Our society is arranged in such a way that in daily life we can act as if Christ does not exist.  Even worse, He has been banished from our society.  Wherever you look, in our schools, shops, banks, factories, in our daily intercourse, no trace of Him is to be found.  Instead we live in a world in which power and money, algorithms and efficiency run things. That may sound radical, but we only become really conscious of it when our life is hanging by a thread.  It is a well-known phenomenon that everything looks different to someone who has stood on the crystal bridge and comes back from a near-death experience.  What seemed important in our everyday existence suddenly becomes insignificant; and the seemingly insignificant sometimes turns out to have great value.  At the boundary between life and death our life appears as an open book, of which the pages are closely covered with writing: nothing of what we have thought, spoken and done is lost.  It is preserved, not in our memory, but in the consciousness of the Lord of our destiny.  Someone who came back from an experience on the boundary of death and life said: “His gaze brought about that I saw myself with His eyes.”

What was manifested in this exceptional experience will one day become reality for every human being.  “… all peoples of the earth will behold the Son of Man …,” says Christ (Mt.24:30) and John adds: “All eyes shall see Him, also the eyes of those who pierced Him” (Rev.1:7).   How can we prepare for that encounter?  And how shall we be able to keep our footing when one day we will stand eye to eye with the Son of Man?

In the Consecration of the Human Being there is one moment when we literally stand before Christ.  In that moment we give ourselves to Him as He gives Himself to us—unconditionally.  That is why the Communion is called the highest form of community.

When you receive this gift, know then: I stand before Him.  Even if I am blind, He sees me.  He gives Himself to me.  He touches me.  In this consciousness I prepare for the moment when I will see myself with His eyes.

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, Dec. 2022

The Thinking Heart

We are living in a world in which we are used to keeping everything at a distance.  Admittedly, we are daily reminded of the misery of the world, but usually we don’t stop to think of it much.  When we have seen the daily news we go back to the order of the day.  After all, there is not much more we can do if we want to fulfill our daily obligations.  The only way to bridge this distance and still be able to do something at that distance is to take the misery of the world to heart, irrespective of the fact that we can actually do so little.  A master in this art was Etty Hillesum (1914-1943)* who, during the terrors of the Second World War, gave herself the task: “I want to be the thinking heart.  I would wish to be the thinking heart of a whole concentration camp.”  Her broken life is a witness of taking-to-heart, whereas outwardly she could do nothing for others. What do we then have left?  The thinking heart.

There is a moment in the Act of Consecration of Man that asks for taking the world to heart.  But usually at this culminating point of the service we are so busy with ourselves that we forget the rest of the world.  After all, it is the most intimate moment when we, each for herself or himself, receive the peace.  What kind of peace is that?

The Act of Consecration itself gives an answer, but we tend to forget this answer when we receive the peace of Christ.  For early in the Communion, He says: “This peace with the world can be with you also…”  In radical terms: His peace is not earmarked for me, but through me: for the world, with the world.  In the most precious moment of the Act of Consecration of Man, if we take the suffering, battling world to heart in our thinking, this world can briefly come to rest in us and find peace.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, October 23, 2022.

* Etty Hillesum was a young Jewish woman in Holland who was picked up by the Nazis during World War II, spent time in the Dutch concentration camp and died in Auschwitz. She left a diary in which she recorded profound experiences.

“Young man, I say to you, stand up!” (Lk.7:14)

Standing up is a matter of willpower, which is needed to overcome gravity.  That takes no effort as long as you are healthy and strong, but it is different when you are tired or exhausted.  You have to do it yourself, with your own strength.  No one else can do it for you.  And it becomes even more difficult when you are sick or bedridden.  Gravity and impotence then take their toll.  Two forces are ceaselessly in conflict with each other; of old this has been expressed in the words “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

When then the trial is over and a long, debilitating illness comes to an end, you can be incredibly thankful that you can stand on your two feet again and that you are free to stand and go where you will.  Is that really only your own spirit that overcomes the weak body?

There is also another, more or less hidden force that wants to help us stand on our own two feet.  It speaks to us every time we are about to lose courage or when despair strikes.  That is the voice that called the youth of Nain out of death to life.  That is the still, strong voice that goes with each one of us until death, into death and in life after death—the voice that calls out to us: “Stand up, let us go on.”

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, September 25, 2022

Healing the Blind Beggar (Lk.18:35-43)

When you think in terms of numbers, of visible and tangible results, you soon come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ did not accomplish much during His life on earth.  For what do a mere twelve disciples add up to in a population of many thousands?  And what is the importance of healing one blind man compared with the countless blind people who never had any help?  In that way, the Gospel is full of riddles and things that don’t seem to make sense and that we can’t comprehend with our everyday intellect—things even that evoke ridicule and irritation in many of our contemporaries.  Why just this one blind man?  Was it only because he kept calling and praying, even when the bystanders wanted him to be quiet?

As long as we are only looking at outer reality we are facing riddles.  But blindness is not only a disorder of the eyes, but also of the heart.  And that disorder afflicts us all.  The healing of the blind man shows us what we are all lacking, and what we can do to be healed.

Most people are living in the illusion that they can see.  But our judgments, prejudices, our sympathies and antipathies make us blind for the reality in which we live.  We are really confronted with that when we get into a conflict.  Usually we think in such circumstances: I am right—the other is wrong.  And if both parties stick to their positions it becomes an unbridgeable impasse.  And when obdurate standpoints collide and bring about lifelong separations, the drama turns into a mystery drama that takes not years, but several lives before we are healed of our blindness.

The first step in this drama is the realization that we can at most see a little glimpse of reality.  The blind man sitting by the roadside calls out to us: “Become aware of your blindness, become a beggar for the spirit, pray to the Savior as long as it takes for Him to take pity on you and open your eyes to the mysteries of destiny and fate, of guilt and forgiveness.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, August 21, 2022