The older we get, the smaller we get, not just literally but most often also figuratively.  Usually, as people get older, they go bent through life.  But it is a well-known phenomenon that with the increasing years, youthful overconfidence and pride also gradually disappear.  Maybe that is one of the reasons why people have to become so old these days.  We realize how little we are, and we become modest, finally…

Just as familiar is the phenomenon that old people, more than ever before in their lives, become religious.  Goethe once expressed this with the following words:

In youth: idealist.

As an adult: realist.

As a greybeard: mystic.

That too is a feature of becoming old: our hands become quiet.  We turn inward and fold our hands in prayer.  And in the silence of our little inner world a great world begins to sound.  We need not wait with this until we have become old and bent.  Every moment in our life gives us the opportunity to learn, to fold our hands in prayer.  In this gesture, the germ of the future creation is hiding, just as in the bud of a plant the flower is hiding.

This future creation, the New Jerusalem, is not only bestowed on us as a new heaven that descends down to us, but also as a new earth, which we ourselves have collaborated to build.

With our helping, healing, praying hands, we assist in silence to build a new heaven and a new earth.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, November 23, 2025

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

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

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