Do not be anxious about tomorrow… (Matthew 6:34)
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 Peace and harmony have been replaced by conflicts and chaos, wherever you look.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
The Ten Lepers: Luke 17: 11-19
The Ten Lepers
On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now, he was a Samaritan. Then said Jesus, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And he said to him, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
Luke 17: 11-19 (RSV)
The story of the ten lepers who are cleansed is more than a miraculous healing. In what is here enacted between the afflicted ones and the Healer we are confronted with the question: what is healing in reality?
In our everyday, result-oriented world healing is a matter of diagnosis, medication, and medical intervention. You are ill and the doctor has to make you better. Most of the time we are treated as if the disorder is an obstacle that has to be cleared away as quickly as possible. There is just a part of the body that has something wrong with it. And when that is fixed we go on with our life as if nothing has happened. In this process we, the patients, are passive objects; we passively undergo the way from being sick to getting better.
Christ does it differently. To heal the sick he needs no passive object but a cooperative subject, someone who has the will to become healthy, someone who can give thanks from the bottom of his heart. And a person who does not do that has not really been healed. He has only been cleansed. Only to the one who comes back to give thanks can He speak the redeeming word: “Your faith has made you well.”
When at the altar Christ gives His medicine that makes whole, He surrenders defenselessly to us, waiting for an answer. He Himself is the medicine that makes whole, who gives Himself to us. He is the God of defenselessness. And only if we also give ourselves to Him, unconditionally, can He heal us fully, just like that one person, with the redeeming word: “Your faith has made you well.”
-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 15, 2024
“He took him aside by himself, away from the crowd….”(Mark 7:32-37)
“He took him aside by himself, away from the crowd…” (7:33)
It is a well-known phenomenon that, as soon as we are surrounded by people and activity, we have the tendency to forget about ourselves. In the worst case we forget what we came to do or wanted to say. Without interruption the noisy world chatters into us, wants our attention and, in the end, makes us forget why we actually came to the earth. That phenomenon is as old as the world; however, in our time that world is so noisy that everything and everyone risks being drowned out by it.
Formerly, life was still ordered, more or less, according to the principle of “pray and work,” ora et labora. Now there is nothing left that imposes the duty on us to turn away from the world at set times and go into our inner room. But there is something else that has taken its place, something that in former times was not yet so obviously present. That is loneliness.
Even when we are in the midst of a crowd, surrounded by distraction and diversion, we may experience a profound loneliness that throws us back onto ourselves. Only, we often have the tendency to escape from such loneliness and drown it out. We throw ourselves into the rush of things, into the whirl of life. And then comes usually the hangover, the realization that we are even lonelier than before.
We can also choose a different way. When we succeed in staying in the loneliness, a conversation may arise from it, a conversation with ourselves. Then what was one is turned into two. This is what Dag Hammarskjōld meant when he wrote in his diary: “Lonely. But loneliness can also be communion.” *
Even more than a conversation with ourselves, loneliness may become communion. For Christ wants to be alone with us, away from the crowd, to open our ears to His voice.
-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 1, 2024
* Dag Hammarskjōld, Markings.