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Real kings are hard to find in our time. For whoever calls himself king, or is so called, is at best a pale shadow of it, and at worst a mere caricature. For how often isn’t the magic of a fairy tale coronation and a fairy tale marriage broken by the sobering reality of human weakness?
We have to look far into the past to find real kings—high initiates who led a people with sure knowledge, and who were able to transform this knowledge into laws carved in stone. Their wisdom was derived from the stars according to the heavenly law: As above, so below. The eternal script of the stars, the dictates of the heavenly hierarchies, was the source they drew from to order life on earth. The symbol of this source of inspiration was of old the golden crown: from a world that rises far above earthly thoughts flowed their inspirations.
The Gospel shows that in his conduct the king followed the inspirations of the angelic world. It is the angel’s message that causes the three kings to decide to return to their lands by a different way (Mat. 2:12). How far do our ways seem to be removed from their royal way! By trial and error, wandering and straying, we have to feel our way to our goal in life. In our noisy world the voices of the angels are drowned out, have gone silent. And yet, in every human being a capacity is hiding that can show us the way. In each of us speaks the voice of conscience. Even if we don’t want to know what our conscience is saying, it does not leave us in peace until we hear its voice. That is the Christ voice of our conscience. And whoever let themselves be led by this voice will sooner or later discover royal gifts, which are lying deeply hidden in us and are waiting to come to light.
Rev. Bastiaan Baan, January 6, 2024
In the night our consciousness is usually extinguished. In deep sleep, something takes place in us we are usually not aware of. Only when we wake up do we notice retrospectively that something did happen to us. That is the wonder of regeneration. Literally the word means: re-creation, rebirth. In our absence, healing forces have restored us. We are—more or less—rested. Be this as it may, we are usually in better shape than at the beginning of the night.
In the night before Christmas, every year anew, the healing force of the Savior is active—of Him who does not only regenerate each human being, but even regenerates the whole world. Even if a person knows nothing of Christmas, even if a person does not want to know about Christmas, in the night before Christmas Christ’s healing light of grace shines on every human being. But so that at least some individuals do not sleep through this greatest gift that is bestowed on our world, for this reason in the night before Christmas the holy act is performed, which is otherwise always performed in broad daylight.
And though afterwards we sleep for the rest of the night just like the rest of mankind, we take our prayer of the Consecration of the Human Being with us into the night, so that it reaches its destination. That is the meaning of the midnight service in the night before Christmas: to watch and pray with Him who bears and orders the life of the world. And every vigilant prayer gives Him strength to bear and to order, even in the chaos of our restless world.
Bastiaan Baan, December 25, 2023
Religion Can and Wants to Change the World
Interview with João Torunsky, Erzoberlenker
June 2021
Translation by Marianne Else November 13 2023