The Christian Community in North America

Watch and Pray

Watch and Pray

It is a well-known phenomenon that some events are so huge, so overwhelming, that they exceed our comprehension. We don’t see them coming, until we are placed before accomplished facts. Sometimes we don’t want to see them at all, and act as if nothing is the matter. Think of the two world wars which, in hindsight, announced themselves long before, but people were asleep. Sometimes they are gifts we don’t recognize because we are blind to the signs of the time.

That is how it went with the coming of the great prophets, the saints, the initiates, and most of all with the coming of Christ. They were not recognized. Thus, humanity is time and again surprised by destiny and fate, by gift and crisis that befall us. Such a gift, which at the same time brings about a crisis, is the second coming of Christ—an event that for one person is more real than anything else and is not seen by another. The only way to recognize His coming is: wakefulness. The only way to prepare for His coming is: prayer.

“Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation.” (Mt.26:41) These words, spoken in the loneliness of prayer of Gethsemane, are a timeless call, not only on each human being separately, but also on every community that wants to follow Him. If a community wants to become the body of Christ, the individual members again and again have to step across their own shadows in order to recognize the light of the Coming One in the other—in friend and enemy, proponent and opponent.

Watch and pray, that His coming may not pass you by without a trace!

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, December 20, 2020

December 21, 2020/0 Comments/by CCNA

2022-100 Years, Blog, News & Events

100 Years -The Christian Community – CG 2022 becomes LOGOS

CG 2022 becomes LOGOS

The planning team for the “100 Years The Christian Community” festival is sending this e-mail to all priests, coordinators, and to our correspondents and friends.

Dear members and friends of the Christian Community,

As usual, you may find the current multilingual newsletters for our festival “100 Years TheChristian Community” at https://cg-2022.org/wp/index.php/filedownload/.

In these days, we appreciate the homily of Bastiaan Baan:
https://www.thechristiancommunity.org/blog/second-coming-far-or-near :

The greatest closeness is: being far and feeling near.
The greatest distance is: being near and feeling far.

So we may also keep contact to the preparation of our festival “100 Years The Christian Community”, use our technical communication channels: www.cg-2022.org.

With warm greetings and good wishes for the ending Advent season and for a Christmas that challenges us all.

–Dr. Wolfgang Jaschinski
Redaktion des CG-2022 Newsletters “100 Jahre Die Christengemeinschaft”
Editor of the CG-2022 Newsletter “100 years The Christian Community”
Tagungsbüro / Conference Office: Mergelweg 31, D 42781 Haan

December 20, 2020/0 Comments/by CCNA

Blog, Homilies

Second Coming – Far or Near

Second Coming – Far or Near?

In a world of estrangement, the concepts of nearness and distance are no longer unequivocal. Is someone near because he happens to sit next to me? Some people may live together for years and experience nothing but loneliness, as if they were miles away from each other in their estrangement. And in reverse, people may live miles away from each other, separated by mountains and oceans, but in spite of this feel each other’s closeness in unbreakable friendship.

There is a saying that expresses the paradox of closeness and distance in the words:

The greatest closeness is: being far and feeling near,
The greatest distance is: being near and feeling far.

Between these extremes human relationships grow or starve.

Only one being on earth is simultaneously present everywhere and near to each human being separately, as if that human being were the only one He is concerned with. His presence is as the air that envelops the earth like an invisible mantle. The apostle Paul expressed this omnipresence with the words:” In Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) Since his Second Coming, Christ is present every day, just as truly as the air in which we live and move and have our existence.

For each of us, and for humanity as a whole, there will come a moment in which all that surrounds and carries us will fall away, when the moment has come to go through the eye of the needle. Then only He will be close to us and lead us to a new form of existence. That is the reason why Paul, who was the first to see His Second Coming, could say: “Rejoice! … The Lord is near!” (Phil.4:4-5)

–Rev. Bastiaan Baan, December 13, 2020

December 14, 2020/0 Comments/by CCNA

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