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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, I hope persons of varied faiths will find inspiration here. Indeed, "God" can be whatever image helps us trust in the Sacred, by whatever means Grace touches us each. Please share this ministry with others, and please return soon. There is a new offering daily. And to be placed on the daily OneLife email list, to request notifications of new writings or submit prayer requests, write to briankwilcox@yahoo.com .
Blessings,
Brian Kenneth Wilcox MDiv, MFT, PhD
Interspiritual Pastor-Teacher, Author, Workshop Leader, Spiritual Counselor, and Chaplain.
You are invited to join Brian at his fellowship group on Facebook. The group is called OneLife Ministries An Interspiritual Contemplative Fellowship. Hope to see you there. Blessings.
Today's Scripture
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body Jews or Greeks, slaves or free and all made to drink of one Spirit.
*I Corinthians 12.13, ESV
Spiritual Teaching
The Father I and are one. Jesus is not saying this in a weak sense: he is not just saying that he and the Father are of like mind, .... Had his hearers understood him in this sense they would not have taken up stones immediately to kill him. The union of Jesus with the Father is the inexhaustible mystery of our Faith.
It is not only about Jesus; it has to do with us too. He is the first-born of many brothers and sisters. He is the head, we are the body. He came into the world not for himself but for us. In our age the individual is supreme: the individual is seen as the sole bearer of meaning. So when it comes to thinking about Jesus we are inclined to see him too as simply an individual - a totally exceptional one, to be sure, but still an individual. That could not be a full account of Jesus. When he says 'I' we are somehow in the picture too.
* Donagh O'Shea. The Mystical Body of Christ. See Jacob's Well: www.goodnews.ie .
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Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours, no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which is to look out
Christ's compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which he is
to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is
to bless us now.
*St. Teresa of Avila, 1515-1582
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In some mysterious way, we are one with the Word, with Christ, the Son of God. The Christian teaching has always been a singularity of Christ among all other persons and, likewise, early formed the teaching of the Mystical Body of Christ. This Mystical Body is the spiritual continuance of Jesus Christ in the Person of the spiritual Church. Certainly, some know Christ in absense of cognitive assent to particular Christian doctrines, and some know Christ through those teachings, yet, Christ and the Mystical Body are facts arising from the inspired intuition of the early Church. There is not a single thread of evidence to support that these mysteries were made up by deluded men or to decieve the masses for power and dominantion.
How did the early Christians formulate these teachings? By experience. No person would have arrived at such teachings without having had the experience of Christ living among the early followers of the Way. The amazing mystery is the Church experienced the apparent paradox of Christ being resurrected and, yet, remaining present. Likewise, the paradox of the Mystical Body of Christ holds the fact of Christ being both apart from the Church and within and through it, too.
St. Teresa of Avila picks up on this teaching of the Mystical Body, noting the privilege each Christian bears to take Christ into the world by means of his or her own body. Likewise, each collective of Jesus followers is to do the same. Anything that hinders the Christian or a church from doing this is to be discarded in a singularity of devotion to the One that Jesus called Abba.
If we are the extension of Christ in the world, we are servants of the Principle of Love. While the historical church has not always exemplified this Love, the fact that no other faith outside the Judeo-Christian tradition so offered the concept of a God Who is Love speaks volumes. Indeed, Timothy Keller, in The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, writes: "I must conclude that the source of the idea that God is Love is the Bible itself. The central claim of the Body of Christ is that it is a living incarnation of the Love of God shown to us in the historical Jesus and continued in the Resurrected Christ and Mystical Body of Christ.
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A Morning Prayer:
Lord of Love, today
I am yours.
You are my all.
May all my longings find rest in You.
May all I think, say, and do, honor You,
for I commit body, mind, and speech wholly to Your service,
to fulfill the divinely given Purpose
for my being here on this earth, at this time.
May no task be too small.
May no deed be done with expectation of reward.
May the seeds nurtured in my heart be only
those that will bring peace and
healing to others.
Peace. Peace. Peace.
In Christ. Amen.
*Brian Kenneth Wilcox
Responding
In what ways can you consciously practice being the Body of Christ in the world? What are means to prepare yourself to do this daily?
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*OneLife Ministries is a ministry of Brian Kenneth Wilcox, SW Florida. Brian lives a vowed life and with his two dogs, Bandit Ty and St. Francis, with friends and under a vow of simplicity. Brian is an ecumenical-interspiritual leader, who chooses not to identify with any group, and renounces all titles of sacredness that some would apply to him, but seeks to be open to how Christ manifests in the diversity of Christian denominations and varied religious-spiritual traditions. He affirms that all spiritual paths lead ultimately back to Jesus Christ. 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 briankwilcox@yahoo.com . Also, Brian is on Facebook: search Brian Kenneth Wilcox.
*Contact the above email to book Brian for preaching, Spiritual Direction, retreats, workshops, animal blessing services, house blessings, or other spiritual requests. You can order his book An Ache for Union from major booksellers.
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