That looks like an impossible task in a world full of troublesome developments.  In times of harmony and peace it is not difficult to live without anxieties, but now?  Peace and harmony have been replaced by conflicts and chaos, wherever you look.

And yet it is Christ’s appeal not to be anxious about tomorrow—a task for all times, in well-being and adversity, in fortune and misfortune.  How do you do that?

One means to obtain trust in the future is the Act of Consecration of Man.  The more you become part of the joint prayer, the more you can carry and are carried.  Because for whom do we pray this intercessory prayer?

The offering gives an answer to this question.  With every step of the offering our prayer grows.  Not only the visible community, but also that of all true Christians and all those who have died are part of it.  And then we realize that there is another person who offers and prays with us.

This is Christ, who brings His offering anew in every service.  For that is how it is called: the Christ offering, even as it would come to life in us, through us.

How does our prayer get wings?  That happens because He prays with us, as He offers Himself with us.  In this awareness our trust can grow, for He goes with us in well-being and adversity, in fortune and misfortune.

Whoever has come to know the light of Christ in the Act of Consecration of Man will begin to recognize this light also in our daylight.

That is why we trust – also in tomorrow!

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 22, 2024

“My son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.”

The century that lies behind us has received the name of the century of the child.  There was a good reason for this.   More than ever before in history people were interested in the child.

We would be equally justified to call our 21^st century the century of youth.  In our current society youth and youthfulness have become an ideal.  This ideal not only applies to younger people; adults too and even older people have to follow it and stay young and vital as long as possible.  The ideal picture of eternal youth is only relatively new.  Formerly, people looked at the course of life differently.  A well-known saying went: “In youth an idealist, as an adult a realist, as a greybeard a mystic.”  When we grow old we have a natural inclination to turn inward more and look back on our life.  “Looking back in wonder,” a well-known authoress called it.

Only, when we do that at an advanced age, life does not look anymore as it did before.  If we are honest with ourselves, we see more and more the shortcomings.  The last stretch of the path of life, which we go through in increasing loneliness, is permeated by the realization: I have separated myself from my divine origin and intended purpose.  I come home with empty hands, poor and needy like the prodigal son.  At the end of life we are all prodigal sons and daughters.

But precisely then, when we have lost all, the Father comes to meet us and bestows on us the only thing we still lack after a life of separation: forgiveness.

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, August 11, 2024

When at the end of the day you look back and wonder: Where was I today? you most often come to many places, to a lot of busyness in many ways, but hardly to yourself. We are called from one task to another, or we simply let ourselves be led from one impression to another. But where was I myself?

There is only one place where I am completely myself, and that is in my own midst, a place where I am not more and not less than myself, where you can have a feeling of poverty and riches at the same time. On the one hand, you feel privileged because you are king in your own realm; I can myself decide to whom I open the door. On the other hand, you feel poor because you are impotently facing yourself and find that you hardly know who you actually are. I don’t know myself.

In this empty space I am alone with myself. Of old, this space has been called the hidden Holy of Holies—not only in the temple, but also hidden in the human being.

“In your midst stands one whom you do not know.”

With these words, John not only indicates Christ who is waiting for him in order to be baptized. He also indicates our midst, where Christ stands and waits until He may come into our hidden Holy of Holies.

– Rev. Bastiaan Baan, July 15, 2024

“Whoever hears the word that I speak, and places his trust in Him who sent me, he has life beyond the cycles of time.  The great decision of destiny does not apply to him, for he has already passed from death to life. … The hour is coming—and it has already come—when the dead will hear the call of the divine Son, and those who hear Him will be bearers of true life.”

Reality and illusion, truth and lie are two worlds we are less and less able to distinguish from each other.  We can no longer self-evidently rely on the visible world we are shown.  With cunning technology an illusory world is conjured up before us that cannot, or can hardly, be distinguished from the real one.  The same is true for the words with which people want to convince us.  Do people really mean what they say?  Or is it a lie wrapped up in pretty words?  More than ever do we live in a world where visible and audible reality is mutilated.

But one manifestation does not let itself be disguised like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  That is the moral music, the tone that makes the music in the language.  When we direct our attention, not to the meaning of the words, but to the tone in which they are spoken, we can hear something of the hidden world behind the words.  Words are more than just sheaths.  It is the intention that makes them truth or lies.

Christ speaks to us in the Gospel.  How does He speak?  We only do His words justice if they are spoken from mouth to ear.  The written word only becomes reality if we become conscious of the fact that it is the voice of Christ that is speaking to us.  That is the secret of the proclamation of the Gospel at the altar.  Do I hear Him speak through the words?

When our hearts fill themselves with His pure life, His voice sounds in our words—His voice, that wants to awaken the living and the dead to life.

 

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, June 27, 2024