Workers in the Vineyard

Our embedded childhood memories often echo the voices of our parents, or teachers calling on us to perform various tasks. Most of the time, we heard them and did what they asked. But sometimes, when we didn´t want, or pretended not to hear them, we either faced punishment, or faced difficulties.

Later on in our life, if we were awake enough, we could hear an inner call, which we felt we should listen to, because it might have had something to do with our task on earth, and in the wider sense, our destiny. For various reasons, we could not always respond to this call. And afterwards, we did not always notice the effect that this unresponsiveness may have caused. The call of destiny may have tried to reach us again and again. When we could not or would not hear it, we experienced difficulties in our life, but didn´t connect the difficulties to these calls.

And sometimes, in our everyday struggles, we may have heard about a very wise person, who wanted to lead us toward new concepts and ideas at the appropriate time. These ideas could bring fairness and brotherhood into the social life of human beings, because they came from a higher wisdom. But these ideas have to be grasped by influential persons, for example people in the government. If they are not fully accepted and implemented, life in society does not come to pass, social life becomes more and more difficult.

The workers in the vineyard all followed the demand of the master of the house, they heard the call. They were all paid the same wages, as agreed before-hand, no matter who ended up working less or more. It was fair and just, because it was agreed upon beforehand. But then they were troubled about it and felt it was unfair.

How do we feel about it? Yes it is unjust for those, who worked the whole day. They have had to put in much more effort and push themselves. Yes, we always look at work from the point of view of money. Mostly, we forget that work also has its creative and regenerative effect.

When we work in freedom by way of inner effort, in meditation, prayer or in the Act of Consecration of Man, we transform our soul and our whole being. We can certainly count on the assurance that through our inner work, if we also work through feeling such freedom in the outer world, we continually transform the earth, even if we cannot always see it. We shouldn´t forget, that we were born to do transformation on the earth. And if we forget the real reason and impulse, we will be called upon by destiny. But also, society shouldn´t walk out on the task of transforming society; otherwise, there will be more conflicts between people, or groups of people. Of course this cannot be achieved by individuals. Such tasks require the strength of whole groups of people, because after death, in the spiritual world, there is no possibility to work in freedom. Our only chance is to start our transformation while we are on earth, so that we can then enter the spiritual world fully prepared.

It could be a great help to learn this already in the childhood when we are called for necessities.

The Sower and the Seed

In paintings by Vincent van Gogh, it is not unusual to see a farmer sowing seeds with a typical one-arm gesture. Even though it is only a painting, we can recognise the devotion of the farmer.

In the past a farmer would pray before going into the fields to sow. The ritual of the seeds in his warm hand and the rhythm of his light steps did not change for centuries. The old farmers working in their fields were in perfect harmony with nature, and as they went through the process of growing the grain, they understood that nature was communicating God’s Word to them.

Today, we hardly ever see a lone farmer sowing seeds in his field. It was our parents’ generation that last witnessed the love of the farmer for the earth.

Nowadays we are accustomed to seeing big heavy machinery with great wheels and blades grinding through the ground. The seeds drop into the soil through a cold metal funnel. We can feel the artificiality of this process. And we can also feel this is not really progress, but rather a procedure now without heart. The devotion towards God’s creation has totally disappeared. But it is “the new reality.” We cannot change it. And so, this transformation and development has become a challenge for farmers and for us as consumers. We are no longer aware of the process. We do not always know what we are consuming, or better said: what we are fed. Our produce and our bread don’t come anymore from the loving hands of the old spiritual farmer.

What we now have to do is express our love for this earth. It is ours. But– do we love the earth with all its beauty? Do we love it in the spring, when we see the first green buds peaking out from the ground? Do we love it in summer, when the wind makes it dance? Do we love the droopy and slowly wilting plants in the last days of autumn? All these thoughts become relevant, only if we are aware that the earth is a spiritual entity.

Today, the word of God can speak to us through different pictures and in many different ways. But the question is always: are we open to God’s spiritual Word when we relate to nature? The truth is, we should not reap the gifts of nature and then forget about it.

Let’s think for a moment how it is said during the service for children: they can lift up their thoughts and feelings to the spirit, to the spirit that lives and works, that lives and works in stone, plant and animal, that lives in human thinking and human doing.

It is obvious that nowadays the children are already learning to appreciate these thoughts and feelings. During the Sunday Service for Children they are given this wonderful chance. And for us, as adults– could we become responsible for the word of God as it speaks to us in all these different forms? Then we can find in our soul a new morality towards all living things on this earth. In prayer we can also pray for the earth, that it will not be destroyed before its time. Only on earth can we– as human beings– fulfil our task for the future in order to become spiritual beings.

The paintings of van Gogh have given us the possibility of looking at both sides, of looking at the morality in his art and also of looking at how it was in the past with the old farmers. From both we can learn and understand how God’s Word speaks in the world, and now we have to find our own way of seeing and hearing it, of becoming connected with it.

A Few Thoughts on Membership and its Relationship to Other Paths

I am sometimes asked what it means to be a member of The Christian Community. It means that an individual has taken part in the sacramental life of the congregation for a sufficient length of time and has come to experience the Act of Consecration of Man, the Communion service as his or her “spiritual home.” Among those seeking for answers to the question of meaning and wholeness in a fractured world are those who find help through communion, through participation in Christ. Such communion is union with a being who is the bearer of one’s “real” self, one’s “higher” self. We experience a kind of unification for a time, the world appears a bit more coherent. Having found a “spiritual home” one can then feel more at home in the earthly world.

Yet membership does not mean that one’s only access to the spirit is in the sacraments, nor need it signify one’s decision that the Christ can be found only in one Church. Christ is at work everywhere in the world and would be heard in the depths of every human soul. Communion with him, which will always be holy whenever it really occurs, can take place in different ways. And it is in the nature of Christ himself that no single path to communion with him, be it meditation, the sacraments or the largely unconscious path of destiny can claim exclusiveness or greater validity for a modern human being. Any path that leads to Christ is worthy, for he said “I am the way …” Yet every path also has its dangers: meditation: spiritual vanity; ritual: spiritual indolence; destiny: resentment and refusal to wake up. These risks are not unique to each path but overlap in large measure just as the various paths can overlap in the lives of individuals. Anyone following a path of spiritual discipline and meditation will be only strengthened in those endeavors by an inwardly active participation in ritual, in the sacraments. But only if, for personal reasons residing deep within the should, they themselves want to participate in ritual. There is no question of should. On the other hand, regular attendance at the Act of Consecration of Man, or any other valid form of the Eucharist, when accompanied by a fervent heart filled with an “active receptivity,” will serve to stimulate one’s thinking by way of the heart. With thinking thus become more lively and flexible it is natural then for an individual to seek for an expanded understanding of the ideas heard, thought and prayed in the ritual. This may lead people to study, for example, the spiritual researches of Rudolf Steiner. Thus, as one would expect of two paths leading to the same goal, Christ himself, the two ways serve to complement and support one another.

Rudolf Steiner was once asked whether an initiate, someone able to directly commune with beings in the spiritual world, would also take communion in the form of bread and wine. He responded that the answer depended entirely upon the initiate, that there is no general principle. In this most personal area there are no rules as to which path or combination of paths any individual or type of individual should follow in seeking communion with Christ. The only certainty is that everyone is individually responsible for deciding which paths are fruitful for him or her.

An individual who has experienced the sacraments in The Christian Community can come to the insight: “Yes, here is reality, here is healing and help for life. Here I find the strength that helps me to help others. Here is a source of THE GOOD in and for the world. I want to unite with this community that the Good endure, that the Good be spread further in the world.” When anyone come comes to this conclusion and wants to become a member of the Christian Community he or she should arrange to meet with a priest to discuss the next step.

The Social Form Implied in the Lord’s Prayer

One of the first things to be noticed in contemplating the Lord’s Prayer is that it immediately extends beyond the personal needs of an individual supplicant. Rephrasing it into a personal supplication is actually unthinkable; the phrase “My father, who art in the heavens” is already repugnant, but “Give me this day my daily bread” is even more so. Anyone who knows the Lord’s Prayer will instinctively cringe away from these expressions of egotism set before the spiritual world.

The larger we make the circle included in the words “our” and “us” in the Lord’s prayer, the truer we are to its intent. Ultimately, it is meant to be prayed on behalf of all creation; but it especially includes all of humanity, those on earth but also those who are not at present on earth. And through its inclusion of humanity it brings to expression the picture of how the structure of human society is built.

When, at the end of the First World War, concerned people asked Rudolf Steiner for guidance on how to rebuild society, he responded by describing what we may know as the Threefold Commonwealth or the Threefold Social Order. It is tempting to classify his indications as yet another blueprint for a Utopian society, but those who have done so have failed to realize that Rudolf Steiner actually did nothing except describe things as they are. Human society is threefold, and the crises that arise from time to time spring largely from people’s failure to recognize the fact. Each realm of society, the spiritual-cultural life, the sphere of rights, and the economic life, has its own laws which operate like laws of nature; and when one sphere encroaches with its laws upon another sphere, then certain pathological conditions arise in society.

The seeds of the threefold social organism are already to be found in Genesis. At the beginning of human development, God gives to humanity three tasks. The first task was the naming of the animals. Then, with the creation of Eva, the second task was for Adam and Eva to take up mutual responsibilities towards each other. Finally, with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the third task was to toil at raising crops for food. Furthermore, Adam and Eva have three sons who are named in Genesis: Cain, who becomes a farmer; Abel, who becomes a shepherd; and Seth, who establishes the line of the patriarchs. Thus we recognize, not once but twice, the archetype of the threefold social organism. To give things names and then to know their names is a fundamental phenomenon of the spiritual-cultural life. The basis for the economic life is in the cultivation of the soil. In the relationship of Cain and Abel we have the archetype for the recurring problem in the relationship of the economic life to the spiritual-cultural life. And it is the task of Seth, the third son, to take responsibility for the whole.

It is then possible to recognize how the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer can help us to shape the threefold social organism. The first petition, “Hallowed be thy name”, gives us the underlying impulse of the spiritual-cultural life. The source for the spiritual-cultural life is the world of ideas, and all ideas are aspects of the name of God. For the ideas to enter into the spiritual-cultural life they must be taken up as ideals. To bring our ideals to expression we need freedom; and each expression of an ideal contributes to the hallowing of God’s name.

The next petition reads “Thy kingdom come.” The moment we speak the word “kingdom” we find ourselves in a political-legal context. Every kingdom has its laws. By calling for the approach of the kingdom of our Father in the Heavens we are resolving to accept the laws of that kingdom.

Next come the words “Thy will be done.” To begin with, we could imagine this as a rather passive acceptance bordering on fatalism—one speaks of “acts of God”; if something happens that I cannot control, I call it “God’s will.” The matter becomes more complicated when I add the effects my own actions into the whole of the world processes. Can other people consider my deeds as an aspect of God’s will? This can become an essential question for each of us, and the prime area of concern that it raises for us is in the economic life, where universal brotherhood is the ideal that we strive for.

Our Father, Who Art in the Heavens

To whom am I speaking when I say, “Our father, who art in the heavens”? Many of us will have spoken these words often without spending much thought on whom we have been addressing. Perhaps a visual image may pass quickly by, such as Michelangelo’s representation of the Father God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But again the image is not often followed through to its consequences.

The first aspect of this question that must be considered is the word “Our”. Whom do I include when I say “Our father”? Again, we face a question that we do not often ask. What happens if I simply say the words without thinking on whose behalf I am saying them?

There are several possible answers to this question, and each of them may be the correct one at different times. The first is that I may be speaking for myself only. If this is true, then I can only reach that spiritual being who is specifically related to me. In traditional nomenclature, this is my angel, or, which comes to the same thing with slightly different emphasis, my guardian angel. It is a good thing to meet and address one’s guardian angel, but in a prayer with the scope of the Lord’s Prayer there is a great risk to us if we cannot reach further than to our angel. At this level we remain isolated in our relationship with the spiritual world and may develop a self-centered spiritual life. To be thus cut off would lead us to become less than human beings. We can therefore recognize the great wisdom in the fact that the Lord’s Prayer begins with the words “Our father”, and not “My father”. At least to a large extent we are protected from the first danger.

The second possibility is that I include into the word “Our” not just myself but all of the people with whom I associate myself. How far I reach depends on how large I can make the circle. It could be as narrow as my family, or it could reach out to include all the people with whom I regularly associate, be it in my place of work, my home town, or my local church. It can extend to people I have never met, most commonly to people who share my religion or nationality. Out of such an attitude I will be addressing that spiritual being who stands in relationship to the group of people whom I have included in the circle with me. These spiritual beings are the archangels, who according to their stature take responsibility for smaller or larger groups of people. Here also there is a risk. I cannot fall into the egotism of “My father”, but there is the very real danger of sectarianism or nationalism. It can be even more significant whom I do not include into “Our” as whom I do include. And from such an exclusion it is only a short step into a war where both sides use the prayer against each other.

The third possibility is that I include all of humanity on earth as I say “Our father”. Now I am addressing the spiritual being who is responsible for the guidance of humanity in the present time. This is the being we know by the name of Michael, one of the time spirits or archai. When we reach this level we can come into a relationship with the spiritual world which is much less likely to cause harm in the world. There does remain a small risk that we will not be able to find a right relationship to what comes before or after us.

This is overcome in the next possibility, which is to include into one’s circle also those human beings who are in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Now our prayer connects us beyond the spiritual beings of the third hierarchy to those of the second hierarchy, to begin with, with the exusiai or elohim. And a further step, including not only human beings but all of the created world when we say “Our father”, brings our prayer to the first hierarchy, to the thrones, cherubim and seraphim.

The image then is this: I speak the words “Our father who art n the heavens”. I speak from a point which I must imagine as the center of the world, but I include into the word “our” all of creation. I feel my kinship with all creation — we have the same father; we have come from the same creator. Through having thus overcome all egotism I can address the place where I may at last find my true I.

Point, Circle, and the Lord’s Prayer

The exercise given in the Curative Course by Rudolf Steiner based on the point and the circle emphasizes the process of transforming the two into each other: the point becomes a circle, and the circle becomes a point. The exchange between circle and point is accompanied by the sentences In me is God and I am in God. The two sentences together form a paradox, of which we contemplate the first side in the evening and the second in the morning. But the whole exercise thus becomes a rhythmic in and out-breathing, which reflects our relation to the world as a whole.

When we contemplate our breathing, we realize that it is an expression of our paradoxical relationship with the world. The air which is in me now was a moment ago in the world around me, and will in another moment return to the world around me. Inasmuch as I am a being of air, I am not separate from the world but in a constant exchange with the world. And so it is that also many kinds of therapy focus on harmonizing of the breathing process.

When our soul equilibrium is upset, a great help can be to take a moment to focus our thoughts onto the Lord’s Prayer. Besides the fact that a prayer is perhaps a good idea at such a moment, we may notice how it calms us and puts the world into a better perspective. What may not be at once apparent is that a rhythmic transformation between point and circle permeates the whole prayer.

Let us follow the prayer and observe the process. The prayer begins with the words of address, Our Father, who art in the heavens. We begin by placing ourselves at a point on the earth, surrounded by the dome of the heavens. There follows the sentence Hallowed be thy name. Our picture of the father in the whole of the heavens is contracted to a word which we can express. We become the circle, with God’s name at the center. Now we come to the sentence Thy kingdom come. Our contemplation must spread world-wide to include the circle of the kingdom. Then the circle focuses on a point as we speak the next words: Thy will be done.

What follows is a transformation in itself. The words As above in the heavens, so also on the earth remind us that we participate in two circles. So far we have looked upwards to the circle of the heavens; the rest of the prayer focuses us upon our relation to the circle of the earth.

The first sentence following this change of direction is: Give us this day our daily bread. Today we do not so often have the chance to experience rightly what we are asking for, because of the haste with which we go through life. But the archetypal experience of receiving our daily bread occurs when we are sitting around the table, with the bread in the middle. The next sentence, And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, places each one of us in the center. From us our trespasses stream outward into the world; from us can also stream outward our forgiveness for the trespasses that stream towards us from others. With the words And lead us not into temptation we ask for help in maintaining our center. Temptation is that which would draw us away from our center to the periphery. But with the words But deliver us from the evil we express the opposite need. Evil is what we find in ourselves, and we must look to the circle around us for deliverance.

A prayer such as the Lord’s prayer can work in many ways, with or without our awareness of the working. Often, once we start the prayer, the rest of it falls into a semiconscious repetition. But every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, one of the things that is happening is that we are bringing ourselves into a healthy, rhythmic relationship between center and periphery, between point and circle.

2nd Michaelmas: Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 6:10-19 New Translation

What it comes to in the end is this: grasp the power which streams to you in the experience of Christ in the soul and in the powerful regency of his pure spiritual strength.

Put on the power of God as one puts on full armor, so that you may stand against the well-aimed attacks of the adversary. For our struggle is not to fight against powers of flesh and blood, but against

spirit beings mighty in the stream of time,
against spirit beings powerful in the molding of earth substance,
against cosmic powers whose darkness rules the present time,
against spirits who carry evil into the realms of the spiritual world.

Therefore take up the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand your ground on the day when evil unfolds its greatest strength, and victoriously withstand it.

Stand firm, then, girded with the truth, like a warrior firmly girded. Connect yourself with all in the world as is justified in the spiritual world, and this connection with the spirit will protect you like a strong breastplate.

And may Peace stream through you, down to your feet, so that on your path you spread peace, as the message that comes from the realm of the angels.

In all your deeds have trust in God. This trust will be like a mighty shield; with it you can quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Take into your thinking the certainty of Christ’s healing deed. It will protect your head like a helmet.

And the spirit, which has become living in you, you shall grasp as one grasps a sharp sword. The sword of the spirit is the working of the Word of God.

May this armor clothe you in all your prayers and supplications, so that in the right moment you raise yourself in prayer to the spirit, and at the same time practice wakefulness in inner loyalty.

Feel yourself united in prayer with all other bearers of the spirit-also with me, Paul, so that the power of the word will be given to me when I am to courageously bring the knowledge of that holy mystery which lives in the message of the gospel.

Evening Sermon, September 13, 2001

In the autumn fruit trees stand ripe for harvest. With its fruit the tree offers its own living substance to the earth. It makes this sacrifice so that new life, so that new trees, so that more fruit can grow and develop. That fruit surrounds an inner kernel, a seed. When the fruit falls, the kernel, the seed, is born. Life continues and metamorphoses. God made the tree’s fruit so abundant that when cared for by humans, the fruit is harvested so that the tree’s abundant life can feed others.

This week we watched in horror as malignant forces harvested human lives. We struggle to make sense of such madness, for we know that a human life is not fruit for the taking. Human lives are not food for some malignant appetite.

We have been shown, again and again, pictures of overwhelming destruction. And in our proper horror before the face of evil, we may ask ourselves how a good God could allow such things to happen. The answer is that the capacity for evil is the shadow side of God’s gift of free will. God values our freedom of choice. He values it perhaps more than we do. Our freedon has such an enormous value because it is the only way we will learn to develop his creative love. God has taken an enormous risk in creating human beings free to choose. We are free to develop ourselves toward good or towards evil. God allows evil to exist. The function of evil is to rouse us, to stimulate us to develop our true, higher humanity.

We are beginning to awaken after the shock and daze of this week. We are beginning to come to ourselves again. We are beginning to react. But we are also beginning to realize that our very natural reactions, reactions of fear, of anger, are perhaps not the best that we can do. For it is very clear: evil attempts to disable the best of the human spirit.

One of the ways evil tries to disable us is through fascination. We have found ourselves gazing in horror at images of destruction and suffering, repeated over and over, until we realize that now it is our souls that are now being invaded. We need to practice soul hygiene. We need to keep ourselves informed, but not overtaken; open, but not overwhelmed. We need to do this because we must control our arousal. We need to find and maintain our calm, upright human center.

In 1910 Rudolf Steiner said:

We must root out of the soul all fear and horror of that which is approaching mankind from the future. How fearful and anxious we make ourselves today before that which lies in the future, and especially before the hour of death! Human beings must make their own a calm composure in connection with all feelings and sensations directed toward the future, behold with absolute equanimity everything that may come, and think only that no matter what comes, it comes to us out of the wisdom-filled guidance of the world. This must be placed ever and again before the soul.

Apocalypse2: The Book of the Apocalypse to John

“The Revelation to John”, as a book, has a clear structure. It has a clearly defined beginning and end, as last week we have seen.2 John’s spiritual experiences, his visions told in this book, are the result of “being in the Spirit”. This happened to him four times.

“In the Spirit”

John first was “in the Spirit” on the Lord’s Day, the day of the Sunday Eucharist, hearing behind him a loud voice. Turning to see the voice speaking to him, in his first vision he perceives “seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man” (1:10-13). In the liturgical setting of the seven burning candles Christ who rose from the dead appears to him as “One like a Son of Man”, identifying himself as “the first and the last, and the living one; I died, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (1:17-18). Having already been told to write to the seven churches, he then writes the words spoken to him, addressed to the angel of the church in Ephesus, in Smyrna, in Pergamum, in Thyatira, in Sardis, in Philadelphia and in Laodicea – seven churches in Asia Minor.

Later, maybe much later (as an “after this” indicates), John sees in heaven an open door (4:1). Perceiving this, he hears the voice which had already spoken to him, and is challenged to “Come up hither, and I will show you….” what is to take place “after this”. This is his second vision, beginning with what we will call the “First Throne Vision”. At once being “in the Spirit”, in heaven John sees a throne and one seated on the throne: a center of power and of movement, of various beings and of continuous glorification (4:2ff). But who is worthy to open the scroll in the right hand of him who is seated on the throne, or to look in it? No one is found to be worthy, neither in heaven nor on earth or under the earth (5:1ff). But now John is led to perceive “a Lamb standing” in the midst of the throne and its beings, “as if sacrificed” (5:5-6). This Lamb, quintessence of temple worship and sacrifice whom John the Baptist, personified in Jesus, had seen coming to him (Jn 1:29), indeed is able to open the scroll and break its seals. Now the apocalyptic process begins to unfold: by the opening of seven seals, the blowing of seven trumpets (but the sounding of seven thunders is sealed) and the pouring out of the seven bowls full of the wrath of God.

Twice more John is called with the words: “Come, I will show you…” by one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls. The first time he is “carried away in the Spirit” into a wilderness, to be shown the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, Babylon the great – her doom and the doom of those over whom she had dominion (17:3ff); this happens between two Throne Visions. The second time he is called after the last Throne Vision, in the Final Vision, once more to be “carried away in the Spirit” unto a high mountain, to be shown “The Bride, the wife of the Lamb” – the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, from God (21:9ff). Both times, it seems, it needs an extra effort of spirit for him to perceive the results of the apocalyptic process in the destinies of these two “women”, so much each other’s opposite.

For the Advancement of the World 2: The Living and the Dead1

When preparing for the festival of Michael, we looked at the way our human role in the world is highlighted in the call of the archangel, as heard in the prayers of this festival time.2 After the Creed has described Christ’s resurrection it speaks of the way Christ, since his ascension, lives as “the fulfiller of the fatherly deeds of the ground of the world”. But he does not only fulfill those fatherly deeds which keep the world as it is in good shape, but he, the Son will, “for the advancement of the world”, unite with all those whom he, through their bearing, can wrest from the death of matter. Thus Christ’s resurrection becomes world-scale resurrection. But this will only become possible when human beings heed that call of Michael, heard in the prayers of his festival. Only when we come to a deeper, a higher awareness, a new grasp of this deed of life and death on Golgotha, will Christ’s forces of resurrection work in us, human beings on earth. To become a creative force, a light-carrying force which will keep alive heavenly light in the darkness of our earthly existence.

The Creed actually introduces Christ by first stating his human connection: “through whom human beings attain the re-enlivening of the dying earth-existence”; then, he is also introduced as “the Son born in eternity”. “The helper of the souls of the dead”, he in future will ally himself with those whom he can wrest from the death of matter. Truly he is the “God of Man”, as is said in the prayers which describe Michael as the countenance of this god. Christ has become the helper of all human beings, both the living and the dead, of all those who have taken his transubstantiating power into their thinking.

With Michael, we are moving into an apocalyptic world, into a world turning more and more apocalyptic. Recently, the line between the physical and the spiritual has become diffuse, the threshold between the world of earth and the world of spirit having shifted. Not only are nowadays human beings able to reach out across the threshold, the threshold as such is “moving down” into the human being itself. This creates a totally new situation, putting human beings into their role of actually becoming co-actors, “players”, becoming directly, actively engaged in the eschatological drama which begins when the world slowly prepares for its “last stage” of death and judgment, of new heaven and new earth. In the book of the Apocalypse, the “Apocalypse to John”, we can perceive how humanity becomes more and more engaged in this process, both while on earth as well as in heaven. It shows how the Christ mystery, encompassing both earth and heaven, is becoming more powerful within a Christian humanity on its way to maturity.3

“With Michael”, I said, meaning on the one hand that Michael, who is the archangel specifically active in our times, presents us with a unique opportunity to become conscious of how to cross that line between the physical and spiritual, at least in intention (see the talk titled Michael’s Call). On the other hand, in the course of the Christian year, from the festival of Michael onwards through Advent, our Christian Community gospel readings carry this apocalyptical signature, first during Michaelmas in the sense that for us living on earth this line between the physical and the spiritual has already shifted with many consequences in our personal sphere. In November we look more at the apocalyptical process on a world-scale, as mirrored in the last book of the Bible. Advent heightens our apocalyptical awareness for the “second coming” of Christ in an apocalyptical setting, until at Christmas the fact that Christ appears on earth can be grasped as an historical and at the same time continuing reality. . At least half the gospel readings of those 12 to 13 weeks are taken from the Apocalypse, the Revelation to John. Here, we’ll focus on this aspect. By the way, this is the great yearly recurring example of the “the hour iscoming and is now” of John’s gospel (4:23 and 5:25), of which Christ’s “second coming” is the prime example. He hás come, he hás risen – but between him and our conscious perception the distance has grown which his disciples experienced as his ascension. Christ’s presence has become obscured to our perceptions; hence for ús he needs to “come again”, needs a “second coming”.