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Scripture: Psalm 26.3, 8
I love your sanctuary, LORD,
the place where your glory shines.-NLT
Comments
John Main (20th Century), founder of the Worldwide Community for Christian Meditation, writes, "The wonder of the proclamation of Christianity is that everyone of us is invited into this same state of simple, loving union with God." He refers to St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510): "My me is God. Nor do I know myself save in him."
Contrast Main and Catherine with much Christian proclamation today. It goes something like this, "Jesus died for us, so I can be forgiven of my sins and go to heaven." How such pales in comparison with the true Message of Jesus Christ! The good news of the now Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven. This message is "Welcome to the Cosmic Party! Come on in, now!" Let us not settle for crumbs and teach other Christians to do likewise, when we are offered the delicacies of loving union with the Trinue God.
Are we not privileged in this life to enter into the Mystery of the Trinity and live there, even as the Trinity lives within us, through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ? If someone you dearly love were given a mansion and you were told to tell her of it, would you only tell her of a hut?
Main writes, "We must remember that this kingdom is not a place but an experience." An experience. What is the experience? "[T]he wholly integrated and integrating experience of the reality of the power of God." What is the power? "[I]n the Christian vision it is knowing that that power is the power of love."
Why speak of a "simple union" with Triune Truth? Distraction and dispersement of our energies lead from the Center. This is why few, if any, will enjoy living in this union without consistent practice of meditative prayer that leads into experiences of contemplative transcendence.
Love demands focus and particularity. How much more union with the Fount of Love?
The psalmist speaks to the LORD "I love your sanctuary" and "the place where your glory shines." Is this external sanctuary not a sign of an inner Reality, an inner Experience? All external evidences of sacredness point to inner Truth of the Heart, the Center where Spirit and spirit mingle in love beyond space and time.
Jesus, speaking to his disciples before his Passion, says, in John 14.1-3 (ESV):
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.
In the same Gospel, Jesus says, ""I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you" (John 14.18, ESV). The context shows he is speaking of the coming of the Paraclete, or Holy Spirit. Did that not happen at Pentecost, when the Spirit descended like fire?
Jesus has come back. He returned to the disciples and emerging Church in Acts, through the Holy Spirit. He keeps coming back, each moment. The house with many dwelling places, or rooms, that Jesus speaks of in the Gospel of John, is not a heavenly motel at the end of time. The house is God who invites everyone to live in the Divine Presence, in the simple union of love; for God is infinite and, thus, has room for all creatures. Then, why do we project into an afterlife such a promise? Why not, like the psalmist, rejoice in loving the Sacred Presence? Indeed, pure Prayer, contemplation, is growing realization of living in the Infinite Presence, even as the Presence humbles Itself and makes Its home within you.
20"I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."-John 17.20-26, ESV
*Materials from John Main are from his Moment of Christ.
**OneLife writings are offered by Brian K. Wilcox, a United Methodist pastor serving in the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. He writes in the spirit of John Wesley's focus on the priority of inner experience of the Triune God; scriptural holiness; ongoing sanctification; the goal of Christian perfection (or, wholeness). Brian lives a vowed contemplative life with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, in North Florida. OneLife writings are for anyone seeking to live and share love, joy, and peace in the world and in devotion to God as she or he best understands God.
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