’s expectations.

The third employee does something very strange.  The only thing that occurs to him is to bury the talent he was given and keep it safe until the master returns.  The master condemns him as wicked and lazy, and he casts him out of his household.  This servant was motivated by fear, and it was this fear that had become the controlling power and influence in his life.  “What happens if I invest money and lose it all? I know the master is a hard man; what would he do to me then?”

Part of what is confusing in this parable, and others like it, is that it was not unusual for Jesus to use persons of less than admirable qualities to provide lessons in his parables. We can easily miss the point by turning the parable into an allegory in which this master would represent God, leading us to think of God as some sort of harsh, severe, and arbitrary character who uses fear as a motivation.

This servant who buries the talent given to him can’t think straight because his heart has been full of fear.  He acts out of fear. He wants to play it safe.  We can do the strangest things when we are afraid—right?  A heart of love, on the other hand, has an enlivening effect on the mind. Acting out of fear is the opposite of faith.  Faith involves risk.  To live in faith is to live with fear yet not be overcome by it. 

This fearful servant doesn’t love the master; he is afraid of him.  “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” He has no clue about his responsibility.  He doesn’t understand what active, creative faithfulness involves.  He is not engaged.   For many today, Christianity seems to have reached a point where the main goal is to conserve, not to courageously seek out new ways to face and accept life’s challenges and proclaim Christ’s burning desire for the reign of God. Now, more than ever, in our times we need to listen carefully to this parable.

We need to ask ourselves if our religion is seen as a system of beliefs and practices that protect us from God and from what God urges us to do: that is, to live creatively.  Status quo religion leads to sad, sterile, joyless lives devoted to safeguarding or protecting the institution rather than risk to love into action.

The inner motivation of third servant is like this: “Here is your gospel, your project of the reign of God.  We have kept it safe.  We haven’t used it to transform our life or introduce your reign to the world.  We didn’t want to take chances.  So here it is undamaged.”

The message is clear.  We cannot hand our life back to God and say: “Here, you have what is yours. I didn’t use it for anything that makes me afraid.”  It is a mistake to live a religiously, morally correct life without taking the risk to move out of ourselves, out of our comfort zone, away from predictability, to connect with persons who might not respect us, who may treat us unkindly.  Jesus urges us to love others courageously, audaciously, and creatively.

When we mostly care about saving our life in any given area, protecting and defending it, we lose it.  If we are so afraid of failure that we don’t follow the aspirations of our heart, we have already failed.  The Spirit of God speaks to us in very subtle ways, like nudges, to allow us to freely choose.  The first reading from Sirach says: “that God in creating us, left us in the power of our inclinations and to act faithfully is a matter of our own choice.” If we fail to listen, if we don’t take the initiative in areas that seem foreign to us and to our temperament, or if we are afraid we are wrong, then we are already wrong.  This is tantamount to burying our very lives.

Jesus’ life and words invite us to live with a certain intensity and the courage to make the Gospel real.  We need to stoke the fires of our creative imagination, listen to the Spirit, and invent Christian love for today.

The greatest mistake of the third servant in the parable is not that he buried his talent. Rather, he surrendered his God-given inner power to fear. He mindlessly assumed that he was responding faithfully to God by keeping his talent safe from risks.  Fidelity to God does not consist in leaving things in a state of status quo…unchanged.  Maybe we need to ask ourselves this question: Do we harbor an attitude that masks habits of passivity, fear of conflict, paralysis, comfort seeking? And at bottom: a lack of trust in the creativity of the Spirit of Christ?

When we act out of faith, we give up the need to control the outcome. It is not what we choose that matters so much, but why we choose or do not choose.   When we operate from faith and not fear, then the Spirit of God, the Energy of Heaven, flows through us. This is the spiritual challenge before us.

A word from Mary Oliver may stoke the embers in our heart: “Let us risk the wildest places, lest we go down in comfort, and despair.”

Homily July 11, 2021 Matthew 6:22-34

 

By Sister Rebecca

Today’s Gospel is a section from the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 5 of Matthew’s Gospel: “Jesus went up into a mountain; he sat down and gathered his disciples around him and taught them.” Matthew is portraying Jesus’ teaching in continuity with the Prophet Moses, who on a mountain received the Law of God. Beginning with the Beatitudes Jesus interprets the Law—also called The Way—showing what the Word of God looks like in the lives of those who are Jesus’ followers.  What follows through to chapter 8 are the teachings seen through the lens of the Beatitudes. These teachings become like beacons of God’s Light: “Let your light shine so people can see how your life manifests the radiance, the splendor of your Father.”  Jesus is not proclaiming a New Law, a different Torah.  He says his teaching does not change even the smallest letter of the Law.  He interprets and brings to light a deeper understanding of the Law.

Just prior to the section we heard today, Jesus was warning his listeners about the danger of making earthly treasures the object of their longing, and ultimately their worship. “Where your heart is, there is your treasure.”  Jesus is not telling his disciples, or us, to squelch any desire to treasure something that is outside of us. Rather, he is directing us to attach, first and foremost, our God-given soul-longing to the ultimate treasure our hearts are yearning for—God Himself. All other treasures will, in the end, break the hearts of their worshippers.

Jesus continues his warning with two more images: a healthy versus an unhealthy eye, and the human tendency to serve two masters.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”

(Many commentators will mention here that at the time of Jesus’ earthly life, people believed that the eye shines light on the objects it is looking at, rather than that the eye takes in light from outside.  However, this is not important in trying to understand Jesus’ point.) Jesus is saying that the eye is the gateway to enlighten the body—the entire inner person.  To have unhealthy eyes has a profound effect on one’s whole life. Everything is affected—how you get around, your ability to engage in social situations, what you can do to earn your living, and so on.

Since this image follows immediately from Jesus’ speaking about what we treasure and set our hearts on, it makes sense to see that what we “SET our eyes” on is really our treasure. The person who has a sound eye is the one who treasures that which is beyond the small self to soul-vision. Such a person is conscious of the deep longing for God: His peace, His righteousness, God’s transforming grace, His justice, His purity, His love and joy. These people recognize the infinite superiority of treasuring God over all else. This is what is meant by having a sound eye, or literally, a single eye, a single-mindedness for God, Then, one’s whole life is full of light.

How so?

In this light we are enabled to see more clearly the correct, proper place of earthly living and its various lesser “treasures.” Our relationships, our work, our wealth, the political situation under which we live—all come to be seen in God’s light.  His purpose and work are seen in their proper place. They are no longer the place where we seek our identity. Seen in this light we can take everything else in this perspective: we can receive what is proper and possible from others and from our work, and we can give in such a way as to be truly a blessing. We can give and receive with no strings attached.

In the verse “If the light within you is darkness, how great IS that darkness” what is the meaning of darkness? It is a form of blindness, subjectively felt as deception, ignorance, lack of insight or understanding.  It brings on a kind of death. It hampers foresight. It often causes extreme worry or anxiety. Darkness can be a kind of blurred vision where there is a lack of boundaries.  When our desires throw us off balance.  It also has a ripple effect on others.  They too are confused, upset, thrown off balance.

When we attach ourselves to things, to unhealthy, unrealistic ideals of ourselves, our “personas,” then our lives are in the dark. When we find ourselves “attached” we are out of balance, and nothing is in its proper place. We cannot enjoy what we do treasure because we are trying to control life rather than receive it gratefully and with a discerning eye.

Have you ever noticed that when you count on another person to be the one who gives you your identity or your life, you cannot see that person for who they really are?  Your state of mind is such that you are unable to receive from them what they are actually able to give you. You are projecting onto them your unrealistic expectations of them. As C.S. Lewis says: “When we worship what is not God, it becomes a demon that we hate, but can’t quite seem to let go of.”

It is not enough to attend to our inner selves—to pray, worship, do good. We do need others, especially in these times, when the floodgates of the media can have devasting effects on those who are not rooted in moral, religious, or spiritual milieus.

There is much Darkness in our midst: unknowing, feelings of listlessness.  There is an ancient term we often hear today: crises of ACEDIA (ah-say-dia), which I think is related to what lately I hear from certain younger people who moan, “I am in a funk.” I need help.  

 We need wise teachers, spiritual companions; we need enlightened friends, spouses, community members to mirror to us the areas of our own blindness. Not all darkness is bad. Darkness can be the space or state of mind where our deeper longings can emerge into our consciousness.  Our resistance to truth can precipitate us into this darkness. We may unconsciously set up resistances to see what really IS, that to which God is calling us, what our addictions or attachments are, and how they are sucking life out of us.  At these times, do we really want to know the truth? Are we willing to surrender to the truth?  There is no way we can shine the light of the Spirit of God on how I am to live my life if we are stuck in our opinions, our unnamed unbalanced areas of our living, our addictions no matter how subtle.  Great teachers tell us that without suffering some form of darkness, our resistances will not give way to the light that leads to fuller life.

Jesus concludes this teaching with these words, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Mammon doesn’t mean money, as some translations would have it. Mammon is anything that we get attached to, cling to, or be addicted to. You cannot, Jesus is saying, have two things vying for first place in your life, as the focus of your eye. Doing that will make you a divided person, unable to be whole in the relationships and activities of your life. In the previous section, we found that we need to choose what truly is first. Here Jesus warns against trying to have two “firsts.”

We cannot set our eyes on two things, have two centers, two “treasures” that we devote ourselves to. Attempting to serve two masters will result in our coming to resent, despise, and resist one or the other—endlessly! Our whole lives will be filled with darkness, not just our eyes! Jesus continues to point out the only source of true blessing, true life, both here and now, and for eternity. He calls us to surrender in trust to the Living God who is present and offers himself to us in Jesus Christ.

I’d like to end with a few thoughts for reflection:

Through what lens am I seeing? What is the light I seek or that I am drawn to?  Is there anything in my life that is blurring my inner vision, just one thing?

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.”  William Blake

“When we go to God in contemplative prayer, we wait in silence. In silence, though, all our thought patterns assault us.  Our patterns of control, addictions, negativity, anger, and fear assert themselves.  That is why many people do not persevere.  Even when Jesus is led by the Spirit into the Wilderness, the first things that show up are wild beasts. Contemplation is at first all-consoling. The precious pearl that Jesus speaks of is formed first like an oyster, through an irritant.  God is light, yet this full light is hidden in the darkness so that only the single-minded seeker is ready to receive it.”

 

Pentecost 2021 Joel 2:23-3:5, Acts 2:1-11, John 7:37-52, 8:12

 

As preached by Sister Cecelia

Holy Wisdom Church

Children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord.

How much more so are we to rejoice and be glad with the knowledge of God’s goodness to us since that first Pentecost. We do not have to wait for the Holy Spirit to come to us, because the Spirit is here now.

In the Gospel this morning, we heard Jesus pleading with his listeners to come to him and drink, meaning that they are to believe in Him and the Father God who had sent Him.  Jesus claimed that “Out of the believer’s heart living water would flow.” Scripture says that this meant that the Spirit would come to believers when Jesus was glorified.

I have pondered what it could mean that Scripture has been translated to say that there was no Spirit yet because Jesus was not glorified. I still don’t really know what it means.  We believe the Spirit has always been, just as God and Jesus have always been—the Trinity, from all eternity. 

Jesus appeared in many forms during the time from his Resurrection until his Ascension. A possible explanation for no spirit yet is that Jesus in bodily form had to leave so that we could more easily accept the bodiless Spirit coming, not only to his immediate disciples at Pentecost, but to all of us who have come to believe.

When we are open to the Spirit, are we as courageous as the early Christians were? What would make us as courageous? When we experience the Spirit within, we come to the awareness of the oneness of everything that is. What unites everything is the God that is within and without everything that is. It was Juliana of Norwich, gazing at a hazel nut, who exclaimed that she could see the whole world there.

We are much more prepared to understand this perplexing, awe-inspiring idea in a post- Einstein world—where energy is the one constant. We awaken to enjoy an entirely sacramental universe, and to recognize God’s image in all creatures, without exception. This transformation happens when we live in the now of our lives. When we allow the moment, the person, the idea, or the situation to influence us and even change us. We need quiet times and reflection to be changed. We need to be vulnerable enough to say “yes” when we sense what God is asking of us as Mary did to the Angel who gave God’s message to her.

It seems God’s goal is always to be united. That is different from any personal perfection, which is merely a goal of the ego that we might be striving for.  Life lived fully and honestly always involves joy and suffering, a path of little deaths that teach us to let go and to live in the joy of divine union. Our ego must learn to become the servant instead of the master, and even be willing to die for the sake of its union with the Spirit, just as Jesus did on the cross.

When we are capable of contemplation—non-dualistic thinking—we can forgive and accept our own imperfections and those of the world around us. With a better understanding of science and psychology, we see many new possibilities for spiritual growth and human development. Growing up and waking up are both essential to be able to attain wholeness and holiness.

When we are open to the Spirit, we can be courageous to let this same Spirit guide us to an ever more encompassing growing up and waking up.

 

Christ is in our midst!