The Christian Community in North America

Feeding the Five Thousand (Lk.9:12-17)

Feeding the Five Thousand (Lk.9:12-17)

Three times during His life on earth Christ shares a meal with people around Him—at the feeding of the five thousand of the four thousand, and of the twelve. All three times He does the same: He takes the bread, He looks up to Heaven, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to the people. It is the same gesture we recognize when the bread is consecrated at the altar. In these acts He bestows imperishable life forces on the bread; it becomes “medicine of immortality.” That is what this meal was called in earliest Christianity, pharmakon athanasias. A meal that goes with us on the path of life, beyond death, into deathless life.

In the Act of Consecration of Man an expression is used for this which has fallen into disuse: “the bread for the way.” The German word used here, Wegzehrung, literally means “food for on the way.”

At the feeding of the five thousand, when this blessed bread is distributed, the evangelist adds: “And all ate and were satisfied…” We can’t say the same of our everyday bread. We have hardly eaten and are feeling hungry again.

But when we receive the meal of bread and wine at the altar something else happens. In that moment what is expressed as a promise in the Act of Consecration of Man becomes reality: “Christ in you.” From that moment He is in us, literally and figuratively. And if we make space for Him in us, He subsequently goes with us on our path of life, as bread for the way for our eternal being.

When we realize what we receive, Whom we receive, with the meal of bread and wine, that which happened at the miraculous feeding of the five thousand is fulfilled again: “And all ate and were satisfied…”

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, August 14, 2022

August 22, 2022/0 Comments/by CCNA

Blog, Essays, Homilies

Contemplation

The bees are living in a world that cannot be compared with ours. Their way of life, their forms of community, their feeling for space and time, follow laws and patterns we can hardly imagine. When we see a garden or field full of flowers we are attracted by the colors and scents. Unsightly flowers—we hardly look at them.

But bees apparently see very different things than we do. Flowers we don’t think are worth looking at, or of which we never even notice the scent—the bees visit them in hordes. And the other way around, the wealth of color and scent we most enjoy—the bees never seem to notice them. What guides them on this enigmatic search? The beekeeper knows that it is the nectar, which we can hardly notice. What has no value for us humans is a matter of life and death for the bees.

That is how it is also in the interaction between the divine world and human beings. We humans often judge each other based on outer things. If it isn’t on visible appearance, it may be the tone of someone’s voice, their gestures and movements. All of it together then forms itself into a judgment of the other, often only half consciously, or unconsciously.

The divine world looks at us differently. Christ does not let outer appearance guide Him. He sees us as we are in all reality. Also, when in the eyes of the world a person is insignificant or even inferior, for Christ every human being is of value, because we are life of His life. And the other way around, prestige in the eyes of others—power, status, possessions—has no meaning for Him, for it estranges us from His proximity.

Nothing of what we have or think we have counts for Him. Only what we are has value for Him. And only if I offer Him my own being can I unite myself with Him, and He with me. That is the meaning of the words that sound during the communion in the Act of Consecration of Man: “Take me as You have given Yourself to me.” It is the most precious gift I can make to Him: myself, nectar for the divine world.

Rev. Bastiaan Baan
August 6, 2022

August 18, 2022/0 Comments/by CCNA

Blog, Essays, Homilies

The Peace of Christ

In our world peace is hard to find. Even if we live in a country with relatively uneventful circumstances, the discord of the world pushes its way into us from all sides. We only have to open the door or open the newspaper—the chaos of the world comes into us from all sides. Peace feels like a fata morgana that looms up on the horizon from time to time, and then disappears again without a trace in the desert of every day. How can you live in such a world and at the same time be at peace with the world?

And yet, the Act of Consecration of Man says of Christ: “I stand at peace with the world.” For many people of our time this sounds like an unattainable vision that every moment is dashed to pieces again by hard reality.

Christ is at peace with the world. We would actually have to say it differently, but our language fails us when we try to find the right words. In the original language of the Act of Consecration it sounds different: Friedvoll stehe Ich zur Welt. He does not have peace with the world—on the contrary, He places His peace face to face with it. If He were at peace with the world as it is, He would leave everything as it is without undertaking anything. That is our traditional, authority-oriented picture of peace, where everything comes to a standstill: Rest in Peace. But that is not even true for the deceased, for they have to ceaselessly work on their purification.

The peace of Christ is not of this world. It is wrested free from death and the underworld. He wants to share this most precious gift of the Resurrection with us, so that we may bear His peace, which passes all understanding, with us in a restless world.

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, Summer 2022

August 15, 2022/0 Comments/by CCNA

Latest News