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Lenten Devotionals 2009
Welcome to OneLife Ministries. This site is designed to lead you prayerfully into a heart experience of Divine Presence, Who is Love. While it focuses on Christian teaching, the writer hopes persons of other faiths find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps you trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches you. Please share this ministry with others, and I hope you return soon. There is a new offering daily.
Blessings,
Rev Dr Brian K Wilcox
Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader,
Spiritual Counselor, Chaplain
PRAYERFUL ENTERING
Let the following affirmation be preparation for entering into the Inner Sanctuary of the Heart of Hearts...
I am One with Christ
I am, then, all in Christ
And Christ is all in me
Apart from Christ, I am not,
I am, in Christ not I
Therefore, my every word, act, and thought
To be an Instrument of Christ, is my prayer
This is the prayer of Christ in me
Then, no one shall know, not in Christ,
Where there is, in or through me,
Other than this Christ
*Brian K. Wilcox
LISTENING TO THE SCRIPTURES
48The people told Jesus, "We were right to say that you are a Samaritan and that you have a demon in you!" 49Jesus answered, "I don't have a demon in me. I honor my Father, and you refuse to honor me. 50I don't want honor for myself. But there is one who wants me to be honored, and he is also the one who judges. 51I tell you for certain that if you obey my words, you will never die."
52Then the people said, "Now we are sure that you have a demon. Abraham is dead, and so are the prophets. How can you say that no one who obeys your words will ever die? 53Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?"
54Jesus replied, "If I honored myself, it would mean nothing. My Father is the one who honors me. You claim that he is your God, 55even though you don't really know him. If I said I didn't know him, I would be a liar, just like all of you. But I know him, and I do what he says. 56Your father Abraham was really glad to see me."
*John 8.48-56 (CEV)
RECEIVING SACRED TEACHING
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Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the wonder of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent ... Source.... It is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source. It knows the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes both beyond reason and beyond simple faith.
*Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation.
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Jesus speaks of honor. His Source of honor is from His Father, with Whom he lives in One. This means Jesus was, literally, a man of "enthusiasm."
Now, let us clarify "enthusiasm" in spiritual terms - and, at the end of this writing, we will hear John Wesley speak of it in one of his sermons:
1603, from M.Fr. enthousiasme, from Gk. enthousiasmos, from enthousiazein "be inspired," from entheos "inspired, possessed by a god," from en- "in" + theos "god" (see Thea). Acquired a derogatory sense of "excessive religious emotion" (1660) under the Puritans; generalized sense of "fervor, zeal" (the main modern sense) is first recorded 1716. Enthusiastic in the modern sense is from 1764. Earlier derogatory sense especially seems to have colored modern sense of enthusiast (1764). Enthuse is an 1827 back-formation.
*Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper.
Okay, to clarify the above. Spiritually, and purely, to be an enthusiastic person is to be living in God, living one with God, being lived in by God. So, while much of what I write below could come over as a challenge to "orthodox" ways of referring to matters Christian and Church, actually, I am referring to a core Christian truth, embodied in Jesus and taught by Him - even if its depth-magnanimous implications are ignored by much of the earthly church and many of its clergy.
These mystical depths Jesus models for us, that we might enjoy the same union with His and our Source - literally, be enthusiastic like Christ. From living out of that One, we, too, find the only honor worth living for in this world, and all worlds.
This raises the question of that core of spiritual Christian faith, the mystical Body of Christ - which in no way is to be equated with the earthly, institutional expressions called the Church.
We were created for a relationship, not a religion -
not rituals, not rules, not regulations.
*Rick Warren
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Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, in Love's Sacred Order, a study of the relevance of teachings of C. S. Lewis on Love, affirms the mystical nature of true Christianity:
[A]t heart, Christianity is not about alleviating physical misery or imparting an exciting and consoling message. At heart, Christianity is a communication of life, a communion of divine Life, and every Christian deed and every Christian word is called to become an instrument whereby the doer and the speaker gives to the other the substance of his person, which is Christ. St. Paul's doctrine here makes it a matter of relative indifference whether it is in the thick of city life or in the solitude of the desert that a Christian strives to allow the life and power of Christ to transform him wholly. If the fire of God's love, communicated in Christ, comes to inhabit my being, that fire shall surely know how to follow the logic of its nature and ignite conflagrations wherever it is meant to do so. Some fires ... erupt from the depths of silence and tranquility....
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Recently, in meditation, wearied after having to counsel during several crises in one day, I, at the end of the day, tried to meditate and pray. I had little sense of Presence. After a long time, I began praying, silently, over and over, a simple longing.
To the Living Christ I repeated: "I want to be your holy man." I felt the "fire" arising from the silence, a communication of life within. I knew felt-desire ignited, yearning and resolve to be a communication of the Life of Christ to others.
This, then, is the communication of a Person. This Person is not the person others and I mean when referring to me, however. This Person, in Christ, is Christ. When the substance of my self gives, it gives Christ; or, rather, Christ gives Himself through the substance of my self - or, Christ is the substance of this self. Indeed, the Person has no need for me to be seen, except when seen in and as the Person of Christ, which is only possible in union with Christ.
However, this Christ is no longer merely an extension of Jesus of Nazareth, even as the substance of my self is not the man others see. This Christ is the Mystical Presence that was Jesus, fully, and is more, in Fullness; the Person that gives identity to Jesus, Person as One with God, in God, as God.
This is even as the spiritual Christian receives an identity, and one the church cannot give him or her. Rather, the earthly church is the Church only to the extent it receives identity from persons who receive an identity in union with Christ. Therefore, Christ defines Christian, the church does not, even as Christ defines church, and not the church defining Christ.
For example, when I preach, persons do not need my self, they need the substance of the self - Christ. They need a Person, mystical Fire, touching them through the substance of my self. Yet, that substance is part of my self, but not my self. The self is the instrument of the Self; and Christ is the Person who moves through the Self, literally - not metaphorically -, to touch those who reach out to be touched by God, and even to initiate their longing to be touched by God.
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See, to be a communication of Life to others, the communication of spiritual Life, God-Life must be the living Reality within us. We must be Holy Communion, or we have no Christ to offer in and through our selves, for the self offers that which the self participates in, as, and through. Christ, then, does not merely call us to Christ, Christ calls us to be Christ, for He calls us to union with Himself - and in Him we are that which He is by participation, by gift, by Love.
The life of Jesus was to honor the Father. To be a true holy man was his all-consuming passion. For Jesus, this meant to honor God and be honored by God. Jesus saw what persons most seek is not religion, dogma, rite, truths; he knew the soul yearns to receive Life, and will live only off Life, and with Life shall never die. When a church is not the medium of this Life, it is no longer the Church.
Yet, when the spiritual Christian is the means of the Christ, this Person he can see through the substance of persons who do not have any vowed affiliation with the earthly institution of the Church. He or she sees, then, those who communicate Life are, indeed, the Body of God. He or she sees many who would not enter a church, are of Christ, and that the name of Christ is, indeed, not merely a name - even as Christian and Church are more than names.
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I turn to words from the late William Law, in An Address to the Clergy, who spoke of the true, spiritual Church. He challenged the clergy who failed to see, live, and share the depths of this Mystery - rather, they championed the signs of Life for Life, rather than being the Communion of Life:
Everything else, be it what it will, however glorious and divine in outward appearance, everything that angels, men, Churches, or reformations can do for us is dead and helpless, but so far as it is the immediate work of the Spirit of God breathing in and living in it.
* * *
My words would not sit well with those inoculated with religion - regardless of its fine facade - that has lost touch with the spiritual ache of the masses, religion that has ceased being spiritual Light and turned into a dogmatic, moralistic, and do-good sect - that while doing much good in the name of Christ, fails at offering persons the being of Christ, and have no art of offering their being as the substance and Person of Christ. These that witness of Christ, yet, do not grasp how they are called to give Life, to communicate God not as words, but as Spirit.
* * *
This of what I write is the same "enthusiasm" so important to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Here are his word, in his sermon "The Nature of Enthusiasm":
Beware, lastly, of imagining you shall obtain the end without using the means conducive to it. God can give the end without any means at all; but you have no reason to think He will. Therefore constantly and carefully use all those means which He has appointed to be the ordinary channels of His grace. Use every means which either reason or Scripture recommends, as conducive (through the free love of God in Christ) either to the obtaining or increasing any of the gifts of God. Thus expect a daily growth in that pure and holy religion which the world always did, and always will, call "enthusiasm;" but which, to all who are saved from real enthusiasm, from merely nominal Christianity, is "the wisdom of God, and the power of God;" the glorious image of the Most High; "righteousness and peace;" a "fountain of living water, springing up into everlasting life!"
*The Sermons of John Wesley; http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/sermons/37/ ; accessed March 3, 2009. Edited anonymously, corrections by George Lyons for the Wesley Center for Applied Theology.
QUIETLY RESPONDING
Where among your priorities is the communication of Life? How might you do this more effectively? What in your present religious affiliations is helping this? Hindering this?
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian K. Wilcox, of SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis. Brian is an ecumenical spiritual leader, open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He is Senior Chaplain for the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, Punta Gorda, FL.
*Brian welcomes responses to his writings or submission of prayer requests at barukhattah@embarqmail.com .
*Contact the above email to book Brian for Spiritual Direction, retreats, or workshops. You can order his book An Ache for Union at major book dealers.
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