The Christian Community in North America

Ascension

Ever since Christ’s Ascension people have a deeply rooted tendency in religious life to look up. Here on earth, in the “vale of tears,” it can’t be found. We have a religious homesickness for heaven. The disciples looked up to heaven when He disappeared from their eyes. But the angels who stood by pointed in a different direction, back to the earth. “Why do you stand there looking up to heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up before you into heaven, will come again, revealed in the same way as you have now seen him pass into the heavenly sphere.” (Acts 1: 11)

Where should we look to find Him? Where did Christ go when He left the earth? With Ascension He disappeared from view, with the promise of His coming, His coming again. And what else is the second coming than His heaven on earth?

It is as if by centuries of looking up to heaven we have forgotten to look for Him on earth. Look at your neighbor, even if he is a stranger to you, even if he is your opponent, even if he is your enemy. For just as in yourself, in the depth of his being a king is hidden who is waiting to be freed. His name is: Christ in me. Christ in you. Christ in us.

In the words of the poet, Lita Vuerhard:

We await him who from his throne
Will radiantly descend.
His heavens full of angels’ songs.
For centuries we await this now
If it will repeat itself.

Away from the world,
To heavenly pastures
We threw our yearning gaze,
In the highest of all lights
To behold his approach.

But he lies deeply in our soul
Shining as a precious stone.
Come, he calls, I’m worthy of it.
Into the depths for Ascension,
As deep as you can sink!

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, June 1, 2025.

June 5, 2025/0 Comments/by CCNA

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North American Newsletter: Spring 2025

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North American News Letter Spring 2025

June 4, 2025/0 Comments/by CCNA

Blog, Essays, Homilies

Contemplation on the Service for a Deceased Perso

When a person is dying, in the last weeks or days of life the mask of the everyday personality drops off. It is as if not only the physical sheath, but also the sheath of the soul breaks open. A dying person usually shows himself in all his vulnerability, as he rarely did during life. When you cross the threshold so vulnerably and broken-open, it is not surprising that on the other side of the threshold you are as helpless as a newborn baby. No wonder that in antiquity the day of death was called dies natalis, which means “day of birth.”
A fifteen-year old girl wrote on the day before she died totally unexpectedly a poem with the words:

Two woven hands
Unfold as two wings.
An inexplicable light.
Cries of joy, unheard.
Unborn being,
Forlorn human being,
Helplessly planted.

That is the world of a person who has just died, an unprecedented, unknown world, into which you are helplessly planted. There you need to be enveloped, just like a newborn. Thank God, that help comes in the form of angels’ hands that receive the deceased on the other side. But in the months and years after crossing the threshold, the deceased is still in all his fibers connected with us, the living.

The angels cannot give him the protection he needs by themselves. We humans cannot do that either. But together, angels and living partners in distress, we can help him come home in the land of his birth. That is the meaning and significance of the Act of Consecration for the Dead, just as formerly, in all times and cultures, people prayed for the deceased.

That is why we gather at the altar to accompany our dear deceased with our prayers, with our offering—for them to get wings in the world of the spirit.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, May 18, 2025

June 3, 2025/0 Comments/by CCNA

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