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I saw a new heaven and a new earth. (Rev.21:1)

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

November 25, 2025/1 Comment/by CCNA

Blog, Homilies

“You have the name of being alive, yet you are dead.” (Rev.3:1)

When you really want to understand someone, you have to be willing to reverse roles with him or her. Usually we look at things from our own standpoint, our own opinion. We owe these to our closed personality, which has become a distant spectator of the world: I think… I feel… My opinion… With all our opinions, we also lose connection with the world the way it presents itself to us. One could say: if people didn’t have so many opinions, they would discover much more.

Imagine that the roles are reversed. We are more or less blind to reality. I do not see the world, but the world sees me. I do not know the spiritual world, but the spiritual world knows me—better than I know myself. Christ sees me; I cannot hide from Him. He knows me inside out.

What does He see when He looks at me? “You have the name of being alive, yet you are dead.” That is the depressing reality of a spiritual world that sees us and sees right through us. We act as if we stand in the midst of life, but before the countenance of God we are “the living dead.”

When you begin to live with the Act of Consecration, eventually you cannot remain a distant spectator anymore. The roles are reversed. Like the blind, we feel our way to the spiritual world. But Christ, He sees us, with all our strayings, denials, weaknesses. And in spite of that—or perhaps precisely because He sees us and knows us—He gives Himself to each of us.

Though I am blind, though I am as dead,

He cares about me.

Take me as You have given Yourself to me.

-Rev. Bastiaan Baan, November 9, 2025

November 12, 2025/0 Comments/by CCNA

Blog, Homilies

“Stand fast, girded about the loins with truth. (Ephesians 6:14)

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

October 28, 2025/0 Comments/by CCNA

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