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The world of divine beings has enormous respect for our freedom. After all, God said, ‘Let us make the human being in our image and after our likeness. ’ Genesis 1:26 Since God is obviously a creator, and we are made in His image, made like Him, it follows that we were made to be creators as well. But how could we create, how could we be creative, if we did not have freedom of choice?
True freedom of choice also includes the choice to be destructive instead of creative. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be true freedom of choice. It even includes the choice not to decide. But its real creativity rests in our ability to make choices that support the good, the true and the beautiful.
Where freedom of choice really shines is in our ability to make choices that disregard our own instinct for self-preservation. We have the freedom to decide to give freely and lovingly to another, even to our own detriment. This kind of choice isn’t ‘natural’. It isn’t dictated by necessity. It is the expression of a true freedom of choice. It is an expression of our true humanity.
Christ, God’s Son, is the God who became a human being; He is our divine human brother. He confirmed that we are to exercise our God-given creative freedom of choice, our creative freedom to decide. ‘You shall be as gods’, He said. John 10:34. He was quoting Psalm 82, which says ‘You are “gods”; you are all sons of the Most High.’
He said to those becoming His students, that in studying with Him, ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ John 8:32.
He also said of Himself, “I am the way, the truth, the life.” John 14:6.
Therefore, to approach Christ is to approach the truth; and at the same time to approach Christ is to approach the truth of our humanity. For our true humanity resides in our ability to make creative choices, self-forgetting choices, good moral choices uninfluenced by outer necessity. To approach the truth that resides in Christ, is at the same time to approach the very freedom that lies at the core of our God-given humanity. ‘Then you will know the truth [Me], and the truth [I, Christ] will set you free.’ John 8:32.
In the Act of Consecration of Man, the Communion service of The Christian Community, we pray that the Son God be the creative force in us. We also pray for the gift of the creating fire of love. Real love, capable of setting oneself aside, operates out of a truly human depth of freedom. It is indeed Christ’s self-sacrificing love, working in us, that ignites a creative fire in us. He is the guide for our use of our freedom.
Nevertheless, Christ, the Divine Human, has enormous respect for our freedom to choose. ‘Here I am!’ He says. ‘I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me’. Rev. 3:20 He stands outside, and knocks, and waits.
In the Sunday Service for the Children, we hear that we have come to earth to learn and to work. We hear that human life becomes desolate without enlivening force of love in our work. We hear that Christ is love’s Teacher. For the children, a direction and focus for any life is gently indicated—learning to develop love as a capacity.
One can see the communion service for adults, the Act of Consecration of Man, as an extension of the path suggested in childhood. For, by its very nature, this Act is an offering of self to God. We offer our purest thoughts, our heart’s love, and a will devoted to Him, to Him who is the very essence of love. We perform an act that He asked us to do in memory of Him—the offering in gratitude of substances of earth—bread, water, wine, to our Father, so that He can be present in them.
We bind our noble thoughts, feelings and devotion to the substances that we, too, are offering, noting that we do so in connection with the working of the Trinity. We pray that the Son God be the creative force in us. We pray for the gift of the creating fire of love.
Christ comes to dwell in them, to concentrate His power in them, in such a way that, through taking in His substances in communion, we can take the creating fire of His love as well, and He can be present in us. He, whose whole life was Love incarnate, sacrifices Himself ever and again for our well-being, for the nourishment and strengthening of the creating power of love in us. Christ dies again and again. But He, the essence of Love, rises again in the hearts of those who give Him a dwelling place.
Our truest, deepest self, our true being, resides in this capacity to develop creative love. Our true self is capable of transforming our narrow egotism into a broader concern for the furtherance of the world. This capacity exists in us as potential, as a seed planted in us by God. At the altar, in any of the sacraments, but especially in the Act of Consecration of Man, this potential to develop love, the characteristic of our truest self, is nurtured and strengthened.
Paul says, ‘your life is now hidden with Christ in God’. Col 3:3 Our true being, our true creative potential, resides with Christ. At the altar we practice offering ourselves to Him in love, taking Him into our selves. At the altar, we are nurturing and developing the life of our true self, with His help. For our true self is Christ, creating Love, in us.
The sacraments are liturgical acts performed by the community, in which the working of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy, Healing Spirit can become visible and audible.
In the Baptism, substances of water, salt and ash are re-united with their original power. They are brought into relationship with the qualities of the Father’s substance, the Son’s renewal, and the Spirit’s light. These regenerated substances are then inscribed on the head and breast of the child, that heaven and earth may come together in a fruitful way in his or her life.
In the Confirmation, we see and hear Christ’s intimate companionship on the young person’s individual path of life; He brings light, power, guidance and comfort.
In the Sacrament of Consultation, the renewed confession, we can hear the words of Christ, in Whose heart the red threads of all human destinies are joined. He encourages us to learn to offer and to receive.
In the Act of Consecration of Man, the communion service, Christ becomes visible in the elevation of bread and wine, transformed into His Body and His Blood, vessels of His Life. He becomes audible in His prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, and in His promise of peace.
In Marriage, the couple’s decision to join two lives together is strengthened in a way that creates the space for a third entity. This space is a place where Christ can appear, as His loving power of sacrifice.
In the Sacraments around death—a Sacrament of Consultation, a Communion and an Anointing— Christ accompanies our crossing of the threshold between earthly life, and the life after earthly life. We hear the words He speaks to His Father the night before He dies, His prayer for us. He opens the eye of the soul to life after life.
In the Ordination of Priests, embedded in the Act of Consecration of Man, the power to celebrate all the sacraments is conferred as a gift from the divine world. The candidate’s soul forces of thinking, feeling and willing are linked to the Trinity, so that the words and actions of the Trinity, and Christ especially, can be conveyed to the congregation in the sacraments.