At that time Jesus exclaimed, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do.’

Matthew 11: 25-26

 

 

I asked a little child, "What happens when a seed is planted?"

The little child responded, "It dies."

I asked the litle child, "If it dies, how can it grow?"

The little child responded, "It doesn’t die dead, it dies live."

2 Cor: 5:1; 6-8

In the first Preface of the Masses for the Dead in the Roman Sacramentary may be found these words:

In him, who rose from the dead,

our hope of resurrection dawned.

The sadness of death gives way

to the bright promise of immortality.

Lord, for your faithful people life is

changed, not ended [emphasis mine].

When the body of our earthly dwelling

lies in death we gain an everlasting

dwelling place in heaven.

As a matter of fact, the whole of our Christian belief centers around the fact that the Soul is eternal and that Death is an Illusion.

Life is changed, not ended. The soul

is no longer a prisoner in this corruptible

body - wherein it experiences primarily the

separateness of the many. Freed from this

corruptible body it experiences primarily

unity in the One, wherein there is neither

male nor female, neither Jew nor Greek,

neither slave nor free.

cf. Galatians 3:27; Mark 12:25

In this section I wish to play with the mysteries of sin, sins, sacrifice, salvation by atonement, and salvation by enlightenment. The reason for doing this is that the Spiritual Exercises for Compassionate Energies participating in the Evolutionary Process of the Human Species follows in the next section, and the first exercises are on sin. I wish to make it abundantly clear that I am putting the emphasis on sin/darkness and Salvation by Christ the Light while acknowledging the reality of personal sins.

Earlier on I mentioned that for the purpose of sharing our experiences of the Transcendent we necessarily use images of a particular culture expressed in concepts in a particular language. These images arise in some manner out of our social, political, and economic culture.

I suggest four images for consideration: the first is that of the Tribal Chieftain or King. He is the sole Ruler. His people depend on him for their well-being. He will do what he needs to do to insure for them a reasonably good life and retain his power over them. He will make demands on them and he will insist that his will, the royal decrees, be observed. If they are not observed the offender is punished. If the offender persists in his/her evil ways the offender may be banished from the Tribe or Kingdom. Because something of a personal relationship has been established between the Chieftain and his subjects, the Chieftain or the King is personally offended when any one of his subjects goes against his will - violates the law.

The second image is drawn from the gospels. One is given in Luke:15 - the wonderful story of the Prodigal/Passionately loving Father. His younger son has squandered his share of the inheritance on a life of debauchery. When he returns to his Father, the Father does not ask him what he has done or why he has done it. The Father accepts him back unconditionally. And in the fifth chapter of Matthew's gospel Jesus says:

Jerusalem Bible, 1985

not be condemned yourselves. Luke 6: 36&37.

Again, there is a person-to-person relationship but now it is between parent and child. The parent loves the child unconditionally. The parent is not offended. The parent is too passionately loving to be offended by children who miss the mark.

The third image is given to me by a friend, Barbara Erichson. Barbara has in the recent past taught pre-K autistic children. These children may have scratched her, pinched her, even bitten her, and carried on in all sorts of ways that are detrimental to her and to her work. She was not offended. She knew that the children were autistic, profoundly handicapped, caught up in their own little worlds with their needs for structure, the desire to communicate and the inability to do so. With this disability came frustration, anxiety, fear, anger, etc. Barbara images God as a Pre-K Teacher and all of us humans as autistic, and profoundly handicapped.

On the Cosmic Scale we are. We live in our own little worlds fashioned for each of us by our DNA as well as the programming experienced by our particular ethnic cultures. The result is a difficulty in knowing the uniqueness of ourselves which we somehow experience. Consequently we have tremendous difficulties communicating with all around us. Out of sheer frustration, anxiety, fear and anger, many of us end up acting in many inappropriate ways which we have been taught offend God. I suggest that we do not offend God; we simply act inappropriately, going against the right order of things, hurting ourselves and others.

The fourth image is that of the One and the Many dancing the Cosmic Dance as described in Chapter I. The One is the Cosmic Dancer choreographing and dancing the cosmic dance of which each and all of us are ephemeral epiphanies. As Shakespeare so eloquently says,

Our separateness and diversity by which we divide ourselves one against the other are ephemeral. Yet we identify with our separateness and think our ephemeralness is the totality of our individual existences. This identification is our Sin/Darkness. Our sins (plural) are all those thoughts, words and actions which emphasize our separateness and desire to survive in our ephemeralness - the temporal persona. This puts us out of harmony with the Cosmic Dancer and with the choreographed Cosmic Dance. We stumble all over ourselves and one another.

In this image there is no personal relationship with the Transcendent - the Cosmic Dancer, because there is no persona unless we project a persona onto the Transcendent, as we do in the first three mentioned above. No persona of the Transcendent is offended. Individually we get hurt because we are not in step with the Cosmic Dance. We hardly disturb the Cosmic Dance which is trillions of times larger than Planet Earth, so how much larger than each of us in our separateness.

The image of the Cosmic Dance is simply another way of expressing the story of the Universe - Cosmogenesis - the continual bursting forth of the new. In this reality there are many microcosmic and macrocosmic irreversible transitions and transformations which have taken and are taking place. All of them require a dying to what is, that the new may live. Scientists tell us that some four and a half billion years ago there was a supernova which they called Tiamet. When it exploded it died to itself and gave life to our galaxy - the Milky Way - of which Planet Earth and each of us individually is a part.

Something of the same happens microcosmically. One day I asked a little boy what happens to a seed when it is planted. He said, "It dies." I asked. "If it dies how can anything come out of it?" He looked at me as though I knew nothing and answered, "It don’t die dead. It dies live!" This sums up the story of the Universe and introduces us humans into the need to trust the Universe of which we are psychic-spiritual as well as physical-material dimensions.

On Plant Earth in the Judaeo-Christian tradition these irreversible transitions and transformations may be called Passovers. For many it is the most difficult and frightening of movements in the Cosmic Dance. It is the movement from the known to the unknown, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, but also from slavery to freedom. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition there is the Passover of a People - the Hebrews are led by Moses from Egypt into the Promised Land. This was a very difficult irreversible transition but also a transformation of tribes into a dominant people.

In Jesus of Nazareth there is the Passover of an individual. For Jesus there was the movement from the sin/darkness within himself to an awareness of his oneness with the Father. This is indicated in the following passages.

"For our sakes God made him who did not know sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the very holiness of God."

2 Cor. 5: 21.

"In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus;

His state was divine

yet he did not cling

to his equality with God

but emptied himself

to assume the condition of a slave

and became as men are."

Philippians, 2: 5-7.

When Jesus comes to an awareness that he and all humans are children of God he proclaims this wherever he goes. He is the Light. John 8:12.This proclamation brings him into conflict with the religious-political powers of his people. This is the Darkness. John 3: 19. This struggle is climaxed in his crucifixion. He rises from the dead and ascends to his Father. This is his passover. He enters into it and goes through it with the courage, strength and trust that he is indeed one with the Father, that his spirit is eternal. This is another way of saying that he is one of the many in the One.

Jesus of Nazareth merges into the Cosmic Dance as the superb Cosmic Dancer. He is for many the Way, the Truth and the Life. He invites us to become aware that we, though many, are one in the One as He is one in the One and the One is in Him and in us. To experience this is a movement from our separateness or Sin/Darkness which seems to be light to the Light which seems to be darkness. Finally, for many it is the movement from Religion to Faith.

Philippians 3: 6 - 9

This is an invitation to the dance, to experience a Passover, an irreversible transition, an irreversible transformation. The ultimate, of course, is to go through the illusion of death. In this most difficult and important of movements in the Cosmic Dance, Jesus of Nazareth is indeed Son of God modelling for us what it means to be children of God.

This Passover which is played out externally has profound meaning for those engaged in the spiritual journey. This is the journey of the persona identified with and engaged in the struggle for survival in the external world. The journey is a gradual awareness of its soul, its cosmic spirit, which is quite beyond conceptualization and yet is intuitively known to be its quintessential thusness.

This is the Passover experience. With this awareness the soul is invited to die to its identification with its ephemeral epiphany, to rise and to ascend to its true self.

These are musings based on our ancient symbols, traditional spiritual writers and forty-five years of priesting. Intuitively I know they manifest reality.

Jesus is the Image of the Invisible Transcendent compassionately present to enlighten us as the Choreographer invites us to go though our individual passovers, the most difficult and frightening of movements of the Cosmic Dance. He is also the archetype of the compassionate presence, courage, strength and trust within each of us that empowers us to live passionately as we go through these passovers; enjoying, struggling, suffering, dying, rising and ascending to our true selves.

The first image of the tribal chieftain is used frequently in the Old Testament and is drawn from the social, political and economic experience of the people of that time. They were tribes trying to survive and they experienced the Transcendent with them; they imaged the Transcendent as something of a tribal chieftain.

The second is the image that Jesus uses and is drawn from the human family in which the Father of the family has all the power and is unconditionally loving; he just doesn't know the good from the bad or the honest from the dishonest. Those are terms that come from the acculturation, not from the family. The family is a place of refuge and security in the midst of the social, political and economic struggles of living.

The third is the image of the Transcendent that cannot be offended, but is simply compassionately present to us as we struggle in our autism or oughtism - experiences of being conditioned and programmed by our social, religious, political and economic cultures.

The fourth image of the Cosmic Dancer is the same as the third in its consequences that it can not be offended.

As far as I can remember I never heard or read of the image of the tribal chieftain used for the Transcendent except in Joseph Campbell’s The Inner Reaches of Outer Space. I use it because it summarizes for me and others the sin/darkness in which many of us have lived. This is a result of taking catechetical teachings literally and accepting as univocal statements what were meant to be analogous statements by our teachers. The sin/darkness is missing the mark, being confused and having very inadequate concepts of God and human and human’s relationship to God and to one another. This is no one’s fault. It is simply part of human’s desire to know and categorize the mysteries of human and God and all of the Universe.

The first image of the Transcendent as a tribal chieftain calls for obedience to the Chief. Going against the Chief's mandates requires punishment and, for the reprobate, banishment from the tribe. When this image is projected onto the Transcendent by us humans we end up with the teachings with which most Catholics grew up in the last millennium.

My perception of what I was taught, and it seems to be the perception of all who were raised with the Baltimore Catechism, is that sin is any willful thought, word, deed or omission contrary to the law of God and is an offense against God, as though God is hurt and takes the offense personally. Since God is infinite, and human is finite, human cannot satisfy the infinite justice of God or satisfy the infinite dignity of the person of God. Therefore, the second person of the Blessed Trinity became human and, being both God and human, could and did satisfy the infinite justice and the offended dignity of God by the bloody sacrifice of his death on the cross. This is called a propitiatory sacrifice.

One of the consequences of this teaching is that we learned that each of us, by our sins, has made Jesus suffer because He had to satisfy God the Father for us. Imagine or remember the guilt that was laid on us as children, and even as adults, when it was preached to us that we caused the bloody sweat in the garden, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the way of the cross and the pain of the crucifixion. I preached this in many retreats and I was right in line with the other preachers.

Along with this agony we were taught to accept our sufferings and unite them to the sufferings of Jesus to atone for the sins of the world. This creates a "victim spirituality" which, in turn, creates an unacknowledged image of a God Who somehow needs our suffering, our atonement, to balance the offenses and insults He experiences by the sins of humanity.

Imaging God as something of a Tribal Chieftain who can be offended and somehow or other needs to be appeased by a propitiatory sacrifice engenders fear and guilt and, I suspect, a tremendous dose of unacknowledged resentment from which springs anger and rebelliousness. When these feelings are not acknowledged, neurotic behavior results. In my forty-five years of priesting I have witnessed hundreds of people in great pain and suffering because of their fear and anxiety and irrational guilt, all of which seem to me are rooted in the doctrine of salvation or redemption by propitiatory sacrifice; of imaging God as a Tribal Chieftain - and a petty one at that.

I have been informed by competent theologians that the above-mentioned doctrine is not the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Rather it is a theory of atonement attributed to St. Anselm in the thirteenth century. I am most happy to learn that. Yet, I must confess it is the doctrine with which I grew up. It is the doctrine I preached for many years. It is the doctrine I heard given back to me by many men and women in their fears and anxieties. I am not in the position of an Andrew Greely to do a survey on this matter but I would wager, if I had anything to wager, that for most Catholics forty-five years and older, that is what they were taught.

Why do I make an issue of this? Simply because it illustrates in the lives of many the power of an Image of God - however implicit, subliminal, unwarranted and even blasphemous it may have been. The teachings resulting from that image engendered much fear and anxiety among so many. This is a good reason for me to make an issue of it.

Imaging God as a parent or as a Pre-K teacher of autistic and profoundly handicapped children who loves His/Her children unconditionally places the focus not on sins but rather on acceptance. This is true also of imaging the Transcendent as the One and the Many dancing the Cosmic Dance.

We have been so accustomed to thinking of sins as intentional acts against the Law, that we tend to forget the reality of sin in our very beings, our unspiritual selves, as Paul mentions in his letter to the Romans 7:18-25:

The fact is, I know of nothing good

living in me - living, that is, in my

unspiritual self - for though the will to

do what is good is in me, the

performance is not, with the result that

instead of doing the good things I want

to do, I carry out the sinful things I do not

want. When I act against my will, then, it

is not my true self doing it, but sin which

lives in me.

In fact, this seems to be the rule, that

every single time I want to do good it is

something evil that comes to hand. In my

inmost self I dearly love God's Law, but

I can see that my body follows a different

law that battles against the law which my

reason dictates. This is what makes me a

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue

me from this body doomed to death? Thanks

be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In short, it is I who with my reason serve the

law of God, and no less I who serve in my

unspiritual self the law of sin [emphases mine].

Paul definitely speaks of his inmost self and true self. He also speaks of his unspiritual self, of that "law of sin that lives inside" his body; "this body doomed to death;" and of being "a prisoner of that law of sin which lives inside my body." In the first exercise of the first week of his Spiritual Exercises, Saint Ignatius invites the exercitant to use the imagination to experience what sin is: "To see in imagination my soul as prisoner in this corruptible body, and to consider my whole composite being as an exile here on earth, cast out to live among brute beasts. I said my whole composite being body and soul."

St. Paul says, "This is what makes me a prisoner of that law of sin that lives inside my body." St. Ignatius speaks of the soul as a prisoner in this corruptible body [emphasis mine].

Neither St. Paul nor St. Ignatius of Loyola are speaking of sins committed against any laws. They are not speaking of moral transgressions. They are speaking of Sin/Darkness - Missing the Mark; what the Baltimore Catechism tells us are the effects of Original Sin; that our understanding is darkened, our will is weakened, and there is in us a strong inclination to evil. This is being "oughtistic" and profoundly handicapped.

Sin/Darkness may be thought of as a mindset, such that human thinks:

(a) that human is not body and soul, but simply this rational animal that exists from the moment of conception until death and then exists no more, or

(b) that human does have a soul: that, indeed, human is created by God to know, love and serve God in this life and to be happy with God forever in heaven; and, therefore, human's existence on Planet Earth is a test. If human passes the test and does all that God wants, human goes to heaven; if human does not pass the test human exists eternally in a hell of torture and no hope, and

(c) for each of the above human has no choice in being here.

Let's Continue to Play

The result of (a) + (c) is the Law of Survival of the Fittest - the Law of Self-Preservation: "Do unto others before they do unto you." This creates fear, anxiety and the desire to have enough power over the earth, the vegetable kingdom, the so-called non-rational animal kingdom, and whatever members of the so-called rational kingdom that may be necessary for survival. Hence power structures of whatever kind are created. Because if I do not survive I cease to be.

The result of (b) + (c) are that human lives in a certain fear and anxiety that human may not measure up to the requirements and so be condemned to hell for eternity; this generates a certain amount of frustration and rage rooted in the feeling of powerlessness because human has no choice in the matter. It is the victimization of human.

The dynamics and resulting mental attitudes I've just described are what I have experienced in the average Catholic during my forty-five years of priesting in parishes and retreat ministry. And I must confess that, in the past, I have encouraged it by my preaching and teaching what I was taught. I maintain now that this mindset in all of its ramifications is Sin/Darkness - Missing The Mark. This is the prison of the corruptible body, the exile among brute beasts in which the soul finds itself. It engenders for many a feeling of impotence from which flows an anger - even rage - that is frequently unacknowledged because it is against "God". This may become the source of energy for both good and bad. We have all experienced in ourselves and others benevolence and charity rooted in the fear of not measuring up. This fear and anxiety is at the basis of the destructive, judgmental attitude of so many well-intentioned humans, as well as of so many groups in the Church and, frequently, of the Church herself. Am I making a judgement here or simply an observation? I prefer to think it is an observation. I am not condemning. I observe this with compassion for the Church, myself and all who have been caught up in this.

The need for survival tends to dominate our lives. We are taught from earliest years to achieve, to succeed, to compete, to win. Our cultural heroines and heroes are those who have done all of the above, received much recognition, and possibly become wealthy in the process, and thus insured survival and power. Our identification with social groups, racial groups and so on, reinforces the cycle of achievement and competition. It is through these mistaken values that we lose our souls, becoming less aware of the compassionate soul/spirit that each of us is, as made in the image and likeness of God. This is Sin/Darkness. This is being "oughtistic" and profoundly handicapped. This is the world, the principles of which, according to John, are "the sensual body, the lustful eye, pride in possessions." 1 John 2:16.

We live in this darkness and are involved in this darkness, using the tools of darkness to proclaim the light. As so frequently happens the medium becomes the message.

Opposite the need to survive is the Good News that we are essentially, in our quintessential thusness, eternal spirits and do not need to survive. This is the light that Jesus brings to us by proclaiming to us that we are children of God. Or, to put it another way, Jesus is a superb Cosmic Dancer who invites us, the many, of which He is one, to allow ourselves to be danced by the One.

children of your Father in heaven [emphasis

mine], for He causes His sun to rise on bad

Matthew 5:43-48

This belief that there is sin/darkness and there is salvation/light through the life, passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ is at the core of Catholic doctrine on salvation.

Did Jesus in fact sacrifice himself to free us from our sinfulness? Yes, of course, as the classical hero who brings light to his people and is killed by those who "have shown they prefer darkness to light" (John 3:19). From His own spiritual journey into the heights, he ascended and then descended among us to let us know that we are indeed children of God. In so doing he risked being killed by those who prefer the darkness; the kingdom of humans having power over one another and over all creation.

That Christ is the light of the world is in John's Prologue and throughout the Johannine literature very clearly. It is also in the Synoptics.

This is why He came:

Luke 4:18

Mark 1: 14, 15

The kingdom of God is not like the kingdom of humans. Jesus came proclaiming the Good News and invites us to trust it. The good news is that the Father loves us unconditionally, and has indeed made us His children.

The Father's gift to us:

1 John 3

John 1:16, 17

John 1:4,5

There is Advent: the waiting for the light;

There is Christmas: the people who lived in darkness have seen a great light;

There is Epiphany: Christ is the light to the gentiles;

There is the Presentation in the Temple: the light of Israel;

Then there is the struggle between light and darkness depicted in the first Sunday of Lent with the Temptations of Jesus - this struggle is depicted throughout the Lenten season;

There is the apparent victory of darkness over light in the crucifixion, but this is the death that brings life and light:

--this is celebrated in the Easter Triduum, and begins with the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday.

The Lord's Passion and Death are celebrated on Good Friday. On Saturday the Easter Vigil begins with the Service of Light, in which the Paschal Candle symbolizing the risen Christ - the Light of the World - is blessed. Later in the service water is blessed for baptisms. Symbolically, the lighted Paschal Candle is dipped three times into the water indicating that all who will be baptized will be baptized (immersed) into the life of Christ, which is Light. Then some individuals may be baptized. Afterwards all present are invited to renew their baptismal promises.

In short, Christ is the Light into Whom all are immersed. There is Sin/Darkness, the not knowing who we are. There is LIGHT - the life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus by which we are invited to trust in the gift of the Father - that we are children of God.

Salvation by enlightenment is at the core of Catholic teaching and especially Catholic liturgical practice - the whole Easter celebration is the center piece of the Liturgical Year.

What does it mean to be children of God? This is an anthropomorphic expression of being the many which are expressions of the One as discussed in Part I, so that a child of God is an eternal spirit of the Eternal Spirit. Jesus reminds us to be compassionate as our heavenly Father is compassionate. May we not say that to be children of God is indeed to be Compassionate Energies dancing the Cosmic Dance? Of course this is babbling, fantasizing in the midst of mystery. This is much healthier than saying that we really know what God, we and all the energies of the Cosmos are. So let us continue to play as we remember that

VI

The following is based on the unproved and unprovable assumption that each human is both temporal and eternal. The unprovability of the assumption in no way minimizes its value, the intuition of the many of the human species through the millenia in all cultures simply knows.

The eternal dimension is called spirit or soul or cosmic consciousness or psyche, and simply is. The temporal dimension is the enfleshment of the eternal in time. The enfleshment is an ephemeral epiphany, a phenomenon, a physical manifestation of the eternal spirit. The difference is that in the temporal, the eternal spirit is limited by the physical, and takes on such limitations as gender, race, nationality, cultural characteristics of its ancestors, and the conditioning and programming of its present cultural training from the time of its conception on through its temporal life. From the perception of a cosmic consciousness one might say the eternal spirit experiences "oughtism" and profound deprivation.

Each Compassionate Energy that freely enters into the human experience does so to be aware of, to revere, to celebrate and to be in harmony with the Transcendent Source from which it is, and thus to grow in the experience of this Transcendent Source and of itself - this Compassionate Energy.

Every other energy on Planet Earth and indeed in the Cosmos is present to aid in this noble quest.

Hence, human (enfleshed Compassionate Energy) is present to the other energies to the extent that they are an aid and withdraws from them to the extent that they are a hindrance in this noble quest.

Therefore, it is good for human to constantly seek a state of freedom; for example, preferring neither health to sickness, neither poverty to riches, neither honor to dishonor, neither a long life to a short life; seeking always to be free from being determined by identities such as religion, race, nationality, profession or role in life.

The one desire and choice is that which is more conducive to the noble quest for which the Compassionate Energy became human.

(N.B. It is well to consider this Principle and Foundation for a day or two, and to refer to it frequently during the following Exercises.)

Daringly and playfully I blithely describe the wondrous mysteries that we are ! ! ! !

Persona: The persona is the collection of all those qualities of the individual imposed by gender, race, nationality, religion, both inherited and programmed into the individual by family, school, religion, society, etc. This may be called the Temporal Image and may be constantly changing as the individual establishes his or her place in society; and then further as the individual seeks her/his true self. These are the limitations the Compassionate Energy assumes upon entering the human experience.

True Self: The Higher Self; Always Self; Eternal Spirit; Soul; Compassionate Energy. That which enters into the human experience to praise, revere and serve the Source from which it is, and thus to grow in the experience of its Source and of itself. To enter into the human experience this true self must limit itself to a persona.

Let us play! Imagine that we are indeed children of God, eternal spirits of the Eternal Spirit; that our enfleshment, incarnation, is to bring light into the darkness. But the only way we can do that is to forget that we are eternal spirit and experience what it means to be in the darkness - to be the darkness.

2 Cor.5:20-21

Philippians 2:5-7