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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
Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
*II Corinthians 4.10, KJV
Spiritual Teaching
“Inscribe with your precious blood, most merciful Lord, your wounds on my heart, that I may read in them both your sufferings and your love.”
*St. Gertrude the Great, Christian Mystic (1253-1302)
* * *
St. Gertrude was placed in a monastery at age five. She remained there the remainder of her life. St. Gertrude was mentored by another famed mystic, St. Mechtild, and the two remained remarkably close through the years.
When of age, St. Gertrude was professed a nun. She, however, did not own her Calling until age twenty-five. The motivation for this happened one evening, when St. Gertrude was preparing for bed. Suddenly, she had a vision of Christ. He was in the form of a young man. Christ spoke to her, “Fear not. I will save and deliver you.” The image was bathed in bright light that emanated from his five wounds. The Christ went on to speak, “You have licked the dust with my enemies and sucked honey from thorns. Now come back to me, and my divine delights shall be as wine to you.”
St. Gertrude came to have a special devotion to the Heart of Jesus. She, as others, saw this as the point where human and divine love are most intimately one.
This dear lady received frequent mystical revelations,often in the form of conversation with Christ, her Loved Spouse. Love was central to her life and thought. - May it be to us, also.
Once, another of the mystics at the monastery asked the Divine what he most liked about St. Gertrude. The answer was: “Her freedom of heart.” St. Gertrude found such freedom and the divine delights promised her within in her embracing of her Call and devotion to her Beloved, Jesus Christ, along with his wounds of Loving the world.
St. Gertrude lived the mystery of the Christ Life, as seen in our Scripture for today. St. Paul writes of carrying in his body the “dying of” Jesus. Yet, as with St. Gertrude, this led for him to “divine delights” as “wine.” This wine is the life of Jesus filling, circulating within, and flowing outward into the world. We taste of this wine, we enjoy this wine, and the Wine gives itself through us, for we are servants of the Wine.
I write of this Christic Mystery, and while doing so am reminded of the individualistic spirituality pervasive in our culture. This “spirituality” is embedded within the fabric of our society, and pervades much of the Church. The Christian is not a man or woman who lives his or her own life and makes his or her own way; the Christian is, and has always been, the person who lives into the Mystery of the Passion of Christ and comes to know that Life as living through the earthy body of each member of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Without the wounds of Christ, the Christian has no Wine of Delight. This is counter to common logic, where wounds are seen as signs of misery only, and injustice often. In our identification truly and spiritually with Christ, we know the Life of Christ in ever-deepening refreshment, joy, and self-giving.
Responding
What is the role that Jesus and his Passion play in your devotion? What does it mean to allow the Christ Life to live in and through you? What role does your body play in being the means of Jesus into the world? Do you find delight to be a consistent trait in your daily life in Christ? How does the above writing counter the tendency toward a do-it-myself individualism within so much so-called spirituality?
*Historical material on St. Gertrude derived from Robert Ellsberg. All Saints. Nov 10: St. Gertrude the Great.
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