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Pentecost

Everywhere in nature presence of Spirit reveals itself.  Wherever you look, everything is ordered and arranged according to wise laws of nature, in which every plant, every animal forms an indispensable link in the whole.  We are hardly able to unravel some of this perfect order in the science we call ecology, a word the literal meaning of which is: logic of the household of nature.  Nothing in this order seems to be left to chance.

Our human order is child’s play compared with the perfect laws of nature.  In our lives “ecology” is often hard to find.  True, in our origin we were made in God’s image, but this primal image is disformed and mutilated again and again into God’s counter image, the unholy spirit.

At Pentecost, Christ wants to send the Spirit into our souls—provided we make room for the Spirit.  His presence of Spirit needs our presence of spirit.  And if there is no space for Christ in us, the breath of the Spirit blows to other places on earth.  The Spirit blows not only where it wills, but also to the dwelling places we prepare for it.

For this reason the Holy Spirit is also called the Paraclete—this means literally “the called one.”  May our prayer, the great prayer of the Consecration of the Human Being, become a flaming call for the Spirit, so that He can find a lasting home in our community!

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, May 28, 2023

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The Ruler of This World

Wherever and whenever you look around you, the ruler of this world is always present—so prominent, so overpowering that the hidden power of the good is mostly really hard to find.  It sounds so simple in the last words of Christ, and it is so difficult to recognize in our daily existence: “…the decision has already been made about the ruler of this world.” (Jn. 16:11)  It often looks as if the ruler of this world has free play.

Only when you try to imagine what Christ did when He stood face to face with the adversary power can you begin to understand these enigmatic words.  How did He look?  What did He see?  He saw a deformed being, a demon, estranged from his origin and purpose.  Christ Himself, through whom “all things came into being” (Jn.1:3), recognized His creature.  And the demon recognized his origin and purpose—and surrendered.

We human beings are still far from able to vanquish the ruler of this world on our own power.  But together with Christ we can subdue him.  One of the psalms says it with the words:

With the Lord on my side I do not fear
What can man do to me?
The Lord is on my side to help me;
I shall look in triumph on those who hate me. (Ps. 118: 6-7)

Watch the adversary power, together with Christ.  Look at the world through the eyes of Christ—and the ruler of this world will recognize his Lord and Master.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, May 7, 2023

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Pay Heed To How You Listen (Lk. 8:18) 

In a world where everything tries to make us seeing-blind and hearing-deaf it is necessary to look and listen with open eyes and ears.  And these days that is not so simple.  Cunning techniques make it possible to twist visible reality into lies.  But with the spoken word this is more difficult.  The human voice cannot conceal itself.  To hear what is really meant you have to learn to listen right through the words.

“Pay heed to how you listen.” (Lk. 8:18)  This instruction from Christ is a key to the reality behind the words.  Whenever a person speaks something always sounds through it.  (The Latin word persona (per-sona) literally means sound through.)  What or who is sounding through when we speak?  A blind person, who had developed the art of listening to great perfection, called this the moral music of the voice.  The art of listening gives us the capacity to distinguish the voice of a stranger from the voice of Christ.

The Consecration of the Human Being is pre-eminently the place where we can develop this ability.  Someone who had attended the altar service for many years said once: “Through the Consecration of the Human Being I have learned to lead a listening life.”

“Pay heed to how you listen.”

And if we not only listen to others, but can also inwardly listen, we will begin to recognize His voice also in ourselves.  That is the Christ voice of conscience which wants to lead us like a shepherd through all the trials of life.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, April 23, 2023

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“Peace be with you! (John 20:19-20)

“Peace be with you!’

And while He said this, He showed them His hands and His side.” (John 20:19-20)

Christ is the God with the wounds.

If there is anything that distinguishes Him from all beings in heaven and on earth it has to be the wounds in a perfect resurrection body.  Wounds are plentiful among people on earth—but no human being on earth is yet risen.  Countless deceased rose after Easter—but no deceased has wounds like His.

To demonstrate to his unbelieving followers that this is His identifying mark, Christ shows them His hands and His side.  If that does not suffice, they may touch His wounds.

Hundreds of years later St. Francis sees in a vision an overwhelming light figure that tells him he is Christ.  St. Francis looks right through the impressive figure and says: “My Lord is lowly in appearance.  Show me your wounds.”  Thereupon the devil flees, who for the occasion had shown himself like a wolf in sheep’s clothes.”

Christ is the God with the wounds.  When He shows His wounds the words always sound: “Peace be with you.”  When we hear these words at the altar He wants to let His breath stream into us to recreate us in His image and likeness.  His peace is not of this world.  He has wrested Himself free of pain, of death, and of demons.  This most precious gift of life out of death He wants to share with us, so that we bear His peace in us—even in a world of pain, death, and demons.

 

Rev. Bastiaan Baan, April 16, 2023

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Nourishment which Endures (John 6:27)

Do not put your efforts into acquiring the perishable nourishment, but the nourishment which endures and leads to imperishable life. The Son of Man will give it to you. (John 6:27)

If there is anything that binds us to the earth, it is eating and drinking.  We have hardly satisfied ourselves, and hunger and thirst are back again.  They accompany our earthly life from our first breath to the last, not only in the literal but also in the figurative sense of the word.  The thirst for existence is never quenched.  Even when we have died, this thirst sooner or later brings us back to the earth, where we still have something to do.

Hunger and thirst also accompanied the life of Jesus Christ on earth.  “I thirst”—it was one of the last words on the cross.  With this prayer and the bad aftertaste of a bitter beverage He died.  But also after His resurrection His hunger and thirst burn for what only we can give Him.  Someone once heard Him say: “I am thirsty.  I only have what I am given.  I take nothing.” [*]

That is also His question to us in the enigmatic, contradictory words from the Gospel of John: “Do not put your efforts into acquiring the perishable nourishment, but the nourishment which endures and leads to imperishable life. The Son of Man will give it to you.”  How can Christ ask us for something He Himself gives us?

In the language of the altar this gift, which He gives and asks at the same time, is called the communion.  It is much more than a gift.  It is also His entreaty: “What can you give me?  Can you give yourself to me, now that I have given myself to you?”

Only if I give myself to Him is the meal He wants to share with us perfect.  Only then is His thirst for our existence quenched.

 

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, March 19, 2023

[*] Gabrielle Bossis, Jesus Speaking: Heart to Heart with the King, Pauline Books and Media.

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The Transfiguration on the Mountain (Mat. 17:1-18)

The Transfiguration on the Mountain (Mat. 17:1-18)

Never in the life of Christ on earth was the contrast between height and depth, between light and darkness, greater than at the Transfiguration on the mountain and the drama that followed it.  He had only just appeared in His true form on the mountain when at the foot of the mountain He was confronted with diseased humanity that brought Him to despair.  “How weak are the hearts of men, and how distorted the image of man has become in them.  How long must I still be with you?  How long must I still bear you?”

This shrill contrast is the distinctive hallmark of Christ and of those who want to follow Him.  Church Father St. Augustine once expressed it most succinctly with the words: “The history of Christianity takes its course between the persecutions of the adversary powers and the consolations of God.”  This is true not only for Christians, but also for Christ Himself—to be lurched this way and that between persecution and consolation, between transfiguration and temptation.  Not only is this His destiny, but it is also His self-chosen destiny, no matter now hard that sounds.  For after His resurrection He gives Himself the answer to His desperate question: “How long must I still bear you?”  “I am in your midst all the days until the completion of earthly time.”

In the Consecration of the Human Being we ascend the mountain.  The mountain—that is the altar.  The Latin words alta area mean: raised area for offering.  Even though we do not see it with our eyes, it is the place where Christ appears in His true form,  Every time the bread and wine are raised in His name, Christ is transfigured again.  Every time we receive the holy meal we can say with Peter: “Lord, it is good that we are here.”  And every time the holy act has been fulfilled He descends from the mountain with us, from the consolations of God back to the persecutions of the adversary powers on earth.

 

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, March 5, 2023

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Invisible Assistance

“He will be delivered to the Gentiles, and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spat upon; they will scourge Him and kill Him …” (Luke 18:32)

All of this—it was not only the torture that Jesus underwent.  It is the daily occurring acts by which everywhere on earth people are broken.  History repeats itself countless times.  And always we stand powerless as bystanders, as witnesses and as spectators, as long as we are not involved ourselves as perpetrator or victim.  Perhaps powerlessness is the characteristic of all people of good will.  Evil is as old as the world, and with the best will in the world it cannot be eradicated.

The followers of Jesus were also powerless facing their rulers, who were possessed by evil.  And yet, despite everything, a few of them tried to assist Him to the end: the one disciple who knew what it was to die; the mother whose soul was pierced by a sword; the sinner who bestowed a deed of love on Him by anointing Him.  Those were the only things they could do in their impotence: stand by Him, literally and figuratively.

When you carefully look, you see that evil in the world does not only physically mutilate, but that, even more often, the souls of people are mutilated and broken.  But even then there still is something we can do in our powerlessness.  When we cannot do anything with our hands to effectively help, the only way we have left to help is through our prayer, our intercession, our compassion.  This invisible assistance, no matter how small and elusive, is a counterweight on the scale that threatens to collapse under the burden of evil in the world.  And it alleviates the burden of Him who has to bear all, and who says: “What you did for the least of my brothers, that you did for me.”

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, February 19, 2023

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Standing before Christ

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

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Christ In You.

The text of the Act of Consecration of Man consists of words that are like seed kernels that are waiting to sprout sooner or later. Some of those words and sentences are promises for the future that are expressed in the form of a possibility. Sometimes the verb is even missing so that it does not become clear whether it is a wish, a petition, or reality: “Christ in you.” What does it mean? Is He in us? Or are we asking Him to dwell in us? Or are we called to give Him a dwelling place? Who is able to say of himself: Christ is in me?
“Our life is His creating life.” Has that come to manifestation in our daily life? We usually act as if our life is not His life but our own. Perhaps in a distant future, looking back from the highest standpoint, we will be able to acknowledge: Yes, our life was His creating life.
But that does not mean that we should meekly wait until that time perhaps comes. On the contrary, every day, every moment calls on us: can you make this day, this moment into His creating life? Can you even do that with the mind-numbing daily work that countless people have to perform in our time? Billions of people on earth have to work as insignificant links or as slaves of technology. When you ask them: “What are you doing it for?” the discouraging answer is usually: “I am doing it for the money.”
But also the most thankless, seemingly senseless work can make a contribution to life on earth, when we not only ask: What do you do? but also: How do you do it?
With everything we do Someone sees us—Someone Who wants to connect His creating life with every human life. His deepest longing is: I in you and you in Me. Everything we do we can do in the knowledge: I am doing it for the earth, for my brothers, for my sisters, for Him Who wants to live in us: Christ in us.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, November 20, 2022

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The Thinking Heart

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.

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