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“And His Disciples Believed in Him” (Jn.2:11)

“And His Disciples Believed in Him” (Jn.2:11)

In a society where everything is focused on visible, tangible results, we all actually live according to the principle of first seeing, then believing.  Whether we want to or not, we have in a certain sense all become materialists.  We want to see, hear, touch and taste—then only do we believe that something really exists.

Thus it goes at the wedding in Cana: the disciples see and hear—and not until it has passed the test of their senses, and they have drunk, do they believe.

Just like doubting Thomas, we can stay at a distance, ask critical questions, and have doubts.  But we can also, if we want to, take the test.  The test—for us that is the service at the altar.  The Act of Consecration of Man has been given to us to learn to believe through all our senses.  Whoever does not want to take in the words, but judges like an aloof spectator, remains on the outside and cannot believe.  But experience teaches that the presence of Christ can be recognized, heard, touched and tasted.  At the altar He manifests His Light Being day in, day out—until we become His disciples and believe in Him.

And whoever has once recognized Him in the bread and wine can, just like doubting Thomas who sees, hears, and touches Him, affirm with heart and soul: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn.20:28)

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, January 24, 2021

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And His Mother Kept All These Words in Her Heart

And His Mother Kept All These Words in Her Heart

Lack of understanding separates people all over the earth.  It causes barriers between individuals, groups, and peoples.  Wherever we go, everywhere on earth we see the tangible results of these invisible hurdles.  Lack of mutual understanding can escalate so badly that people exclude each other or threaten each other’s lives.  Each of us, whether we want to or not, forms part of the collective confusion of thinking that shuts out those who have different ideas.  Before we know it, we are involved in a conflict by spouting a judgment or taking sides.

How will these separate worlds ever come together again?  How can we ever understand what the other actually wants to say when we are always kept apart from each other by walls, words, judgments, and prejudices?  Most people take the easy way: they turn away from their opponents as if they don’t exist anymore.  However, sooner or later the confrontation will begin again.

Perhaps we have to look for a different place to put the words and ideas we don’t understand—somewhere beyond our lack of understanding.  The gospel shows a way to find such a place for all we don’t understand.  When the child Jesus, after having disappeared without a trace, returned to his parents after three days, he spoke words no one understood: “Why did you look for me?  Don’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Lk.2:49) The gospel has an extraordinary expression for the way His mother received these enigmatic words: “His mother kept all these words in her heart.” (Lk.2:51)

No more than this and no less than this is needed to create a space for all that we do not understand—even for the injustice that happens in the world.  Bear it with patience.  Take it into your heart.  Sooner or later life itself will give an answer to the riddle you were given.

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, January 17, 2021

 

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A New Year

A New Year

In our time it does not often happen that people face the future full of confidence.  Everywhere sounds concern about the future, fear of the future, doom-thinking about what the future has in store for us.  There is even a “no-future-generation,” young people for whom the future is hopeless.  How can they, how can we have hope for the future?  Isn’t it an illusion when at the beginning of the year we wish each other Happy New Year?

Indeed, in the world that is built by human hands the security of existence is steadily crumbling away.  It is as if we no longer stand on firm ground, as if from time to time the water rises to our lips, as if the only choice we have left is: survive or drown.  How can you wish someone who has the water standing at his lips a Happy New Year?

In the physical world happiness is often hard to find.  Wealth does not usually bring happiness; of course, neither does poverty.  Happiness must be found far from the perishable world—in an invisible world which we call providence.  In this word you recognize a world that foresees in the spirit what is going to happen, even before it becomes earthly reality.  But the word “providence” also has another meaning: the spiritual world provides for our needs, and takes care of us—albeit often in very different ways than we imagine.*

One thing is certain concerning the future that is waiting for us: less and less will we be able to build on outer certainty of existence.  But whatever happens, we can build on trust in the ever present help of the spiritual world.  You don’t find this help on every street corner; it isn’t thrown into your lap.  You have to keep your eyes and ears open for the people who cross your path, for the possibilities life is offering you, for the lucky circumstances that may occur.  That asks for uninterrupted wakefulness.  But in due course we will then recognize that in our fate and destiny we are never alone.  The Lord of fate and destiny, the Lord of providence, goes with us, always, at all times, to the end of the world.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, 1-10-2021.

* The Latin word provideo means literally: to see ahead, foresee, see into the future, as well as: to provide for, to take care of someone or something.

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Christmas Epistle

Christmas Epistle

One of the paradoxes of Christianity is that the Son of God lived only once on the earth, and that he is at the same time “the Son born in eternity.”  The reality of His one-time embodiment is expressed in classical Christianity with the words Et incarnatus est.  The Word became flesh.

The reality of His timeless embodiment is expressed in the epistle of the Christmas season with the words: “Christ has chosen the earthly body.”  More is meant with this than a mortal, material body.  Since His death and resurrection, the whole earth is His body.  In a certain sense, He moved his dwelling place from heaven to the earth.  Our dying earth existence is permeated with His presence—no matter how sick, damaged, and exhausted this earth may be—in order to transform the quintessence of this existence into a new earth and a new heaven in the future.

Undoubtedly, this is for Him, even though He rose from the dead, a lasting path of suffering.  It means an uninterrupted battle with the opposing powers, “in all future cycles of time,” as the epistle expresses it.  For us humans, death is sooner or later a liberation.  As long as we are more or less healthy, and are living without too many worries, we don’t want to think of dying.  But when we grow old and weak, when we cannot expect anything from life anymore, death is our liberator—the crown on our earthly existence.

And for Christ?  His death is but the beginning of a new, unknown path of suffering, a way He has chosen Himself.  The epistle expresses this with the unusual words: “Christ has chosen the earthly body.”  Just as He once came as a human being of flesh and blood—not for the righteous, but for the sinners, the ill, the possessed—so he chooses the dying earth existence “to release man from the deceiving false light, to release man from the senses’ unworthy craving,” always, to the end of the world.

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, 1-3-2021