,

“Stand fast, girded about the loins with truth. (Ephesians 6:14)

When in our language we can’t find the right words to express something, we use gestures to reinforce our words.  Sometimes such a gesture says more than all words.  Of all the gestures we are familiar with, beckoning is perhaps the one that leaves you most free.  Everyone can do with it what they want.  You can follow it or just let it be.

Our time spirit, Michael, beckons us.  He does no more and no less than making this eloquent, tacit gesture.  If he did more, he would probably overwhelm us.  “Every angel is terrifying,” wrote Rilke, the poet.  If he gave us less than a beckoning, even a wise person would probably not recognize him.

When you try to picture this taciturn, beckoning archangel, you will recognize in the Act of Consecration at this time of the year another eloquent gesture.  It sounds simple: Michael stands.  These words sound five times in the epistle and insert during Michaelmas time.  “He who stood … He who stands …”  Between fight and flight, between offense and defense, he has taken a place where he remains standing—whatever happens.

That is also what the apostle Paul wants to tell us when he calls on us—no to fight, but to “resist the well-aimed attacks of the Adversary.”  Not to rush forward or to shrink back, but to stand, “girded about the loins with truth, with the breastplate of righteousness, the feet shod with preparedness to spread the message of peace that comes from the angels.”

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, October 26, 2025

/0 Comments/by
, ,

The Epistle of the Trinity

With the day of the Archangel Michael on September 29, a weeks-long hushed period comes to an end, a time without highlights, seemingly standing still between the great festivals of St. John and Michael.  Those who have experienced these ten weeks at the altar will be impressed with the always returning prayer to the Trinity.  Although this epistle disappears and is, in a certain sense, overwhelmed by the appeal to Michael, it also resounds, barely audibly, like under- and over-tones in music.  In due time, these words become the undercurrent of all our religious life.  It is as if the words of this epistle want to say:

Whatever may happen:

I am there.

I shall be there.

Always shall I be there.

 

Whatever befalls you,

In good and bad fortune,

In joy and sorrow,

Your life is My creating life.

 

No matter how dark the future will be,

Stronger than all darkness that will lame you

Is the light of the Spirit

That shines on everything and everyone.

 

That is the silent, strong undercurrent of infinite trust of God in human beings, which is with us always, from the cradle to the grave,

All our life,

All our lives.

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 28, 2025

/0 Comments/by
,

Healing Ten Lepers (Luke 17:11-19)

The healing of the ten lepers in the Gospel of Luke is not only an example of divine power, but also of human weakness.  The tragedy, the disillusionment sound in the question Christ asks when only one returns to thank Him: “Were not ten healed?  Where are the other nine?  Are they not returning to praise the power of God?  Why is it only this foreigner who does that?”  To none of these questions does He get an answer.

We only need to briefly project ourselves into the situation to feel the painful rejection Christ had to undergo.  Almighty as His healing power may be, so powerless does He stand vis-à-vis people who turn their backs on Him and simply disappear.

That is how it went at the time.  And now?  Does history repeat itself—or do we perhaps do it differently than at that time?

We are all suffering from a collective illness that has estranged us from our divine origin.  Think of what the Act of Consecration calls the sickness of sin.  Even more concrete is the expression Rudolf Steiner used for the sickness of our time.  He called it: der Aussatz des Materialismus, “the leprosy of materialism.”  This sickness is unavoidable; we are all infected by it.  The only medicine is:  the healing medicine, His body and blood.  And when we receive this sacrament, what is then our answer?  Do we return to thank Him?

He does not want to give us His meal—He wants to share it with us.  Sharing begins with thanking.  Then only does this meal become complete, if it becomes eu-charist of Him and of us, which means: giving thanks.  Then only can He say, just as to the one person who thanked Him: “Your faith has made you whole.”

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 14, 2025

/0 Comments/by
,

“And He took him aside by himself, away from the crowd… (Mark 7:33)

The Dutch language has the word eigenwijs which, literally translated, would be something like “own-wise,” and is used for someone who is out of step with others, or sees things differently from the way others normally view them.  Formerly, someone who was “own-wise” was just annoying.  When decisions had to be taken in a group, such a person was soon considered to be a spoilsport who had to be isolated.  Today the word has developed a different meaning.  It is even encouraged: do it in your own way, don’t let others tell you what you should say or do.  For we have all become more or less closed personalities, each one with our own opinions, our own wise.

But this individuality is as a double-edged sword.  On the one hand, it makes us autonomous, frees us from ties; on the other, it brings us into a world of colliding interests, opinions, and conflicts.  If we only follow our own wisdom, our conversations become like verbal combat among the deaf, who are all locked up in their own points.

To heal a deaf person, Christ had to take him away from the crowd to a quiet place.  There, alone with him, He could perform the miracle of the healing and open his ears.

Also our deafness, our own wisdom that is estranged from divine wisdom, can only be healed when we are in silence together with Him.

That is the way and the significance of the Act of Consecration—being together with Him in silence.  Where in the world can you still find such a spot, where you can practice the art of listening with full attention?  For, the art of prayer is nothing other than the art of listening to the will of God.  The Act of Consecration teaches us to lead a listening life.  Sooner or later, He will open our ears to His presence, not only at the altar, but in every human being, no matter how “own-wise” we may be.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, August 31, 2025

/0 Comments/by
, ,

“Ask, and it will be given you.” (Matthew 7:7)

If things were as simple as it sounds in this sentence, all our questions would be answered and all our desires fulfilled.  But the reality of life is very different.  How often have we asked the spiritual world a question, fervently prayed for help—and no answer ever came.

But did we ask the right question?  Or did we perhaps not hear the answer because we were expecting something very different?

We have in our world, which always focuses on outer results, lost the knack of asking questions.  Even worse, it has often become a caricature.  The spiritual world does not take to cheap questions, and even less to cheap answers.  Real questions need time to be born.  To ask a real, honest question, you have to nurture it, brood on it, until it has ripened.  For, everything we ask of the divine world is subject to the plea: Not my will, but Your will be done.

It makes no sense to ask to be spared illness, suffering, and evil.  Prayer is no means against evil, but a means to make the best of even the worst that happens to us.  In every human life there will come temptations that threaten to exceed our forces.  There are not only things like ordeals to test us, enlighten us, and initiate us, but there is also darkening, and failed initiation.

But when the hardest ordeal comes, when you think: I can’t do it anymore—remember then the plea of Christ during His greatest temptation:

“Father, if it be your will, then let me be spared this cup.

But not my will but your will be done.” (Luke 22:42)

No human being stood by Him.
He was not spared suffering.
But an angel strengthened Him.

 

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, August 4, 2025

/1 Comment/by
, ,

“You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29)

Long ago, there was a time when it was necessary not just to recognize Christ in silence, but to also confess Him emphatically, as Peter was the first to do: “You are the Christ.”  Of course, because at that time there was almost no one who recognized the Son of God, Christ, in the Son of Man, Jesus.  In our time you cannot just pronounce that.  When you loudly start proclaiming that He is the Christ, no one wants to hear it.  On the contrary, you then just irritate others, or your words are blown away in the wind.

Confessing Christ—how do you do that in our world?

Actually, we constantly confess something without words as we go through the world.  Just look at the faces of the people around you: so much somberness, so much sorrow, so much annoyance, so much anger.  Just look at yourself when you are walking through the streets of a city.  Without sensing it ourselves, we spread and confess our moods, for our face, our posture, our footsteps speak volumes.  We leave our tracks non-stop, visible and invisible.  In the world in which we are living these days you don’t need to pronounce what you know and believe; without speaking a word, you can DO what you know and believe.

When we receive His peace at the altar, this gift can become our confession.  This peace is not only meant for us, but through us for the world.  That is the appeal of Christ after He has bestowed His peace on us: My peace is not of this world.  My peace wants to work in the world through you.  Are you ready to confess my peace?

Give me your hands, your head, your heart, your feet – and walk the way of peace with me.

– Rev. Bastiaan Baan, July 27, 2025

/0 Comments/by
, ,

Peace

Wherever you look around you, in our time peace has become a shaky, unstable concept, both at large in our society, and also in relationships between people.

Hardly has peace been established somewhere, and it is broken again and superseded by chaos and fighting. Even in the individual peace is often elusive—hardly has our inner life been set at rest, and the storm of our changeable moods breaks out again. In nature it is similar. A peaceful landscape can suddenly be drowned in violent rain, or wither in the scorching heat of the sun. Nature holds up a mirror to us of our chaotic, disturbed world. In brief, nothing is as vulnerable today as peace.

The peace that emanates from Christ is beyond compare with our earthly concepts and ideas: “I leave you the peace: my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives.” (John 14:27) When we make an effort to comprehend what we receive with this form of peace, our intellect has to capitulate. What does Christ bestow on us when we for a moment feel His touch with the words: “The peace be with you”? From His suffering, from His death, and from the underworld, He has wrested a substance of peace He always bears with Him, until the end of the world. He is the calm in the storm, the quiet in the chaos, the rise in the decline.

Even if our whole life long we are not able to understand what He bestows on us with this touch, one day we will stand face to face to Him, and He will remind us of what He gave us:
“I leave you the peace: my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives.”

– Rev. Bastiaan Baan, June 10, 2025

/1 Comment/by
, ,

Ascension

Ever since Christ’s Ascension people have a deeply rooted tendency in religious life to look up.  Here on earth, in the “vale of tears,” it can’t be found.  We have a religious homesickness for heaven.  The disciples looked up to heaven when He disappeared from their eyes.  But the angels who stood by pointed in a different direction, back to the earth.  “Why do you stand there looking up to heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken up before you into heaven, will come again, revealed in the same way as you have now seen him pass into the heavenly sphere.” (Acts 1: 11)

Where should we look to find Him?  Where did Christ go when He left the earth?  With Ascension He disappeared from view, with the promise of His coming, His coming again.  And what else is the second coming than His heaven on earth?

It is as if by centuries of looking up to heaven we have forgotten to look for Him on earth.  Look at your neighbor, even if he is a stranger to you, even if he is your opponent, even if he is your enemy.  For just as in yourself, in the depth of his being a king is hidden who is waiting to be freed.  His name is: Christ in me.  Christ in you.  Christ in us.

In the words of the poet, Lita Vuerhard:

We await him who from his throne
Will radiantly descend.
His heavens full of angels’ songs.
For centuries we await this now
If it will repeat itself.

Away from the world,
To heavenly pastures
We threw our yearning gaze,
In the highest of all lights
To behold his approach.

But he lies deeply in our soul
Shining as a precious stone.
Come, he calls, I’m worthy of it.
Into the depths for Ascension,
As deep as you can sink!

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, June 1, 2025.

/0 Comments/by
, ,

Contemplation on the Service for a Deceased Perso

When a person is dying, in the last weeks or days of life the mask of the everyday personality drops off. It is as if not only the physical sheath, but also the sheath of the soul breaks open. A dying person usually shows himself in all his vulnerability, as he rarely did during life. When you cross the threshold so vulnerably and broken-open, it is not surprising that on the other side of the threshold you are as helpless as a newborn baby. No wonder that in antiquity the day of death was called dies natalis, which means “day of birth.”
A fifteen-year old girl wrote on the day before she died totally unexpectedly a poem with the words:

Two woven hands
Unfold as two wings.
An inexplicable light.
Cries of joy, unheard.
Unborn being,
Forlorn human being,
Helplessly planted.

That is the world of a person who has just died, an unprecedented, unknown world, into which you are helplessly planted. There you need to be enveloped, just like a newborn. Thank God, that help comes in the form of angels’ hands that receive the deceased on the other side. But in the months and years after crossing the threshold, the deceased is still in all his fibers connected with us, the living.

The angels cannot give him the protection he needs by themselves. We humans cannot do that either. But together, angels and living partners in distress, we can help him come home in the land of his birth. That is the meaning and significance of the Act of Consecration for the Dead, just as formerly, in all times and cultures, people prayed for the deceased.

That is why we gather at the altar to accompany our dear deceased with our prayers, with our offering—for them to get wings in the world of the spirit.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, May 18, 2025

/0 Comments/by
,

Peace be with you! (John 20:27)

The more often you hear these words, the more you may be surprised that they do not express an incontrovertible truth, but a possibility. Why did Christ never say: “Peace is with you”—not even to doubting Thomas, who was allowed to touch him? And why do we never hear at the altar: “Peace is with you”—whereas He is giving it to us? Does this mean that we have to make this possibility a reality?

What do we do with the soft touch of Peace that we receive at the altar? What does this touch bring about?

Peace is a mood that wants to reach further than a feeling of rest and harmony. It wants to be part of our voice, our gestures, even our feet. Are our feet—speaking with Paul—“…shoed with preparedness to spread the message of peace…?” (Ephesians 6:15)

With our feet we walk the path of our life. Semiconsciously and consciously we leave our traces. Only when we walk with Christ and He with us, do our feet begin to spread the message of His Peace. His Peace is not only meant for me, not only for my destiny, but also for everyone’s destiny. This Peace wants to go into the world in us, through us, to save what can be saved. For, Peace in the world is inconceivable. But walking the still, narrow path of Peace—this creates in a torn world an indelible track.

– Rev. Bastiaan Baan, April 27, 2025

/0 Comments/by