First Communion Quotes

Jesus was not revolutionary because he said we should love God and each other. Moses said that first. So did Buddha, Confucius, and countless other religious leaders we've never heard of. Madonna, Oprah, Dr. Phil, the Dali Lama, and probably a lot of Christian leaders will tell us that the point of religion is to get us to love each other. "God loves you" doesn't stir the world's opposition. However, start talking about God's absolute authority, holiness, ... Christ's substitutionary atonement, justification apart from works, the necessity of new birth, repentance, baptism, Communion, and the future judgment, and the mood in the room changes considerably.

No one was more stunned by the choice than her mother, who claimed to the saleswoman that she hadn't seen Danielle that dressed up since her first Communion.

The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Can there be anything more sad than a girl dying on the day of her first communion, in her new dress. A little bride of death...

It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.... Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances... Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

It shall be my pleasure to remedy it. First, it is not your strength or your speed that draws me. It's your...everything. Your laugh, your wit, your emotions and the way they change. Your courage, your sweetness, your near obsessive delight in cookies. Second, you are indeed a prize. You've made me want what no one else ever had. A communion of bodies." -Zacharel to Annabelle

You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed of the world which would be as difficult and embarrasing to speak about as religious experience and yet it was as authentic as the feeling you had when you heard Bach, or stood in Chartres Cathedral or the Cathedral at León and saw the light coming through the great windows; or when you saw Mantegna and Greco and Brueghel in the Prado. It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you had never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reasons for it that you own death seemed of complete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would interfere with the performance of your duty. But the best thing was that there was something you could do about this feeling and this necessity too. You could fight.

Perhaps there is a philosophical as well as a clinical lesson here: that in Korsakov’s, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation.

If our spiritually dead ones are to be raised, we must first get power with God. The reason we so often fail in moving our fellowmen is that we try to win them without first getting power with God. Jesus was in communion with His Father, and so He could be assured that His prayers were heard. We

Chigurh shot him in the face. Everything that Wells had ever known or thought or loved drained slowly down the wall behind him. His mother’s face, his First Communion, women he had known. The faces of men as they died on their knees before him. The body of a child dead in a roadside ravine in another country.

A temple, first of all, is a place of prayer; and prayer is communion with God. It is the 'infinite in man seeking the infinite in God.' Where they find each other, there is holy sanctuary--a temple.

Writing, music, sculpting, painting, and prayer! These are the three things that are most closely related! Writers, musicians, sculptors, painters, and the faithful are the ones who make things out of nothing. Everybody else, they make things out of something, they have materials! But a written work can be done with nothing, it can begin in the soul! A musical piece begins with a harmony in the soul, a sculpture begins with a formless, useless piece of rock chiseled and formed and molded into the thing that was first conceived in the sculptor's heart! A painting can be carried inside the mind for a lifetime, before ever being put onto paper or canvass! And a prayer! A prayer is a thought, a remembrance, a whisper, a communion, that is from the soul going to what cannot be seen, yet it can move mountains! And so I believe that these five things are interrelated, these five kinds of people are kin.

To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too. And when others give life, I could have done the same. Then we experience that we can be present to the soldier who kills, to the guard who pesters, to the young man who plays as if life has no end, and to the old man who stopped playing out of fear for death. By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness, we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community.

There are two Paths to the Innermost: the Way of the Mystic, which is the way of devotion and meditation, a solitary and subjective path; and the way of the occultist, which is the way of the intellect, of concentration, and of trained will; upon this path the co-operation of fellow workers is required, firstly for the exchange of knowledge, and secondly because ritual magic plays an important part in this work, and for this the assistance of several is needed in most of the greater operations. The mystic derives his knowledge through the direct communion of his higher self with the Higher Powers; to him the wisdom of the occultist is foolishness, for his mind does not work in that way; but, on the other hand, to a more intellectual and extrovert type, the method of the mystic is impossible until long training has enabled him to transcend the planes of form. We must therefore recognize these two distinct types among those who seek the Way of Initiation, and remember that there is a path for each.

Birdwatching, at first glance, seems like a pursuit designed specifically for people who find stamp collecting too stimulating. But oh, how wrong they would be. Behind the courteous nods, the gentle lift of binoculars and the soft pitter-patter of birder footsteps on dew-dappled gum leaves lies a world of unexpected drama – a scandalous underbelly of rivalry, controversy and intrigue. Indeed, what appears to be a peaceful communion with nature masks a tempest of Shakespearean passion.

No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with Divine Power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one’s owns self sufficiency.

Because it is useless, and I tell them so at once. If you had confessed your fears to me sooner, I would have reassured you. My dear friend, a man in love is not only foolish but dangerous. I cease all intercourse with people who love me or pretend to; firstly, because they bore me, and secondly, because I look upon them with dread, as I would upon a mad dog. I know that your love is only a kind of appetite; while with me it would be a communion of souls. Now, look me in the face—" she no longer smiled. "I will never be your sweetheart; it is therefore useless for you to persist in your efforts. And now that I have explained, shall we be friends?

Barbara appraised her with critical eyes. ‘Oh my. Well, this is going to need some work.’ She went right to Carmen’s hips and pulled the unfinished seams open. ‘Yes, we’ll have to take this way out. I’m not sure I have enough fabric. I’ll check when I get back to my office.’ You are a horrible witch, Carmen thought. She knew she looked absolutely awful in the dress. She was part Bourbon Street whore and part Latina first-communion spectacle.

Nick and the Candlestick I am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactites Drip and thicken, tears The earthen womb Exudes from its dead boredom. Black bat airs Wrap me, raggy shawls, Cold homicides. They weld to me like plums. Old cave of calcium Icicles, old echoer. Even the newts are white, Those holy Joes. And the fish, the fish ---- Christ! they are panes of ice, A vice of knives, A piranha Religion, drinking Its first communion out of my live toes. The candle Gulps and recovers its small altitude, Its yellows hearten. O love, how did you get here? O embryo Remembering, even in sleep, Your crossed position. The blood blooms clean In you, ruby. The pain You wake to is not yours. Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses, With soft rugs ---- The last of Victoriana. Let the stars Plummet to their dark address, Let the mercuric Atoms that cripple drip Into the terrible well, You are the one Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.

[91] Why Should It Be Necessary? “But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?” I answer, What if He knows Prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of Himself?…Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer

Why did Our Blessed Lord use bread and wine as the elements of this Memorial? First of all, because no two substances in nature better symbolize unity than bread and wine. As bread is made from a multiplicity of grains of wheat, and wine is made from a multiplicity of grapes, so the many who believe are one in Christ. Second, no two substances in nature have to suffer more to become what they are than bread and wine. Wheat has to pass through the rigors of winter, be ground beneath the Calvary of a mill, and then subjected to purging fire before it can become bread. Grapes in their turn must be subjected to the Gethsemane of a wine press and have their life crushed from them to become wine. Thus, do they symbolize the Passion and Sufferings of Christ, and the condition of Salvation, for Our Lord said unless we die to ourselves we cannot live in Him. A third reason is that there are no two substances in nature which have more traditionally nourished man than bread and wine. In bringing these elements to the altar, men are equivalently bringing themselves. When bread and wine are taken or consumed, they are changed into man's body and blood. But when He took bread and wine, He changed them into Himself.

The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs. Her religious beliefs went first, for all she could ask of a god, or of immortality, was the gift of a place where daughters love their mothers; the other attributes of Heaven you could have for a song. Next she lost her belief in the sincerity of those about her. She secretly refused to believe that anyone (herself excepted) loved anyone. All families lived in a wasteful atmosphere of custom and kissed one another with secret indifference. She saw that the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires. These were the sons and daughters of Adam from Cathay to Peru. And when on the balcony her thoughts reached this turn, her mouth would contract with shame for she knew that she too sinned and that though her love for her daughter was vast enough to include all the colors of love, it was not without a shade of tyranny: she loved her daughter not for her daughter's sake, but for her own. She longed to free herself from this ignoble bond; but the passion was too fierce to cope with.

Uniting the search for love with the quest to be free was the crucial step. Searching for love, I found the path to freedom. Learning how to be free was the first step in learning to know love.

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God's love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother and sister when we learn to listen to them.

I am bored, Darrow. I am terminally bored. I yearn for the clash. I yearn for martial sensation. So gratitude, Reaper. Gratitude, foe, for this! The ultimate honor between peers—a conversation in the language we both have mastered. Violence. Surely there can be no greater distillation of all our mutual respect, animus, and quality.” His eyelids flare back. “Gratitude for answering my summons. Gratitude for granting me this final communion.” His eyes flick to my bald head where the first sprouts of new hair are emerging. “Depilated and dilapidated though you may be.

To be in communion means to be with someone and to discover that we actually belong together. Communion means accepting people just as they are, with all their limits and inner pain, but also with their gifts and their beauty and their capacity to grow: to see the beauty inside of all the pain. To love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: “You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust

consecrated to my Immaculate Heart, and I shall ask that on the first Saturday of every month Communions of reparation be made in atonement for the sins of the world.

Many ask, "Shall we first acquire material success to fulfill our worldly obligations, and then seek God? Or should we have God first and then go after success?" By all means, God first. Never begin or end your day without communion with Him in deep meditation. We should remember that we could not perform any duties without the power borrowed from God. So it is to Him we owe our first allegiance. If you do your other duties but forget God, He doesn't like that at all. The ideal is to perform all duties with the sole desire to please God.

Emotion integrates but emotivity isolates. So free yourself from affectivity. In this absence of emotivity, you may have the impression at first that you become indifferent. But very soon you’ll see that there is really affection for your surroundings. Emotion, affection, is giving.

The Church is a place where human beings have the conviction to patiently seek the truth together, in a shared life of charity, one that is both cosmopolitan and personal, both reasonable and religious, both philosophical and theological. This communion in the truth is made possible, however, only because people have first accepted to be apprenticed to revelation through a common effort of learning the truth from another (i.e., God), who is the author of truth, and from one another.

Nothing can fill the gap left by someone we love, and we should not attempt to find anything. We must simply endure and hold out. That may sound very harsh at first, but at the same time it is a great comfort, because as the hole that he has left remains unfilled, so the connection with him remains. It is wrong to say: ‘God, fill the hole.’ God doesn’t fill it at all. Rather he leaves it unfilled, and in this way he helps us to maintain our true communion with our loved one, even though it is painful.

If I could have made the change sooner I daresay I should never have given a thought to the literary delights of Paris or London; for life in the country is the only state which has always completely satisfied me, and I had never been allowed to gratify it, even for a few weeks at a time. Now I was to know the joys of six or seven months a year among fields and woods of my own, and the childish ecstasy of that first spring outing at Mamaroneck swept away all restlessness in the deep joy of communion with the earth.

The Christian mystic therefore is one for whom God and Christ are not merely objects of belief, but living facts experimentally known first hand; and mysticism for him becomes, in so far as he responds to its demands, a life based on this conscious communion with God

This is why most people do not stick with a contemplative discipline for very long; we have heard all sorts of talk about contemplation delivering inner peace but when we turn within to seek this peace, we meet inner chaos instead of peace. But at this point it is precisely the meeting of chaos that is salutary, not snorting lines of euphoric peace. The peace will indeed come, but it will be the fruit, not of pushing away distractions, but of meeting thoughts and feelings with stillness instead of commentary. This is the skill we must learn. The struggle with distractions is not characterized only by afflictive thoughts. Many sincerely devout people never enter the silent land because their attention is so riveted to devotions and words. If there is not a wordy stream of talking to God and asking God for this and that, they feel they are not praying. Obviously this characterizes any relationship to a certain extent. When we are first getting to know someone, the relationship is nurtured by talking. Only with time does the relationship mature in such a way that we can be silent with someone, that silence comes to be seen to be the deeper mode of communion. And so it is with God; our words give way to silence.

Increasingly, Jung came to see that while his father and his uncles, six of whom were pastors, spoke to him about dogma and belief, he was more concerned with experience, with what he would later call gnosis, discovering the distinction in the ancient Gnostic Christian sects of the second and third centuries AD. He was convinced his father had no real experience of a living God, and after his first Communion proved to be an empty affair (“So that’s that” is how he described it), Jung realized that the Church was the last place he might find the answers to the questions that plagued him.

Mystical experience needs some form of dogma in order not to dissipate into moments of spiritual intensity that are merely personal, and dogma needs regular infusions of unknowingness to keep from calcifying into the predictable, pontificating, and anti-intellectual services so common in mainstream American churches. So what does all this mean practically? It means that congregations must be conscious of the persistent and ineradicable loneliness that makes a person seek communion, with other people and with God, in the first place. It means that conservative churches that are infused with the bouncy brand of American optimism one finds in sales pitches are selling shit. It means that liberal churches that go months without mentioning the name of Jesus, much less the dying Christ, have no more spiritual purpose or significance than a local union hall. It means that we -- those of us who call ourselves Christians -- need a revolution in the way we worship. This could mean many different things -- poetry as liturgy, focused and extended silences, learning from other religious traditions and rituals (this seems crucial), incorporating apophatic language. But one thing it means for sure: we must be conscious of language as language, must call into question every word we use until we refine or remake a language that is fit for our particular religious doubts and despairs -- and of course (and most of all!) our joys.

Now if BECOMING history is the particularity of the Son in the economy, what is the contribution of the Spirit? Well, precisely the opposite: it is to liberate the Son and the economy from the bondage of history. If the Son dies on the cross, thus succumbing to the bondage of historical existence, it is the Spirit that raises him from the dead. The Spirit is the BEYOND history, and when he acts in history he does so in order to bring into history the last days, the ESCHATON. Hence the first fundamental particularity of Pneumatology is its eschatological character. The Spirit makes of Christ an eschatological being, the 'last Adam.

In the parlor was a huge camera on wheels like the ones used in public parks, and the backdrop of a marine twilight, painted with homemade paints, and the walls papered with pictures of children at memorable moments: the first Communion, the bunny costume, the happy birthday. Year after year, during contemplative pauses on afternoons of chess, Dr. Urbino had seen the gradual covering over of the walls, and he had often thought with a shudder of sorrow that in the gallery of casual portraits lay the germ of the future of the city, governed and corrupted by those unknown children, where note even the ashes of his glory would remain.

Visitors tried to cheer him up with the usual comforting banalities but he was not placated, until he was visited by the nun who had prepared him for his first Communion, Sister Dolores. ‘She said something that truly stuck with me,’ he later recalled, ‘and make me feel at peace: “you are imitating Christ” ’, he was told.

Every subsequent moral crisis of my life, moreover, has had precisely the pattern of this struggle over the first Communion, I have battled, usually without avail, against a temptation to do something which only I knew was bad, being swept on by a need to preserve outward appearances and to live up to other people's expectations of me.

books are the voices of the dead. They are a main instrument of communion with the vast human procession of the other world. They are the allies of the thought of man. They are in a certain sense at enmity with the world. Their work is, at least, in the two higher compartments of our threefold life. In a room well filled with them, no one has felt or can feel solitary. Second to none, as friends to the individual, they are first and foremost among the compages, the bonds and rivets of the race, onward from that time when they were first written on the tablets of Babylonia and Assyria, the rocks of Asia minor, and the monuments of Egypt, down to the diamond editions of Mr. Pickering and Mr. Frowde.

think I am? Smothered in fancy furs? The food churned in my stomach. I gagged. I ran to her backyard and threw it all up. Out she came. Look at what he did. Thrun up his First Communion breakfast. Thrun up the body and blood of Jesus. I have God in me backyard. What am I goin’ to do? I’ll take him to the Jesuits for they know the sins of the Pope himself.

There would be no communion between him and us if he did not first come to us with his grace.

First you recognize stillness, then you are it. You feel yourself as autonomous, that is, not identified with what is all around you. And now true relation is possible.

Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre, where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume, brought us into closer communion.

You see what I am driving at. The mentally handicapped do not have a consciousness of power. Because of this perhaps their capacity for love is more immediate, lively and developed than that of other men. They cannot be men of ambition and action in society and so develop a capacity for friendship rather than for efficiency. They are indeed weak and easily influenced, because they confidently give themselves to others; they are simple certainly, but often with a very attractive simplicity. Their first reaction is often one of welcome and not of rejection or criticism. Full of trust, they commit themselves deeply. Who amongst us has not been moved when met by the warm welcome of our boys and girls, by their smiles, their confidence and their outstretched arms. Free from the bonds of conventional society, and of ambition, they are free, not with the ambitious freedom of reason, but with an interior freedom, that of friendship. Who has not been struck by the rightness of their judgments upon the goodness or evil of men, by their profound intuition on certain human truths, by the truth and simplicity of their nature which seeks not so much to appear to be, as to be. Living in a society where simplicity has been submerged by criticism and sometimes by hypocrisy, is it not comforting to find people who can be aware, who can marvel? Their open natures are made for communion and love.

Prayer is not supposed to be all we do - it's just supposed to undergird all we do. Prayer is not supposed to be just the first thing we do, but the first, second, fourth, seventh, and final thing we do in each circumstance.

To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks A various language; for his gayer hours She has a voice of gladness, and a smile And eloquence of beauty, and she glides Into his darker musings, with a mild And healing sympathy, that steals away Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts Of the last bitter hour come like a blight Over thy spirit, and sad images Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall, And breathless darkness, and the narrow house, Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;— Go forth, under the open sky, and list To Nature’s teachings, while from all around— Earth and her waters, and the depths of air— Comes a still voice— Yet a few days, and thee The all-beholding sun shall see no more In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground, Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears, Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix for ever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thine eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the infant world—with kings, The powerful of the earth—the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,—the vales Stretching in pensive quietness between; The venerable woods—rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks That make the meadows green; and, poured round all, Old Ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,— Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.—Take the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous woods Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, Save his own dashings—yet the dead are there: And millions in those solitudes, since first The flight of years began, have laid them down In their last sleep—the dead reign there alone. So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw In silence from the living, and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, matron and maid, The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man— Shall one by one be gathered to thy side, By those, who in their turn shall follow them. So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

On her First Holy Communion, Majella could remember sitting in the chapel for a long time, with Jesus stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her trying to peel him off with her tongue. Somehow she knew picking him off with her finger was all wrong.

Because I love you and I don’t want you to be afraid, I have gone ahead of you into everything bad that can and will happen to you. I have gotten there first. Look for me when you get there. I will have a cup, a cannula, communion, ready for you.

I am just like you. My immediate response to most situations is with reactions of attachment, defensiveness, judgment, control, and analysis. I am better at calculating than contemplating. Let’s admit that we all start there. The False Self seems to have the “first gaze” at almost everything. The first gaze is seldom compassionate. It is too busy weighing and feeling itself: “How will this affect me?” or “How can I get back in control of this situation?” This leads us to an implosion, a self-preoccupation that cannot enter into communion with the other or the moment. In other words, we first feel our feelings before we can relate to the situation and emotion of the other. Only after God has taught us how to live “undefended,” can we immediately stand with and for the other, and in the present moment. It takes lots of practice. On my better days, when I am “open, undefended, and immediately present,” as Gerald May says, I can sometimes begin with a contemplative mind and heart. Often I can get there later and even end there, but it is usually a second gaze. The True Self seems to always be ridden and blinded by the defensive needs of the False Self. It is an hour-by-hour battle, at least for me. I can see why all spiritual traditions insist on daily prayer, in fact, morning, midday, evening, and before we go to bed, too! Otherwise, I can assume that I am back in the cruise control of small and personal self-interest, the pitiable and fragile “Richard self.

In the history of walking, many experts considering him (Wordsworth) the authentic originator of the long expedition. He was the first – at a time (the late eighteenth century) when walking was the lot of the poor, vagabonds and highwaymen, not to mention travelling showmen and pedlars – to conceive of the walk as a poetic act, a communion with Nature, fulfilment of the body, contemplation of the landscape. Christopher Morley wrote of him that he was ‘one of the first to use his legs in the service of philosophy’.

But if God is so good as you represent Him, and if He knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask Him for anything?” I answer, What if He knows Prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of Himself?…Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer…. So begins a communion, a taking with God, a coming-to-one with Him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases. We must ask that we may receive: but that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God’s end in making us pray, for He could give us everything without that: to bring His child to his knee, God withholds that man may ask.

The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing thing; to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world. That I should have come at last upon so singular a body was, I may say without vanity, not altogether singular, for I have a mania for belonging to as many societies as possible: I may be said to collect clubs, and I have accumulated a vast and fantastic variety of specimens ever since, in my audacious youth, I collected the Athenaeum. At some future day, perhaps, I may tell tales of some of the other bodies to which I have belonged. I will recount the doing's of the Dead Man's Shoes Society (that superficially immoral, but darkly justifiable communion); I will explain the curious origin of the Cat and Christian, the name of which has been so shamefully misinterpreted; and the world shall know at last why the Institute of Typewriters coalesced with the Red Tulip League. Of the Ten Teacups, of course I dare not say a word.

Nothing can make up for the absence of someone whom we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a substitute; we must simply hold out and see it through. That sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us. It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap; God does not fill it, but on the contrary, God keeps it empty and so helps us keep alive our former communion with each other, even at the cost of pain. . . . The dearer and richer our memories, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy. The beauties of the past are borne, not as a thorn in the flesh, but as a precious gift in themselves. We must take care not to wallow in our memories or to hand ourselves over to them, just as we do not gaze all the time at a valuable present, but only at special times, and apart from these keep it simply as a hidden treasure that is ours for certain. In this way the past gives us lasting joy and strength. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

... the intercessor is not so much like a lamp in the electric circuit as a radio which is both a receiver and transmitter. The receiving aspect is often quite overlooked in the ministry of intercession. Communion with God should surely be a two-way traffic. We speak of prayer as our ‘coming to the mercy seat’, but when God first spoke about this to Moses He said nothing about it as a place where Moses would speak with Him, but rather as a place where He would speak with Moses (Exod. 2 5 : 22). In other words, the mercy seat was to be first a place of revelation, and then a place of intercession. This revelation may indeed be given to the intercessor as he prays, but it will often be necessary to tune in and hear what eaven is saying that he may know how to pray. To learn how to talk to God we must first learn how to listen to God.

At the time, the doors to the cathedral were kept locked because the federal government had ordered all gathering places to remain closed: theaters, movie houses, bars, and of course, churches. For a while, poor Father Pedro had defied the order, saying that nobody had the right to close the House of the Lord, much less refuse Communion to believers, even if fewer and fewer attended. Sick but soldiering on, he had died suddenly three days ago while reciting the Credo in the first mass of the day. The handful of churchgoers had run out without even crossing themselves.

Jesus breaks what we bring to Him. All too often we come to the table with our best manners and a pose of impenetrable self-sufficiency. We're all surface, all role - polished and poised performers in the game of life. But Jesus is after what is within, and He exposes the insides - our inadequacies. At the table we're not permitted to be self-enclosed. We're not permitted to remain self-sufficient. We are taken into the crucifixion. We dramatize it as we eat the common food. The breaking of our pride and self-approval opens us up to new life, to new action. Everything on the table represents some kind of exchange of life, some sacrifice to our Host. If we come crusted over, hardened within ourselves in lies and poses, He breaks through and brings new life. 'A broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise' (Psalm 51:17). We discover this breaking first in Jesus. Jesus was broken, His blood poured out. And now we discover it in ourselves. Then Jesus gives back what we brought to Him, who we are. But it is no longer what we brought. Who we are, this self that we offer to Him at the table, is changed into what God gives, what we sing of as Amazing Grace. [Living the Resurrection]

The memory of his childhood suddenly grew dim. He tried to call forth some of its vivid moments but could not. He recalled only names. Dante, Parnell, Clane, Clongowes. A little boy had been taught geography by an old woman who kept two brushes in her wardrobe. Then he had been sent away from home to a college, he had made his first communion and eaten slim jim out of his cricket cap and watched the firelight leaping and dancing on the wall of a little bedroom in the infirmary and dreamed of being dead, of mass being said for him by the rector in a black and gold cope, of being buried then in the little graveyard of the community off the main avenue of limes. But he had not died then. Parnell had died. There had been no mass for the dead in the chapel and no procession. He had not died but he had faded out like a film in the sun. He had been lost or had wandered out of existence for he no longer existed. How strange to think of him passing out of existence in such a way, not by death but by fading out in the sun or by being lost and forgotten somewhere in the universe! It was strange to see his small body appear again for a moment: a little boy in a grey belted suit. His hands were in his side-pockets and his trousers were tucked in at the knees by elastic bands.

Respectfully I kiss her lovely teeth and she says, slowly, gravely, the second time a few notes higher than the first: 'Communion takes place in silence...Communion takes place in silence.' This, she explains, is because this kiss leaves her with the impression of something sacred, where her teeth 'substituted for the host.

We have, then, in this beautiful section, as we have seen, a picture of unbroken communion and its delightful issues. May our lives correspond! First, one with the King, then speaking of the King; the joy of communion leading to fellowship in service, to a being all for Jesus, ready for any experience that will fit for further service, surrendering all to Him, and willing to minister all for Him. There is no room for love of the world here, for union with Christ has filled the heart; there is nothing for the gratification of the world, for all has been sealed and is kept for the Master's use. Jesus, my life is Thine! And evermore shall be Hidden in Thee. For nothing can untwine Thy life from mine.

I take it from her, turn it around so I can see I right-side-up. Is this her, is this what she's like? My treasure. So tall and changed. Smiling a little now, so soon, and in her white dress as if for an olden-days First Communion. Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, washed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. I have been obliterated for her. I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph. A shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers become. You can see it in her eyes. I am not there. But she exists, in her white dress. She grows and lives. Isn't that a good thing? A blessing? Still, I can't bear it, to have been erased like that. Better she'd brought me nothing.

The consecration of all to our Master, far from lessening our power to impart, increases both our power and our joy in ministration. The five loaves and two fishes of the disciples, first given up to and blessed by the Lord, were abundant supply for the needy multitudes, and grew, in the act of distribution, into a store of which twelve hampers full of fragments remained when all were fully satisfied.

She felt a wild communion with them compounded of blood and hate, not knowing that in part the hatred was for them for the whippings, for First Stolen's use of her, for a life stolen which she could never truly miss but which lingered dimly still somewhere far beyond her waking consciousness-and not caring, because this was life now, this hunger, this blood beating in the veins of the man who held her.

When it was time for me to leave, I thanked Mrs. Odom, climbed on Lenny’s bike, and set off for home. As I pedaled up the road, I turned and glanced back at the Odoms’ house. I remembered that first day on the school bus when I had seen it and thought it was so sad-looking. Then I pictured all those boys in that little kitchen getting loved on by their mama and that house didn’t look one bit sad anymore.

As for the vice of lust - aside from what it means for spiritual persons to fall into this vice, since my intent is to treat of the imperfections that have to be purged by means of the dark night - spiritual persons have numerous imperfections, many of which can be called spiritual lust, not because the lust is spiritual but because it proceeds from spiritual things. It happens frequently that in a person's spiritual exercises themselves, without the person being able to avoid it, impure movements will be experienced in the sensory part of the soul, and even sometimes when the spirit is deep in prayer or when receiving the sacraments of Penance or the Eucharist. These impure feelings arise from any of three causes outside one's control. First, they often proceed from the pleasure human nature finds in spiritual exercises. Since both the spiritual and the sensory part of the soul receive gratification from that refreshment, each part experiences delight according to its own nature and properties. The spirit, the superior part of the soul, experiences renewal and satisfaction in God; and the sense, the lower part, feels sensory gratification and delight because it is ignorant of how to get anything else, and hence takes whatever is nearest, which is the impure sensory satisfaction. It may happen that while a soul is with God in deep spiritual prayer, it will conversely passively experience sensual rebellions, movements, and acts in the senses, not without its own great displeasure. This frequently happens at the time of Communion. Since the soul receives joy and gladness in this act of love - for the Lord grants the grace and gives himself for this reason - the sensory part also takes its share, as we said, according to its mode. Since, after all, these two parts form one individual, each one usually shares according to its mode in what the other receives. As the Philosopher says: Whatever is received, is received according to the mode of the receiver. Because in the initial stages of the spiritual life, and even more advanced ones, the sensory part of the soul is imperfect, God's spirit is frequently received in this sensory part with this same imperfection. Once the sensory part is reformed through the purgation of the dark night, it no longer has these infirmities. Then the spiritual part of the soul, rather than the sensory part, receives God's Spirit, and the soul thus receives everything according to the mode of the Spirit.

AFTER THE DELUGE AS SOON as the idea of the Deluge had subsided, A hare stopped in the clover and swaying flower-bells, and said a prayer to the rainbow, through the spider’s web. Oh! the precious stones that began to hide,—and the flowers that already looked around. In the dirty main street, stalls were set up and boats were hauled toward the sea, high tiered as in old prints. Blood flowed at Blue Beard’s,—through slaughterhouses, in circuses, where the windows were blanched by God’s seal. Blood and milk flowed. Beavers built. “Mazagrans” smoked in the little bars. In the big glass house, still dripping, children in mourning looked at the marvelous pictures. A door banged; and in the village square the little boy waved his arms, understood by weather vanes and cocks on steeples everywhere, in the bursting shower. Madame *** installed a piano in the Alps. Mass and first communions were celebrated at the hundred thousand altars of the cathedral. Caravans set out. And Hotel Splendid was built in the chaos of ice and of the polar night. Ever after the moon heard jackals howling across the deserts of thyme, and eclogues in wooden shoes growling in the orchard. Then in the violet and budding forest, Eucharis told me it was spring. Gush, pond,—Foam, roll on the bridge and over the woods;—black palls and organs, lightning and thunder, rise and roll;—waters and sorrows rise and launch the Floods again. For since they have been dissipated—oh! the precious stones being buried and the opened flowers!—it’s unbearable! and the Queen, the Witch who lights her fire in the earthen pot will never tell us what she knows, and what we do not know.

I'll come back to that later. First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

I wiped the blade against my jeans and walked into the bar. It was mid-afternoon, very hot and still. The bar was deserted. I ordered a whisky. The barman looked at the blood and asked: ‘God?’ ‘Yeah.’ ‘S’pose it’s time someone finished that hypocritical little punk, always bragging about his old man’s power…’ He smiled crookedly, insinuatingly, a slight nausea shuddered through me. I replied weakly: ‘It was kind of sick, he didn’t fight back or anything, just kept trying to touch me and shit, like one of those dogs that try to fuck your leg. Something in me snapped, the whingeing had ground me down too low. I really hated that sanctimonious little creep.’ ‘So you snuffed him?’ ‘Yeah, I’ve killed him, knifed the life out of him, once I started I got frenzied, it was an ecstasy, I never knew I could hate so much.’ I felt very calm, slightly light-headed. The whisky tasted good, vaporizing in my throat. We were silent for a few moments. The barman looked at me levelly, the edge of his eyes twitching slightly with anxiety: There’ll be trouble though, don’tcha think?’ ‘I don’t give a shit, the threats are all used up, I just don’t give a shit.’ ‘You know what they say about his old man? Ruthless bastard they say. Cruel…’ ‘I just hope I’ve hurt him, if he even exists.’ ‘Woulden wanna cross him merself,’ he muttered. I wanted to say ‘yeah, well that’s where we differ’, but the energy for it wasn’t there. The fan rotated languidly, casting spidery shadows across the room. We sat in silence a little longer. The barman broke first: ‘So God’s dead?’ ‘If that’s who he was. That fucking kid lied all the time. I just hope it’s true this time.’ The barman worked at one of his teeth with his tongue, uneasily: ‘It’s kindova big crime though, isn’t it? You know how it is, when one of the cops goes down and everything’s dropped ’til they find the guy who did it. I mean, you’re not just breaking a law, your breaking LAW.’ I scraped my finger along my jeans, and suspended it over the bar, so that a thick clot of blood fell down into my whisky, and dissolved. I smiled: ‘Maybe it’s a big crime,’ I mused vaguely ‘but maybe it’s nothing at all…’ ‘…and we have killed him’ writes Nietzsche, but—destituted of community—I crave a little time with him on my own. In perfect communion I lick the dagger foamed with God’s blood.

Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it: only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.

If I am a parent, what is my relationship with my child? First of all, have I any relationship at all? The child happens to be my son or my daughter, but is there actually any relationship, any contact, companionship, communion between myself and my child, or am I too busy earning money, or whatever it is, and therefore pack him off to school? So I really have no contact or communion at all with the boy or the girl, have I? If I am a busy parent, as parents generally are, and I merely want my son to be something, a lawyer, a doctor, or an engineer, have I any relationship with him even though I have produced him? Do parents ever ask themselves why they have children? Do they have children to perpetuate their name, to carry on their property? Do they want children merely for the sake of their own delight, to satisfy their own emotional needs? If so, then the children become a mere projection of the desires and fears of their parents.

The first Christians were eucharistic by nature: they gathered for “the breaking of the bread and the prayers.” They were formed by the Word of God, the “apostles’ teaching.” When they met as a Church, their worship culminated in “fellowship”—the Greek word is koinonia, communion. The Mass was the center of life for the disciples of Jesus, and so it has ever been. Even today, the Mass is where we experience the apostolic teaching and communion, the breaking of the bread and the prayers.

The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God—and by filling the world with this eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him. The world was created as the “matter,” the material of one all-embracing eucharist, and man was created as the priest of this cosmic sacrament.

It is a great truth that you will rise again. It is a sweeter truth that you will "always be with the Lord." Whatever else you draw comfort from, neglect not this deep, clear, and over-flowing well of delight. There are other sources of good cheer in connection with the glory to be revealed, for heaven is a many-sided joy, but still none can excel the glory of communion with Jesus Christ, wherefore comfort one another in the first place and most constantly, with these words, "So we will always be with the Lord.

For that is the curious quality of the discotheque after you have gone there a long time: in the midst of all the lights, and music, the bodies, the dancing, the drugs, you are stiller than still within, and though you go through the motions of dancing you are thinking a thousand disparate things. You find yourself listening to the lyrics, and you wonder what these people around you are doing. They seemed crazed to you. You stand there on a floor moving your hips, wondering if there is such a thing as love, and conscious for the very first time that it is three-twenty-five and the night only half-over. You put the popper to your nostril, you put a hand out to lightly touch the sweaty, rigid stomach of the man dancing next to you, your own chest is streaming with sweat in that hot room, and you are thinking, as grave as a judge: What will I do with my life? What can any man do with his life? And you finally don’t know where to rest your eyes. You don’t know where to look, as you dance. You have been expelled from the communion of the saints.

Now that I was sitting here holding my own flesh and blood with my heart about to explode from sheer joy, I felt nearer to knowing what it meant to be loved by God. The thought occupied my mind all summer - at every diaper change and every feeding, with every coo and smile and cry. So this is what it's like to really love someone else, to have the sum total of everything you are and love, living and breathing outside of you? It was my first, real taste of heaven, of communion with God, and in a way, its own baptism of sorts.

Charles G. Finney, known as “America’s foremost revivalist,” was a major leader of the Second Great Awakening. Finney was a fiery, entertaining, and spontaneous preacher, and was widely influential among millions of Americans. In addition, however, Finney was deeply concerned with social justice. He was an abolitionist leader who frequently denounced slavery from his pulpit and denied communion to slaveholders. He was president of Oberlin, the first college in America to educate black and white men and women in the same classrooms.

To tie this point with the previous two chapters, the daily fight for joy is the fight to maintain faith in the all-sufficiency of Christ.38 Which is why daily joy in the Christian life is thwarted by personal sin. For two reasons, it is impossible to live simultaneously in known sin and in the joy of the Lord. First, sin is the soul’s pursuit of a false pleasure that stands in as a hollow replacement for the joy of Christ. Second, our sin chases out divine joy, because holiness is the counterpart of happiness. Christlikeness is one way we experience the joy of communion with Christ.

I have maintained that precisely because Christian faith regards the nothing from which the world came forth as absolute ‘non-being, creatureliness implies that death is a return to the nothingness of nonbeing… Problems essentially derive either from a belief, latent in many Christians, in the immortality of the soul, whereby death no longer constitutes a return to non-being since the soul, of it’s nature, lives eternally, or from a belief that God does not create mortal beings, and consequently that what is created cannot but live. With regard to the first belief, namely in the immorality of the soul, I have said enough above about the soul not being immortal by nature, since it is not eternal but created. Consequently, it too is subject to the destiny of creation if left to itself. We can certainly speak of an immortality of the soul that is not ‘natural’ by ‘by grace’, but this is possible only by means of a logical contradiction. The fact that the soul can be immortal *by grace* does not logically permit us to say that it *is* immortal, since the fact that is is created means that it is not immortal in its nature. In fact, it we accept that the soul can be immortal by grace, we implicitly accept that it is not so by nature. Indeed, immortality by grace is conceivable, as we shall, but why limit it to the soul? Immortality by grace, when and where it prevails, concerns the body and the material world in general just as much as the soul. To speak of immortality only with regard to the soul – and only for the soul – even by grace, is a distraction: it involved specially attributing to the soul qualities of immortality. But God does not want only souls to be saved – he wants also the salvation and survival of bodies and of the world as a whole.

In the first place, the questions which divide Christians from one another often involve points of high Theology or even of ecclesiastical history, which ought never to be treated except by real experts. I should have been out of my depth in such waters: more in need of help myself than able to help others. And secondly, I think we must admit that the discussion of these disputed points has no tendency at all to bring an outsider into the Christian fold. So long as we write and talk about them we are much more likely to deter him from entering any Christian communion than to draw him into our own.

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons. They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut. Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in. The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble, They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps, Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another, So it is impossible to tell how many there are. My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently. They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep. Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage—— My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox, My husband and child smiling out of the family photo; Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat stubbornly hanging on to my name and address. They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations. Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head. I am a nun now, I have never been so pure. I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down, Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color, A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck. Nobody watched me before, now I am watched. The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins, And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips, And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself. The vivid tulips eat my oxygen. Before they came the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise. Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine. They concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself. The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves. The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health. --"Tulips", written 18 March 1961

Because individualism is the first challenge, it’s important to realize that a discipleship approach to racial justice and reconciliation depends on a community of Christians. There’s nothing especially innovative about this; for generations, Christians have gathered for corporate worship and, by participating in shared liturgical practices such as singing and Holy Communion, have together had their desires aimed toward the kingdom of God. By its very nature the Christian life is communal; individuals find new life within the locally expressed body of Christ. It’s not that we lose our individuality when we become Christians, but that who we are as individuals finds fuller and truer expression within the community of saints.

And just as Christ is always drawing his people closer to himself, so in Christ-centered marriage each spouse is constantly endeavoring to provide an atmosphere in the home which helps the other to draw closer to Christ, to be always flourishing in the spiritual life. This certainly is another tremendously important reason for marriage. As the Monk Moses of Mt. Athos states, “Two people come to the communion of marriage to help one another in their salvation.” Fr. Alexander Elchaninov hints at this with these remarkable words: “In marriage the festive joy of the first day should last for the whole of life: every day should be a feast day; every day husband and wife should appear to each other as new, extraordinary beings. The only way of achieving this: let both deepen their spiritual life, and strive hard in the task of self-development.

The consecration of all to our Master, far from lessening our power to impart, increases both our power and our joy in ministration. The five loaves and two fishes of the disciples, first given up to and blessed by the Lord, were abundant supply for the needy multitudes, and grew, in the act of distribution, into a store of which twelve hampers full of fragments remained when all were fully satisfied. We have, then, in this beautiful section, as we have seen, a picture of unbroken communion and its delightful issues. May our lives correspond! First, one with the King, then speaking of the King; the joy of communion leading to fellowship in service, to a being all for Jesus, ready for any experience that will fit for further service, surrendering all to Him, and willing to minister all for Him. There is no room for love of the world here, for union with Christ has filled the heart; there is nothing for the gratification of the world, for all has been sealed and is kept for the Master's use. Jesus, my life is Thine! And evermore shall be Hidden in Thee. For nothing can untwine Thy life from mine.

Mackenzie, I can fly, but humans can’t. Jesus is fully human. Although he is also fully God, he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being. He is just the first to do it to the uttermost—the first to absolutely trust my life within him, the first to believe in my love and my goodness without regard for appearance or consequence.” “So when he healed the blind?” “He did so as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.” That came as a shock to Mack’s religious system. “Only as he rested in his relationship with me, and in our communion—our co-union—could he express my heart and will into any given circumstance. So, when you look at Jesus and it appears that he’s flying, he really is… flying. But what you are actually seeing is me, my life in him. That’s how he lives and acts as a true human, how every human is designed to live—out of my life.

This justice must, however be rendered to him. Malevolence was not, perhaps, innate in him. From his very first steps among men, he had felt himself, later on he had seen himself, spewed out, blasted, rejected. Human words were, for him, always a raillery or a malediction. As he grew up, he had found nothing but hatred around him. He had caught the general malevolence. He had picked up the weapon with which he had been wounded. After all, he turned his face towards men only with reluctance; his cathedral was sufficient for him. It was peopled with marble figures — kings, saints, bishops — who at least did not burst out laughing in his face, and who gazed upon him only with tranquillity and kindliness. The other statues, those of the monsters and demons, cherished no hatred for him, Quasimodo. He resembled them too much for that. They seemed rather, to be scoffing at other men. The saints were his friends, and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and guarded him. So he held long communion with them. He sometimes passed whole hours crouching before one of these statues, in solitary conversation with it. If any one came, he fled like a lover surprised in his serenade.

We stopped talking about Zampanô then. She paged her friend Christina who took less than twenty minutes to come over. There were no introductions. We just sat down on the floor and snorted lines of coke off a CD case, gulped down a bottle of wine and then used it to play spin the bottle. They kissed each other first, then they both kissed me, and then we forgot about the bottle, and I even managed to forget about Zampanô, about this, and about how much that attack in the tattoo shop had put me on edge. Two kisses in one kiss was all it took, a comfort, a warmth, perhaps temporary, perhaps false, but reassuring nonetheless, and mine, and theirs, ours, all three of us giggling, insane giggles and laughter with still more kisses on the way, and I remember a brief instant then, out of the blue, when I suddenly glimpsed my own father, a rare but oddly peaceful recollection, as if he actually approved of my play in the way he himself had always laughed and played, always laughing, surrendering to its ease, especially when he soared in great updrafts of light, burning off distant plateaus of bistre & sage, throwing him up like an angel, high above the red earth, deep into the sparkling blank, the tender sky that never once let him down, preserving his attachment to youth, propriety and kindness, his plane almost, but never quite, outracing his whoops of joy, trailing him in his sudden turn to the wind, followed then by a near vertical climb up to the angles of the sun, and I was barely eight and still with him and yes, that the thought that flickered madly through me, a brief instant of communion, possessing me with warmth and ageless ease, causing me to smile again and relax as if memory alone could lift the heart like the wind lifts a wing, and so I renewed my kisses with even greater enthusiasm, caressing and in turn devouring their dark lips, dark with wine and fleeting love, an ancient memory love had promised but finally never gave, until there were too many kisses to count or remember, and the memory of love proved not love at all and needed a replacement, which our bodies found, and then the giggles subsided, and the laughter dimmed, and darkness enfolded all of us and we gave away our childhood for nothing and we died and condoms littered the floor and Christina threw up in the sink and Amber chuckled a little and kissed me a little more, but in a way that told me it was time to leave.

Prayer was the rhythm of the Holy Father’s life. He made time to pray before and after his meals, and interspersed his Breviary prayers (the Liturgy of the Hours) throughout the day and night, calling it: “very important, very important.” At six in the morning, at noon, and again at six in the evening, he would stop whatever he was doing to pray the Angelus, just as he had done while working in the chemical plant in Poland. He prayed several Rosaries each day, went to confession every week, and did not let a day pass without receiving Holy Communion. Each Friday (and every day in Lent), he prayed the Stations of the Cross, and preferred to do this in the garden on the roof of the Papal Apartments. During Lent, he would eat one complete meal a day, and always fasted on the eve of our Lady’s feast days. He remarked, “If the bishop doesn’t set an example by fasting, then who will?” The Holy Father knew that his first duty to the Church was his interior life. He declared, “the shepherd should walk at the head and lay down his life for his sheep. He should be the first when it comes to sacrifice and devotion.” Each night, he looked out his window to Saint Peter’s Square and to the whole world, and made the sign of the cross over it, blessing the world goodnight.

No one believed that the author was the Chinese who received the prize. At the end of the last century, fleeing the scourge of yellow fever that devastated Panama during the construction of the railroad between the two oceans, he had arrived with many others who stayed here until they died, living in Chinese, reproducing in Chinese, and looking so much alike that no one could tell one from the other. At first, there were no more than ten, some of them with their wives and children and edible dogs, but in a few years, four narrow streets in the slums along the port were overflowing with other unexpected Chinese, who came into the country without leaving a trace in the customs record....In the popular view, they were divided into two kinds: bad Chinese and good Chinese. The bad ones were the ones in the lugubrious restaurants along the water front where one was as likely to eat like a King as to die a sudden death at the table, sitting before a plate of rat meat with sunflowers, and which were thought to be nothing more than fronts for white slavery, and many other kinds of trafficking. The good ones were the Chinese in the laundries, heirs of a sacred knowledge, who returned one's shirts cleaner than new, with collars and cuffs like recently ironed communion wafers.

1. I WON'T SHAM Why pretend all is well, yet in hurt When inside I’m dying for your affection? Why should l flout you? When my heart yearns for communion? 'l don't care' cries the broken hearted When inside the heart cries for love When the very reason they are crying Is them they are pretending to slur 'l never loved you' cries the divorced When their heart bleeds for love, just one act of love The one that brought them together at first The very reason they even got married 'l hate you' cries the frustrated When fulfillment is all they long for The reality of which is still a fallacy to them If only they could hold on just a little longer 'That's a dry joke’ cries the scowling When laughter is what they long for In as much as they pretend to frown Merriment is still so true in their hearts But, l hate to say goodbye, when all l want is to be with you I hate to walk away, when l could have gone with you You'd make me sad by waving goodbye When all that's true is for you and me to be together I hate to shout at you, when l can just speak tenderly l hate to hang you down on the phone, When l could have said a little more to make you blissful I hate to say goodnight when l'm not heavy-eyed myself All that's real to me is l abhor to be a dummy But hold on my love, l WON'T SHAM....

There is a scene I love where a brother and sister meet after many years and little communication. They meet in an arranged café in mid-afternoon. The light is dying and the city outside rumbles softly in the complacent time before rush hour. The café is unexceptional and quiet. She comes first, sits at the far end, a table facing the door, nervous in her buttoned raincoat. The waiter is an older man. He leaves her be. The brother enters late with the look but not the words of apology. He kisses her cheek. They sit and the old man brings them teas they do not want, two pots, strong for him weak for her. It is long ago since they said each other’s names aloud, and saying them now has the extraordinary shyness of encounter I imagine on the Last Day. At first there is the full array of human awkwardness. But here is the thing: almost in an instant their old selves are immediately present. The years and the changes are nothing. They need few words. They recognise each other in each other, and even in silence the familiarity is powerfully consoling, because despite time and difference there remains that deep-river current, that kind of maybe communion that only exists within people joined in the word family. So now what washes up between them, foam-white and fortifying and quite unexpectedly, is love. I cannot remember what book it is in. But it’s in this one now.

Liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp show of the tushes of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes. Liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. The battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat…the enemy triumphs…the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote and leadballs do their work…the cause is asleep…the strong throats are choked with their own blood…the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other…and is liberty gone out of that place? No never. When liberty goes it is not the first to go nor the second or third to go…it waits for all the rest to go…it is the last…When the memories of the old martyrs are faded utterly away…when the large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators…when the boys are no more christened after the same but christened after tyrants and traitors instead…when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted and laws for informers and bloodmoney are sweet to the taste of the people…when I and you walk abroad upon the earth stung with compassion at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship and calling no man master—and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves…when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night and surveys its experience and has much extasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority…when those in all parts of these states who could easier realize the true American character but do not yet—when the swarms of cringers, suckers, dough-faces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no…when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart…and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape…or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth—then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth.

If a negative mind comes to a rose, to a garden, many roses may be there, but he will count only the thorns. The first thing for the negative mind is the thorns; that is significant. Flowers are just illusory; only thorns are real. He will count, and, of course, for each flower a thousand thorns exist. And once he has counted a thousand thorns he cannot believe in one flower. He will say this one flower is just illusory. How can such a beautiful flower exist with such ugly thorns, violent thorns? It is impossible, it is unbelievable. And even if it exists, it means nothing now. One thousand thorns have been counted, and the flower disappears. A positive mind will start with the rose, with the flower. And once you are in a communion with the rose, once you know the beauty, the life, the unearthly flowering, thorns disappear. And one who has known the rose in its beauty, in its highest possibility, one who has looked deep into it, for him now even thorns will not look like thorns. The eyes filled with the rose are different now. Now the thorns will look just like a protection for this flower. They will not be enemies; they will look just like part of the happening of flowers. Now this mind will know that this flower happens and these thorns are needed, they protect. Because of these thorns this flower could happen. This positive mind will feel grateful even to thorns. And if this approach deepens, a moment comes when thorns become flowers. With the first approach the flower disappears – or the flower even becomes a thorn. Only with a positive mind can you get the state of a non-tense mind. With a negative mind you will remain tense, with so many miseries all around. Such a negative, inventive mind goes on revealing miseries and miseries and hells and hells. In

Man belongs to two spheres. And Scripture not only teaches that these two spheres are distinct, it also teaches what estimate of relative importance ought to be placed upon them. Heaven is the primordial, earth the secondary creation. In heaven are the supreme realities; what surrounds us here below is a copy and shadow of the celestial things. Because the relation between the two spheres is positive, and not negative, not mutually repulsive, heavenly-mindedness can never give rise to neglect of the duties pertaining to the present life. It is the ordinance and will of God, that not apart from, but on the basis of, and in contact with, the earthly sphere man shall work out his heavenly destiny. Still the lower may never supplant the higher in our affections. In the heart of man time calls for eternity, earth for heaven. He must, if normal, seek the things above, as the flower's face is attracted by the sun, and the water-courses are drawn to the ocean. Heavenly-mindedness, so far from blunting or killing the natural desires, produces in the believer a finer organization, with more delicate sensibilities, larger capacities, a stronger pulse of life. It does not spell impoverishment, but enrichment of nature. The spirit of the entire Epistle shows this. The use of the words "city" and "country" is evidence of it. These are terms that stand for the accumulation, the efflorescence, the intensive enjoyment of values. Nor should we overlook the social note in the representation. A perfect communion in a perfect society is promised. In the city of the living God believers are joined to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, and mingle with the spirits of just men made perfect. And all this faith recognizes. It does not first need the storms and stress that invade to quicken its desire for such things. Being the sum and substance of all the positive gifts of God to us in their highest form, heaven is of itself able to evoke in our hearts positive love, such absorbing love as can render us at times forgetful of the earthly strife. In such moments the transcendent beauty of the other shore and the irresistible current of our deepest life lift us above every regard of wind or wave. We know that through weather fair or foul our ship is bound straight for its eternal port.

[T]here was a prophetic medieval Italian abbot, Joachim of Floris, who in the early thirteenth century foresaw the dissolution of the Christian Church and dawn of a terminal period of earthly spiritual life, when the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, would speak directly to the human heart without ecclesiastical mediation. His view, like that of Frobenius, was of a sequence of historic stages, of which our own was to be the last; and of these he counted four. The first was, of course, that immediately following the Fall of Man, before the opening of the main story, after which there was to unfold the whole great drama of Redemption, each stage under the inspiration of one Person of the Trinity. The first was to be of the Father, the Laws of Moses and the People of Israel; the second of the Son, the New Testament and the Church; and now finally (and here, of course, the teachings of this clergyman went apart from the others of his communion), a third age, which he believed was about to commence, of the Holy Spirit, that was to be of saints in meditation, when the Church, become superfluous, would in time dissolve. It was thought by not a few in Joachim’s day that Saint Francis of Assisi might represent the opening of the coming age of direct, pentecostal spirituality. But as I look about today and observe what is happening to our churches in this time of perhaps the greatest access of mystically toned religious zeal our civilization has known since the close of the Middle Ages, I am inclined to think that the years foreseen by the good Father Joachim of Floris must have been our own. For there is no divinely ordained authority any more that we have to recognize. There is no anointed messenger of God’s law. In our world today all civil law is conventional. No divine authority is claimed for it: no Sinai; no Mount of Olives. Our laws are enacted and altered by human determination, and within their secular jurisdiction each of us is free to seek his own destiny, his own truth, to quest for this or for that and to find it through his own doing. The mythologies, religions, philosophies, and modes of thought that came into being six thousand years ago and out of which all the monumental cultures both of the Occident and of the Orient - of Europe, the Near and Middle East, the Far East, even early America - derived their truths and lives, are dissolving from around us, and we are left, each on his own to follow the star and spirit of his own life.

I have come to think of the UFO problem in terms of three distinct levels. The first level is physical. We now know that the UFO behaves like a region of space, of small dimensions (about ten meters), within which a very large amount of energy is stored. This energy is manifested by pulsed light phenomena of intense colors and by other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The second level is biological. Reports of UFOs show all kinds of psychophysiological effects on the witnesses. Exposure to the phenomenon causes visions, hallucinations, space and time disorientation, physiological reactions (including temporary blindness, paralysis, sleep cycle changes), and long-term personality changes. The third level is social. Belief in the reality of UFOs is spreading rapidly at all levels of society throughout the world. Books on the subject continue to accumulate. Documentaries and major films are being made by men and women who grew up with flying-saucer stories. Expectations about life in the universe have been revolutionized. Many modern themes in our culture can be traced back to the "messages from space" coming from UFO contactees of the forties and fifties. The experience of a close encounter with a UFO is a shattering physical and mental ordeal. The trauma has effects that go far beyond what the witnesses recall consciously. New types of behavior are conditioned, and new types of beliefs are promoted. Aside from any scientific consideration, the social, political, and religious consequences of the experience are enormous if they are considered over the timespan of a generation. Faced with the new wave of experiences of UFO contact that are described in books like Communion and Intruders and in movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, our religions seem obsolete. Our idea of the church as a social entity working within rational structures is obviously challenged by the claim of a direct communication in modern times with visible beings who seem endowed with supernatural powers. This idea can shake our society to the very roots of its culture. Witnesses are no longer afraid to come forward with personal stories of abductions, of spiritual exchanges with aliens, even of sexual interaction with them. Such reports are folklore in the making. I have discovered that they form a striking parallel to the tales of meetings with elves and jinn of medieval times, with the denizens of "Magonia," the land beyond the clouds of ancient chronicles. But they are something else, too: a portent of important things to come.

GOD IS WITHIN AND WITHOUT, because only God is. In fact to say "God is" is a repetition because God is never "is not." God is the very isness of existence. We can say "the house is" because once the house was not and once again the house will not be. To call the house "is" is okay because the "is not" is possible. We can say "the man is" but we cannot say "God is," because only he is, always has been, always will be. God is the very isness, God is existence itself. Then why say the word "God" at all? Why use it? We use it very symbolically, to indicate something. When we say "God is" we mean existence is not without a soul. We mean that existence is not dead. We mean that existence is alive, throbbing with love, compassion, consciousness, conscience; that existence is intimate; that there is a possibility of addressing existence and there is a possibility of getting the response. When we say "God is" we mean that existence allows the possibility of a dialogue. You can have a dialogue with it; you can call it "thou" and it will not be meaningless; and you can be in such a state that prayer becomes possible, that communion becomes possible. That's all the word "God" carries. Existence is not like a dead rock; it is an alive flower. It will respond to you. If you love it, love will flow towards you. If you move towards it, it will move towards you. If you seek it, it will seek you. Existence is not care-less. If you are in love with existence, existence is in love with you. That's all that we mean when we call existence divine or when we say God is. Remember it. It is a poetic way of saying a truth. It is not a fact. It is poetry, it is romance. And religion is romance with existence. Yes, it is more like falling in love rather than arguing towards a conclusion. That's why Kabir says God is within and without, but the journey has to start from the within. Unless you have known God withinwards, you will not be able to comprehend him in the outside. Unless you have seen him within yourself, you will not be able to see him in the trees, in the birds, in the stars. How can you see him in the tree, in the rock, if you have not been able to feel him within yourself? Your center of being is the closest door to God. If you have not been able to enter from there, you cannot enter from anywhere else. God is within and without, both, because only he is; still, the journey starts from your innermost core. This point has to be understood very deeply. The whole approach of Kabir - the whole approach of all the mystics of the world - depends on this. If you see God outside and you have not seen him within, it is going to be just a dream, a projection, a wish fulfillment; so don't start the journey that way. The journey starts by closing the eyes; the journey ends by opening the eyes. First, one closes the eyes in meditation, goes deep into oneself. When one has realized, touched the very core, has known who is there; one opens the eyes - and finds him all over, spread everywhere.

Jesus was not revolutionary because he said we should love God and each other. Moses said that first. So did Buddha, Confucius, and countless other religious leaders. "God loves you" doesn't stir the world's opposition. However, start talking about God's absolute authority, holiness, ... Christ's substitutionary atonement, justification apart from works, the necessity of new birth, repentance, baptism, Communion, and the future judgment, and the mood in the room changes considerably.

Jesus was not revolutionary because he said we should love God and each other. Moses said that first. So did Buddha, Confucius, and countless other religious leaders. "God loves you" doesn't stir the world's opposition. However, start talking about God's absolute authority, holiness, ... Christ's substitutionary atonement, justification apart from works, the necessity of new birth, repentance, baptism, Communion, and the future judgment, and the mood in the room changes considerably.

When, in Being and Time,Heidegger insists that death is the onlyevent which cannot be taken over by another subject for me—an-other cannot die for me, in my place—the obvious counterexampleis Christ himself: did he not, in the extreme gesture of interpassiv-ity, take over for us the ultimate passive experience of dying? Christdies so that we are given a chance to live forever....The problemhere is not only that, obviously, we don’tlive forever (the answer tothis is that it is the Holy Spirit, the community of believers, whichlives forever), but the subjective status of Christ: when he was dyingon the Cross, did he know about his Resurrection-to-come? If he didthen it was all a game, the supreme divine comedy, since Christ knewhis suffering was just a spectacle with a guaranteed good outcome—in short, Christ was faking despair in his “Father, why hast thou for-saken me?” If he didn’t, then in what precise sense was Christ (also)divine? Did God the Father limit the scope of knowledge of Christ’smind to that of a common human consciousness, so that Christ ac-tually thought he was dying abandoned by his father? Was Christ, ineffect, occupying the position of the son in the wonderful joke aboutthe rabbi who turns in despair to God, asking Him what he shoulddo with his bad son, who has deeply disappointed him; God calmlyanswers: “Do the same as I did: write a new testament!”What is crucial here is the radical ambiguity of the term “the faithof Jesus Christ,” which can be read as subjective or objectivegenitive: it can be either “the faith ofChrist” or “the faith / of us, be-lievers / inChrist.” Either we are redeemed because of Christ’s purefaith, or we are redeemed by our faith in Christ, if and insofar as webelieve in him. Perhaps there is a way to read the two meanings to-gether: what we are called to believe in is not Christ’s divinity as suchbut, rather, his faith, his sinless purity. What Christianity proposes isthe figure of Christ as our subject supposed to believe:in our ordinary lives,we never truly believe, but we can at least have the consolation thatthere is One who truly believes (the function of what Lacan, in hisseminar Encore,called y’a de l’un).The final twist here, however, is thaton the Cross, Christ himself has to suspend his belief momentarily.So maybe, at a deeper level, Christ is, rather, our (believers’) subject supposed NOTto believe: it is not our belief we transpose onto others, but,rather, our disbelief itself. Instead of doubting, mocking, and ques-tioning things while believing through the Other, we can also trans-pose onto the Other the nagging doubt, thus regaining the abilityto believe. (And is there not, in exactly the same way, also the func-tion of the subject supposed not to know? Ta ke little children who are sup-posed not to know the “facts of life,” and whose blessed ignorancewe, knowing adults, are supposed to protect by shielding them frombrutal reality; or the wife who is supposed not to know about herhusband’s secret affair, and willingly plays this role even if she re-ally knows all about it, like the young wife in The Age of Innocence;or, inacademia, the role we assume when we ask someone: “OK, I’ll pre-tend I don’t know anything about this topic—try to explain it to mefrom scratch!”) And, perhaps, the true communion with Christ, thetrue imitatio Christi,is to participate in Christ’s doubt and disbelief.There are two main interpretations of how Christ’s death dealswith sin: sacrificial and participatory.4In the first one, we humansare guilty of sin, the consequence of which is death; however, Godpresented Christ, the sinless one, as a sacrifice to die in our place—through the shedding of his blood, we may be forgiven and freedfrom condemnation. In the second one, human beings lived “inAdam,” in the sphere of sinful humanity, under the reign of sin anddeath. Christ became a human being, sharing the fate of those “inAdam” to the end (dying on the Cross), but...

The first thing for our soul’s health, the first thing for His glory, and the first thing for our own usefulness is to keep ourselves in perpetual communion with the Lord Jesus and to see that the vital spirituality of our faith is maintained over and above everything else in the world.

Ysoldette looked at the holy woman looming over her, and wondered at the miracle of a snap judgment that no one could find fault in. It wasn’t the first time it had inspired this in her, but her communion with Lady Vago had deepened her awe of such a blessing. All those nights spent lying awake, the hours poring over records of past rulings, the long, heated conversations with her husband. Is this real justice, is this true mercy? How tender are these graces? The questions had never become easier to answer over time, and Lord Vago’s murder had robbed all joy from this impossible pursuit. But even that had not been enough to persuade the baroness to give up the chase. Neither had her own death.

More than any other ancient Christian communion the Church of the East made Christianity into a global religion.

That the saints have distinct communion with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit (that is, distinctly with the Father, and distinctly with the Son, and distinctly with the Holy Spirit), and in what the peculiar appropriation of this distinct communion unto the several persons does consist, must, in the first place, be made manifest.

but empirical science, empiricism, takes no account of the soul, no account of what constitutes and determines personal being. Perhaps there is a philosophical as well as a clinical lesson here: that in Korsakov's, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation.

Sir Tristan?’ Simeon ventured. ‘But even if he does, will he defend the King? Coming from Lyonesse, surely he’ll follow the Goddess?’ Dominian showed his teeth in a nasty laugh. ‘The Great Mother, yes. The old whore we are driving from the land.’ ‘As soon as we have taken Her ways for our own?’ Dominian frowned. ‘What d’you mean?’ An earnest student of both history and the modern world, Simeon had been waiting for the moment to bring this up. ‘Did not the first Christians take over the apparatus of the Mother?’ he began importantly. ‘Her threefold incarnation of Maiden, Mother, and Wise Woman, is that not what people in those days called the Holy Trinity?’ Dominian paused. ‘This is not something to share with the common folk,’ he said carefully. ‘We teach them that God the Father was here before all things.’ ‘But our Communion, too,’ Simeon pressed on. ‘At the feasts of the Mother, the Lady is the loaf giver to all who come and pours wine from her loving cup with her own hand. When we offer bread and wine, haven’t we taken thus from the first power of the Lady, to feed and to provide?

A spirit of practicality had come to her aid. It was only human. When the earthquake stops, when the flood recedes, when the volcanic dust settles or the guns fall silent, the survivors pick their way through the rubble and debris and wreckage. A chair leg here, a first communion certificate or a bundle of love letters there. The flotsam and jetsam of the old ways―the ways that will never return.

only the day of the first, the unique, [36r°] the eternal Communion of Heaven will be endless!

He is a very interesting fellow, Judith, and a first-rate mathematician. He is to be company for me, my dear girl. I do sometimes feel the need for a little communion with gentlemen, living as I do in the midst of ladies.

There is a scene I love where a brother and sister meet after many years and little communication. They meet in an arranged café in mid-afternoon. The light is dying and the city outside rumbles softly in the complacent time before rush hour. The café is unexceptional and quiet. She comes first, sits at the far end, a table facing the door, nervous in her buttoned raincoat. The waiter is an older man. He leaves her be. The brother enters late with the look but not the words of apology. He kisses her cheek. They sit and the old man brings them teas they do not want, two pots, strong for him weak for her. It is long ago since they said each other’s names aloud, and saying them now has the extraordinary shyness of encounter I imagine on the Last Day. At first there is the full array of human awkwardness. But here is the thing: almost in an instant their old selves are immediately present. The years and the changes are nothing. They need few words. They recognise each other in each other, and even in silence the familiarity is powerfully consoling, because despite time and difference there remains that deep-river current, that kind of maybe communion that only exists within people joined in the word family. So now what washes up between them, foam-white and fortifying and quite unexpectedly, is love. I cannot remember what book it is in. But it’s in this one now.

It’s the one I just read.” Christian smiled. “In the New Testament, it is reiterated in the eighth chapter of Hebrews. More importantly, Jesus announced it when He introduced the sacrament of communion. You can see that in Luke chapter 22 and in First Corinthians chapter 11.

forehead while we recited the prayers to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, adding, by his desire, three times the Gloria Patri in honor of Blessed Margaret Mary. The novena ended on the First Friday of March.” The time had arrived when Gemma’s great patience was to be rewarded. She was not to die; God intended to glorify her by the fullness of His most extraordinary gifts before taking her to Himself. But in order that she might be delivered from her frightful sufferings, a great miracle was required. This miracle Our Lord in His mercy and goodness was pleased to perform. At the close of the novena to the Sacred Heart, Gemma sent for her confessor and made her Confession. After Holy Communion, Jesus said to her, “Gemma, wilt thou be cured?” Overcome with emotion, she answered only with her heart: “As Thou wilt, my Jesus.” Gemma was restored to health: her cure was as complete as it was instantaneous. Scarcely had two hours passed when she arose. The relatives and members of the household wept with joy. She now received Holy Communion again daily, for she had a consuming desire for this heavenly Food. Three months after her cure, she received the sacred stigmata. During the four years that she still lived, wonderful mysteries were imparted to her, such as have been imparted only to the greatest saints. Since her death God has glorified her through miracles. She was canonized by Pope Pius XII on May 2, 1940. Aid through the Sacred Heart of Jesus

In August, 1746, disputes about baptism were first brought into this church; and while the pastor, Mr. Backus, was prayerfully considering the subject, ten persons were baptized by Elder Moulton. The description of his subsequent exercises, and the result to which he was brought, is thus given in his own words.   “About three months after, when the heat of controversy was abated, the question was put to my conscience in my retired hours, Where is it, and in what relation to the church, do those stand, who are baptized, but not converted? I could see that all the circumcised were obliged to keep the passover; and I had seen that there was no halfway in the Christian church, nor any warrant to admit any to communion therein, without a credible profession of saving faith. No tongue can tell the distress I now felt. Could I have discovered any foundation in Scripture for my former practice, I should most certainly have continued therein: But all my efforts failing, I was at last brought to the old standard, so as to leave good men and bad men out of the question, and simply inquire, What saith the Scriptures?” By this means his mind was at length settled, in the full conviction of the baptism of believers only, and he submitted himself to this ordinance, August 22, 1751.

It feels like a coming together of a thousand threads—the Episcopal church I attended in college; the longing I felt as a child to be Catholic, because being a non-Catholic in Chicago is to be an outsider, missing out on Friday fish fries and first communions; my lit major focusing on modern Jewish and Israeli writing, with a special emphasis on the Holocaust.

Pope Benedict XVI General Audience To repent [or convert] is to change direction in the journey of life: not, however, by means of a small adjustment, but with a true and proper about turn. Conversion means swimming against the tide, where the “tide” is the superficial lifestyle, inconsistent and deceptive, that often sweeps us along, overwhelms us, and makes us slaves to evil or at any rate prisoners of moral mediocrity. With conversion, on the other hand, we are aiming for the high standard of Christian living; we entrust ourselves to the living and personal Gospel which is Jesus Christ. He is our final goal and the profound meaning of conversion, he is the path on which all are called to walk through life, letting themselves be illumined by his light and sustained by his power which moves our steps. In this way conversion expresses his most splendid and fascinating Face: it is not a mere moral decision that rectifies our conduct in life, but rather a choice of faith that wholly involves us in close communion with Jesus as a real and living Person. To repent and believe in the Gospel are not two different things or in some way only juxtaposed, but express the same reality. Repentance is the total “yes” of those who consign their whole life to the Gospel, responding freely to Christ who first offers himself to humankind as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, as the only One who sets us free and saves us. This is the precise meaning of the first words with which, according to the Evangelist Mark, Jesus begins preaching the “Gospel of God”: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15).

Sanctuary is a seaport, and its name goes back to a time when it provided the only armed haven along an important caravan route. But the long war ended, the caravans abandoned that route for a shorter one, and Sanctuary declined in status—but not in population, because for every honest person who left to pursue a normal life elsewhere, a rogue drifted in to pursue his normal life. Now, Sanctuary is still appropriately named, but as a haven for the lawless. Most of them, and the worst of them, are concentrated in that section of town known as the Maze, a labyrinth of streets and nameless alleys and no churches. There is communion, though, of a rough kind, and much of it goes on in a tavern named the Vulgar Unicorn, which features a sign in the shape of that animal improbably engaging itself, and is owned by the man who usually tends bar on the late shift, an ugly sort of fellow by the name of One-Thumb.

Whenever an ambulance arrives in Lucignana the news spreads like wildfire, as if the houses themselves were relaying the message. I’m convinced Jan Koum, who created WhatsApp, must have studied how communication works in little mountain villages: as soon as someone changes their status, anyone connected to that person will know. We’re the original social network, a network forged through first communions, confirmations, imaginary footballer boyfriends, the first taste of those forbidden

Whenever an ambulance arrives in Lucignana the news spreads like wildfire, as if the houses themselves were relaying the message. I’m convinced Jan Koum, who created WhatsApp, must have studied how communication works in little mountain villages: as soon as someone changes their status, anyone connected to that person will know. We’re the original social network, a network forged through first communions, confirmations, imaginary footballer boyfriends, the first taste of those forbidden pleasures, and pretending to be famous bands.

The Church is not a club, a philanthropic organization, a social advocacy group, or a business. It is a community called to prepare for the kingdom of God. It does so by inviting all to know the Person of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit and thus to be drawn into communion with the Father.

But that is precisely what the Christian does who unites himself with a prostitute. Stealing from Christ, he makes himself a member of the prostitute, her property. And for one who has been freed by Christ through belonging to him, this is an enslavement, a “falling under the power of,” the type of thing that Paul excluded in verse 12. Union with a prostitute is not the only type of fornication, but Paul uses it here as the most typical and that which the city of Aphrodite presented as the most common temptation to the male converts to the new faith. [16]    The fornicator becomes one body with her, for “the two,” it says, “will become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Sexual union, whether within marriage or not, involves the whole person of each partner. It leaves an imprint on the soul as well, because of the partners’ psychosomatic nature. The libertines cannot say that in giving the body what it lusts for, the soul remains free and unengaged. Today this still is no small matter, given the currency of casual sex in our society. Sex is not a merely biological activity: it is a communion of persons.

Oscar from Around Do you believe that hell was made to appear familiar at first glance? What might look like a school... a prison, an island retreat, a psych office… might only be a facade to give its captives false hope? After all, when in hell, one finds oneself in communion with an odd swarm of demons…

Though it is wrong to receive Communion without confession and absolution of serious sins, Communion does have the effect of cleansing from venial sin. Indeed, in the Byzantine liturgy, Communion is given with the words, “The servant of God, [name], partakes of the precious, most holy, and most pure body and blood of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and for life everlasting.

But the way into the holiest was not yet made manifest whilst the first tabernacle was standing, Heb. ix. 8. Though they had communion with God, yet they had not παῤῥησίαν, — a boldness and confidence in that communion.

The natural world is the fundamental locus for the meeting of the divine and the human. We need to look up at the stars at night and recover our primordial wonder that awakened in our souls when we first saw the stars ablaze in the heavens against the dark mystery of the night. We need to hear the song of the mockingbird thrown out to the universe from the topmost branch of the highest tree in the meadow ... In all these experiences communion takes place between ourselves and the numinous reality ... If we were truly sensitive, we would realize that in these moments the universe is communicating to us the most basic understanding that we really need.

I would be the first to caution against falling for any man who comes bearing the visible signs of humility on their foreheads, wearing white, and posing for photos with their hands in front of them like pious Catholics queuing for the Holy Communion. Even if they speak with the softer version of Archbishop Palmer-Buckle's voice, it is not enough to fall for their "humility".

communion was celebrated. "We had comunion. Captain Newport dined ashore with our diet, and invited many of us to supper as a farewell." The next day, Christopher Newport raised anchor and began the return trip to England. He took letters from those remaining in Virginia and carried accounts describing Virginia and the events that had occurred. The settlement had been made, and the future seemed promising.

More mystically minded people sometimes suppose that words by their very nature are an obstruction to the goal of a deep communion with God, but that is just not so.” If God’s words are his personal, active presence, then to put your trust in God’s words is to put your trust in God. “Communication from God is therefore communion with God, when met with a response of trust from us.” Of course, there can be, in prayer, times of simple stillness in his presence, but even at the human level, “a man and a woman sitting in a restaurant gazing silently into each other’s eyes . . . are engaging in a much more genuine relationship if they are doing so with twenty years of conversation-filled marriage behind them, than if they are on their first date and have not yet spoken to each other.”108

Renewal can mean polishing up our hypocrisy so that it looks nice. God does not necessarily want to renew our human plans, traditions, programs, and religious machinery that we have attempted to implement in His name; He wants to restore us to proper fellowship and communion with Himself. He only wants to renew those things that He deems right and were developed on the right foundation in the first place.

In the meanwhile, much Company effort was diverted to the East India School. This free school, planned to have dependence on Henrico College, was projected for Charles City. Although emphasis was on the education of the Indian, it seems clear that the colonists' children were likewise a consideration. There is specific comment on this as it related to the East India School. Donations in money and kind such as books and communion service continued to be forthcoming in England. An audit of the Company books early in 1622 showed college receipts to the extent of £2,043 and expenditures of £1,477. In Virginia, George Thorpe continued to encourage peace and friendship with the Indians setting an excellent personal example in this. He did what he could, too, to develop the College lands even planting vines to the number of 10,000.

Not long after I first learned that I was sick, in the dim time of travel, multiple doctors, and endless tests, when it seemed that I might be in danger of dying very soon, I began to meet every Friday afternoon with the pastor at the church just around the corner from where my wife and I lived. I think that he, like anyone whose faith is healthy, actively craved instances in which that faith might be tested. So we argued for an hour every Friday, though that verb is completely wrong for the complex, respectful, difficult interactions we had. Nothing was ever settled. In fact my friend—for we became close friends—seemed to me mulishly orthodox at times, just as I seemed to him, I know, either boneheadedly literal when I focused on scripture or woozily mystical when I didn’t. And yet those hours and the time afterward, when, strangely enough, I didn’t so much think about all that we had discussed as feel myself freed from such thoughts, are among the happiest hours of my life. Grief was not suspended or banished, but entered and answered. Answered not by theology, and not by my own attempts to imaginatively circumvent theology, but by the depth and integrity and essential innocence of the communion occurring between two people. *

The word yoga comes from the Sanskrit yug which can be translated as “to harmonize”, “to bring together” or “to harness or yoke”. As Christians we can apply this image of yoking in a couple of ways. First, we can understand it as the idea of desiring wholeness or unity in our person of the physical, spiritual, mental and emotional aspects of our being. We seek to yoke together all these parts to be able to move forward with purpose just as a farmer yokes his oxen together to move the plow in one direction. We pursue an integrated focused life instead of a fragmented life. We can also apply the picture of being yoked to pursuing harmony or communion with God, bringing our lives in line with Him. We seek to be yoked in relationship with God and by God. Jesus uses this image or metaphor when he invites us to take off the world’s harness and take on his yoke instead:

For there had been a necessity that, in the first place, a human being should be fashioned, and that what was fashioned should receive the soul; afterwards that it should thus receive the communion of the Spirit. Wherefore also “the first Adam was made” by the Lord “a living soul, the second Adam a quickening spirit.” As, then, he who was made a living soul forfeited life when he turned aside to what was evil, so, on the other hand, the same individual, when he reverts to what is good, and receives the quickening Spirit, shall find life.

There is the great and glorious fact, that God has indeed spoken; that He who made the heart has had first entrance to it; that He has spoken first; that, as in a palimpsest, deep, deep below all the writing of doubt and unbelief is the writing of God, and shall remain there, either in an eternity of blessedness or anguish. When

The insight into the true order of values is not easy to achieve. It is difficult for anyone to prevail in the struggle against the fear, which does not serve an old Goethean advice. In the ideal communion which Goethe draws up in his wandering years, the quaint rule is that their members must never speak of past or future, but only of the present present. Most people sacrifice the day to the day. They are not satisfied with the task of considering and solving the problems they are now posing, but in anxious thoughts they draw down on the burden of coming times. Although we can never take the second step before we have done the first, we always consider the fiftieth or the hundredth. But Johannes Muller's theorem is one of the fundamental principles of life: "Do what is present, and wait, what will." Very many have a strange position on the past, present and future. The past transfigures them, they despair of the future, and the present they fail to miss, by their memories and fears. But the present is the only real thing that does not seize it, never reaches life. That is why we should consciously enjoy every tolerable hour without letting it darken future clouds.

She was always cheerful—until she turned eighty and started going blind. She had a great deal of religious faith, and everyone assumed that she would adjust and find meaning in her loss—meaning and then acceptance and then joy—and we all wanted this because, let’s face it, it’s so inspiring and such a relief when people find a way to bear the unbearable, when you can organize things in such a way that a tiny miracle appears to have taken place and that love has once again turned out to be bigger than fear and death and blindness. But this woman would have none of it. She went into a deep depression and eventually left the church. The elders took communion to her in the afternoon on the first Sunday of the month—homemade bread and grape juice for the sacrament, and some bread to toast later—but she wouldn’t be a part of our community anymore. It must have been too annoying for everyone to be trying to manipulate her into being a better sport than she was capable of being. I always thought that was heroic of her, that it spoke of such integrity to refuse to pretend that you’re doing well just to help other people deal with the fact that sometimes we face an impossible loss.

My family’s pretty intense. Like every other day, someone’s having a first Communion or a christening or a baby. My mother calls me four times a day just to ‘catch up.’ I have to pretend the cell service sucks out here just to get some peace and quiet. I love them, but too much of a good thing, you know?

Even before the incarnation, and from the very moment of the first sin, God has been leading humanity toward closer communion with the divine. For this reason, God curses the serpent and the earth, but only punishes the man and the woman.

Without radical humility that is expressed in gestures of adoration and in sacred rituals, no friendship with God is possible. Silence manifests this connection in an obvious way. True Christian silence makes itself sacred silence first so as to become silence of communion.

It seems to me that in a pastoral situation our first risk is to throw people back on themselves with exhortations and instructions as to what to do, and how to do it... [Actually we are] to direct people to the Gospel of Grace—to Jesus Christ, that they might look to Him to lead them, open their hearts in faith and in prayer, and to draw them by the Spirit into His eternal life of communion with the Father

A few years ago, one who was generally believed to be a racketeer and murderer met death at the hands of his fellow criminals. A few minutes before his death, he asked to be received into the Church, was baptized, received First Communion, and was anointed and given the last blessing. Some who should have known better protested against the Church. Imagine! Envy at the salvation of a soul! Why not rather rejoice in God’s mercy, for, after all, did he not belong to the same profession as the thief on the right —and why should not our Lord be just as anxious to save twentieth-century thieves as first-century thieves? They both have souls. It would seem that sinful envy of the salvation of a thief is a greater sin than thievery. One thief was saved: therefore, let no one despair. One thief was lost: therefore, let no one presume.

Whatever form and shape prayer takes, our first concern is not to press God for the things we think we need or the matters we are concerned about, but rather a quest for God's presence and relationship.

Lady Jenny, your turn.” She passed her sketch pad over to him, feeling a pang of sympathy for accused criminals as they stood in the dock. And yet, she’d asked for this. Gotten together all of her courage to ask for this one moment of artistic communion. “Well,” Mr. Harrison said, “isn’t he a handsome fellow? What do you think, ladies?” “You look like a papa,” Fleur observed. “Though our papa doesn’t sketch. He reads stories.” “And hates his ledgers,” Amanda added. “Is my hair that long in back?” “Yes,” Jenny said, because she’d drawn not only Elijah Harrison’s hands, but all of him, looking relaxed, elegant, and handsome, with Amanda crouched at his side, fascinated with what he created on the page. “I look…” He regarded the sketch in silence, while Jenny heard a coach-and-four rumbling toward her vulnerable heart. “I look… a bit tired, slightly rumpled, but quite at home. You are very quick, Lady Genevieve, and quite good.” Quite good. Like saying a baby was adorable, a young gentleman well-mannered. “The pose was simple,” Jenny said, “the lighting uncomplicated, and the subject…” “Yes?” He was one of those men built in perfect proportion. Antoine had spent an entire class wielding a tailor’s measure on Mr. Harrison’s body, comparing his proportions to the Apollo Belvedere, and scoffing at the “mistakes” inherent in Michelangelo’s David. Jenny wanted to snatch her drawing from his hand. “The subject is conducive to a pleasing image.” He passed the sketch pad back, but Jenny had the sense that in some way, some not entirely artistic way, she’d displeased him. The disappointment was survivable. Her art had been displeasing men since she’d first neglected her Bible verses to sketch her brothers. “You

in Korsakov’s, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation.

Now I have no doubt that, more often than not, a moral drawn from history lies in the eye of the beholder. But the more I read about the imperial church—the power plays, the petty jealousies, the various political intrigues—the less inclined I was to place any confidence at all in its pronouncements. In this, I suppose, my reaction was typically Protestant. Unlike some of my Roman Catholic friends, I had inherited a bias against official church pronouncements anyway; and as I saw it, the imperial church’s obsession with power and control inevitably bred, first, an obsessive fear of heresy, then, the persecution of heretics, and finally, a tendency to regard every deviation from the most rigid orthodoxy as heretical. Whereas the early church had sought to achieve unity through positive confessions of faith (“I believe in God the Father Almighty”), the imperial church sought to achieve it through the condemnation of error (“Let them be anathema”) and the persecution of those thought to be in error. And neither the moral character of the one thought to be in error nor the circumstances surrounding the fall into “error” seemed to matter one whit to an emperor such as Justinian, as his condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia illustrates. For though Theodore—“the ablest exegete and theologian of the Antiochian school” 27 had been dead for more than a century, though he had died in full communion with the church, and though Pope Vigilius had argued that no one can lawfully “judge anew anything concerning the persons of the dead,” 28 such was Justinian’s arrogance that he insisted upon condemning, not merely the bishop’s writings, but also the good bishop himself. And so, the Fifth General Council de­clared: “We, therefore, anathematize . . . the impious Theodore of Mopsuestia with his execrable writings.

Structurally, then, errors of love are similar to errors in general. Emotionally, however, they are in a league of their own: astounding, enduring, miserable, incomprehensible. True, certain other large-scale errors can rival or even dwarf them; we’ve gotten a taste of that in recent chapters. But relatively few of us will undergo, for example, the traumatic and total abandonment of a deeply held religious belief, or the wrongful identification of an assailant. By contrast, the vast majority of us will get our hearts seriously broken, quite possibly more than once. And when we do, we will experience not one but two kinds of wrongness about love. The first is a specific error about a specific person—the loss of faith in a relationship, whether it ended because our partner left us or because we grew disillusioned. But, as I’ve suggested, we will also find that we were wrong about love in a more general way: that we embraced an account of it that is manifestly implausible. The specific error might be the one that breaks our heart, but the general one noticeably compounds the heartache. A lover who is part of our very soul can’t be wrong for us, nor can we be wrong about her. A love that is eternal cannot end. And yet it does, and there we are—mired in a misery made all the more extreme by virtue of being unthinkable. We can’t do much about the specific error—the one in which we turn out to be wrong about (or wronged by) someone we once deeply loved. (In fact, this is a good example of a kind of error we can’t eliminate and shouldn’t want to.) But what about the general error? Why do we embrace a narrative of love that makes the demise of our relationships that much more shocking, humiliating, and painful? There are, after all, less romantic and more realistic narratives of love available to us: the cool biochemical one, say, where the only heroes are hormones; the implacable evolutionary one, where the communion of souls is supplanted by the transmission of genes; or just a slightly more world-weary one, where love is rewarding and worth it, but nonetheless unpredictable and possibly impermanent—Shakespeare’s wandering bark rather than his fixèd mark. Any of these would, at the very least, help brace us for the blow of love’s end. But at what price? Let go of the romantic notion of love, and we also relinquish the protection it purports to offer us against loneliness and despair. Love can’t bridge the gap between us and the world if it is, itself, evidence of that gap—just another fallible human theory, about ourselves, about the people we love, about the intimate “us” of a relationship. Whatever the cost, then, we must think of love as wholly removed from the earthly, imperfect realm of theory-making. Like the love of Aristophanes’ conjoined couples before they angered the gods, like the love of Adam and Eve before they were exiled from the Garden of Eden, we want our own love to predate and transcend the gap between us and the world.

But the very ransomed children of God themselves: why do they know so little of that habitual conscious communion with God which the Scriptures seem to offer? The answer is our chronic unbelief. Faith enables our spiritual sense to function. Where faith is defective the result will be inward insensibility and numbness toward spiritual things. This is the condition of vast numbers of Christians today. No proof is necessary to support that statement. We have but to converse with the first Christian we meet or enter the first church we find open to acquire all the proof we need.

Time and space flowed around me in never-ending circles. I delighted in each moment of day or year. I dreamt through centuries yet focused on the intimate second. I felt my strength grow until it was too great to be constrained by bark and leaf and then, as I expanded, stretching out toward the universe, I felt the shock of connection with someone who stopped to rest in my shade. This was only the first of many such communions with the human soul; so fragile and yet so brave. Now and then, as centuries passed, a special soul drew near, one who could hear my song and who, for a short time sang with me.

1.  Declaration of Intent: Hand lifting to the sky The first step is the collective declaration of intent to reestablish Kintuadi between Creator, Catalyst and Creation. That collective intent was implemented and manifested by the physical act of hand lifting to the sky.   Objective: To first acknowledge that we are lost due to a false start and to seek the alignment and the Kintuadi of 3 Components; Creator, Catalyst and Creation (CCC).   2.  Commitment and Decision: Cross Jumping The second step is the collective commitment and decision to abandon sinful, flesh and material driven life, and jump to the side of the creator and Christ. That collective commitment and decision was implemented and manifested by the physical act of cross jumping.   Objective: To stop and commit to a change of direction.   3.  Fasting and Meditation: Spiritual Retreat The third step is the collective fasting and meditation to gradually reduce total dependency on flesh and material driven life. This is the step of seeking spiritual enlightment, guidance and purpose for life. It is achieved by a temporary but frequent isolation and spiritual retreats. During this step, the body and soul are cleansed and fed with spiritual food.   Objective: To stop dependency on human guidance but seeks spiritual guidance and direction.   4.  Devotion and Service to God: Temple Construction (1987) The fourth step is the collective devotion and service to God. Now that body and soul are cleansed and fed spiritually, man devotion and service to god is manifested by the construction of the temple as an offering to God. The real temple is the body of Christ, the supreme sacrifice.   Objective: To regain God’s trust by gradually training the flesh and material wealth to serve God.   5.  Prayers and Faith Consolidation: Spiritual Soiree (1990s) Now that body and soul have constructed the sanctuary, the place of reunion and spiritual communion with God. This fifth step is the step of collective prayers and faith consolidation at the sanctuary, the place of invocation and the real body of Christ, our Catalyst.   Objective: To repair and reestablish communication between Creator, Catalyst and Creation.   6.  Redemption: The Begging for forgiveness; December 24, 1992 In the name of all humanity, on December 24, 1992 followers of Simon Kimbangu lead by Papa Dialungana Kiangani (Kimbangu son) gathered inside the temple in Nkamba, all wearing sac clothes and begged for the forgiveness of Adamus and eve original sin. After asking for forgiveness that Adamus himself did not have the courage to ask, the Kimbanguists burned all sac clothes. In 1994, Adeneho Nana Oduro Numapau II, President of the Ghana National House of Chiefs, initiated ceremonies in Africa and the Americas to beg forgiveness of African Americans for his ancestors ‘involvement in the slave trade.   Objective: To reestablish and maintain interconnectivity between Creator, Catalyst and Creation.   7.  Return to Eden, the Realm of Kintuadi (Oneness) December 24th, 1992 marked the beginning of a new spiritual era for mankind in general but for Africans in particular. The chains of physical and spiritual slavery were broken on that date. The spiritual exodus from Egypt, the land of Slavery to Eden, the Promised Land also started that date. On May 10, 1994 Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first black President of South Africa, Africa most powerful country. On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated as the first African American president of the United States, the most powerful country on earth.   Objective: To enjoy the Oneness between Creator, Catalyst and Creation.  Chapter 27  Kimbangu’s Wife, 3 sons  and 30 Grand Children As stated in chapter 11, few months after Kimbangu’s birth, his mother Luezi died, so Kimbangu did not know his biological mother and was raised by Kinzembo, his maternal aunt.

Another, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, suggests I need to change my Facebook photo to something that makes me look younger. I scan an old photo from my First Communion and make it my profile photo. There I am, age eight, wearing my First Communion robe, hands folded in prayer in front of me, looking angelic. “I’m trying to get a promotion at HubSpot,” I write. “The 8-year-old version of me has lots of ideas about how to expand geographically while also driving up MRR by pushing into the enterprise.

Felicity,” supplied her mother. “Am I right? Yes.” She lifted one elbow and thumped a crutch hard against the floor so that the first Communion photo rattled. “The little bitch.

Catholics actually think about prayer a little differently than evangelicals. Prayer is not simply praise and intercession. Prayer is, first of all, “the raising of one’s mind and heart to God” (Catechism 2559). Prayer can also involve “the requesting of good things from God.” But more fundamentally, “prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Spirit. . . . Thus, the life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the thrice-holy God and in communion with him

one of the first principles that any believer in any phase of his life must enforce is to honor God as the center of his daily living and to make communion with God the foundation for all his other activities.

April 6 MORNING “Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp.” — Hebrews 13:13 JESUS, bearing His cross, went forth to suffer without the gate. The Christian’s reason for leaving the camp of the world’s sin and religion is not because he loves to be singular, but because Jesus did so; and the disciple must follow his Master. Christ was “not of the world:” His life and His testimony were a constant protest against conformity with the world. Never was such overflowing affection for men as you find in Him; but still He was separate from sinners. In like manner Christ’s people must “go forth unto Him.” They must take their position “without the camp,” as witness-bearers for the truth. They must be prepared to tread the straight and narrow path. They must have bold, unflinching, lion-like hearts, loving Christ first, and His truth next, and Christ and His truth beyond all the world. Jesus would have His people “go forth without the camp” for their own sanctification. You cannot grow in grace to any high degree while you are conformed to the world. The life of separation may be a path of sorrow, but it is the highway of safety; and though the separated life may cost you many pangs, and make every day a battle, yet it is a happy life after all. No joy can excel that of the soldier of Christ: Jesus reveals Himself so graciously, and gives such sweet refreshment, that the warrior feels more calm and peace in his daily strife than others in their hours of rest. The highway of holiness is the highway of communion. It is thus we shall hope to win the crown if we are enabled by divine grace faithfully to follow Christ “without the camp.” The crown of glory will follow the cross of separation. A moment’s shame will be well recompensed by eternal honour; a little while of witness-bearing will seem nothing when we are “for ever with the Lord.

Midnight Mass was required, and at Saint Aloysius, it lasted ninety minutes. Because the church was crowded with what Mother called “one timers” who attended Mass only on Christmas Eve, we arrived at 11:00 p.m. to get a seat near the front. The church was splendidly decorated. Poinsettias bloomed everywhere, huge wreaths and sprigs of holly tied with red bows hung on every pillar, potent incense enveloped us, and six tall candles burning on the main altar lighted our way out of the long, cold darkness. Carols sung from the choir loft filled the church and evoked the sensuous beauty and mystery of this holy night. While other children chatted with friends and showed off their holiday apparel, My PareNTs, gail aNd i, Mara aNd NiCho- las; ChrisTMas, 1974; CaNToN, ohio I sat quietly, awaiting the chimes that announced the first minutes of Christmas and heralded the solemn service: the priest’s white and gold vestments, his ritualized gestures, the Latin prayers, the incense, the communion service with the transfigured bread and wine, and the priest’s blessings from the high altar that together

April 13 MORNING “A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me.” — Song of Solomon 1:13 MYRRH may well be chosen as the type of Jesus on account of its preciousness, its perfume, its pleasantness, its healing, preserving, disinfecting qualities, and its connection with sacrifice. But why is He compared to “a bundle of myrrh”? First, for plenty. He is not a drop of it, He is a casket full. He is not a sprig or flower of it, but a whole bundle. There is enough in Christ for all my necessities; let me not be slow to avail myself of Him. Our well-beloved is compared to a “bundle” again, for variety: for there is in Christ not only the one thing needful, but in “Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” everything needful is in Him. Take Jesus in His different characters, and you will see a marvellous variety — Prophet, Priest, King, Husband, Friend, Shepherd. Consider Him in His life, death, resurrection, ascension, second advent; view Him in His virtue, gentleness, courage, self-denial, love, faithfulness, truth, righteousness — everywhere He is a bundle of preciousness. He is a “bundle of myrrh” for preservation — not loose myrrh tied up, myrrh to be stored in a casket. We must value Him as our best treasure; we must prize His words and His ordinances; and we must keep our thoughts of Him and knowledge of Him as under lock and key, lest the devil should steal anything from us. Moreover, Jesus is a “bundle of myrrh” for speciality. The emblem suggests the idea of distinguishing, discriminating grace. From before the foundation of the world, He was set apart for His people; and He gives forth His perfume only to those who understand how to enter into communion with Him, to have close dealings with Him. Oh! blessed people whom the Lord hath admitted into His secrets, and for whom He sets Himself apart. Oh! choice and happy who are thus made to say, “A bundle of myrrh is my wellbeloved unto me.

You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife, something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feeling of consecration to a duty toward all of the oppressed of the world which would be as difficult and embarrassing to speak about as religious experience and yet it was authentic as the feeling you had when you heard Bach, or stood in Chartres Cathedral or the Cathedral at Leon and saw the light coming through the great windows; or when you saw Mantegna and Greco and Brueghel in the Prado. It gave you a part in something that you could believe in wholly and completely and in which you felt an absolute brotherhood with the others who were engaged in it. It was something that you had never known before but that you had experienced now and you gave such importance to it and the reasons for it that your own death seemed of complete unimportance; only a thing to be avoided because it would interfere with the performance of your duty. But the best thing was that there was something you could do about this feeling and this necessity too. You could fight.

Prayer is conversation with God. ~ Shirley Tye         What Is A Prayer Partner?     “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints” (Ephesians 6:18).     As a teenager, I read Dale Carnegie’s book, How To Win Friends and Influence People. His simple advice to win friends by becoming genuinely interested in them intrigued me. To show interest all you needed to do was to ask questions and listen to their responses.   But for me, even better than being listened to is being prayed for. I am delighted to have formal prayer partners and to be a member of prayer groups.   One such partner is JoAnn. We met briefly at a 3-day women’s conference. When we first arrived at this conference, the organizers took our photos. On the last day, we were given the picture of another woman – our prayer partner. I keep a picture of her beside my computer. She is posed in front of a stone fireplace with a shy smile. On the back of the photo, I have written her name and address with the names of her husband and two grown children. Although I have not talked to JoAnn in many years, I still pray for her and I am confident that she prays for me.   I am also a member of a Christian writers’ group, The Word Guild. I have joined a smaller team within this group, aptly called the Prayer Team. Members of the Guild submit their prayer requests via email, and we pray for these people. On top of that, the organizer picks four specific members to pray for each week. Many of these people I may never meet and may know nothing more than their names. But I pray for them regularly and I am confident that they pray for me.   Lastly, at my church, a program called Secret Sisters has been introduced. I filled out an information form, including my favourite scripture verse, and submitted it to the organizer. In return, I received the name of a church “sister” to pray for over the next year. At the end of the year, we will reveal ourselves to our secret sisters. I pray for my sister regularly and am confident that she prays for me.   I hold these partners in high esteem and count them as some of my best friends. There is power in prayer. If you are not already praying for someone specific, I challenge you to seek out a partner.       Prayer is talking to Him and listening to Him, too. Sweet communion! ~ Pat Gerbrandt        

Reacting to Jesus’ pronouncement that remarriage after divorce is adultery, his disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry” (Mt 19:10). From the first moment of its declaration, the teaching Jesus propounded as the will of God was deeply distressing, even to men of good will. Subsequent centuries have shown no slackening in the energy and ingenuity devoted to weakening or nullifying the force of this teaching, and as long as it is expedient to circumvent the doctrine, there will be attempts to explain away its scriptural anchoring. But the doctrine is given as absolute in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and even Paul goes out of his way to insist that, as a messenger of the teaching and not its author, he is not to blame for its rigor: “To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord” (1 Cor 7:10). There can be no serious doubt that the teaching is dominical.

[E]verything points to the conclusion that the leaders and members of the so-called “Jerusalem Church” were not Christians in any sense that would be intelligible to Christians of a later date. They were Jews, who subscribed to every item of the Jewish faith. For example, so far from regarding baptism as ousting the Jewish rite of circumcision as an entry requirement into the religious communion, they continued to circumcise their male children, thus inducting them into the Jewish covenant. The first ten “bishops” of the “Jerusalem Church” . . . were all circumcised Jews. They kept the Jewish dietary laws, the Jewish Sabbaths and festivals, including the Day of Atonement (thus showing that they did not regard the death of Jesus as atoning for their sins), the Jewish purity laws (when they had to enter the Temple, which they did frequently), and they used the Jewish liturgy for their daily prayers . . .  . . . the first follower of Jesus with whom Paul had friendly contact, Ananias of Damascus, is described as a “devout observer of the Law and well spoken of by all the Jews of that place.” (Acts 22:12)

The holy pair were not only children under the fatherly care of God but students receiving instruction from the all-wise Creator. They were visited by angels, and were granted communion with their Maker, with no obscuring veil between. They were full of the vigor imparted by the tree of life, and their intellectual power was but little less than that of the angels. The mysteries of the visible universe—“the wondrous works of him which is [51] perfect in knowledge” (Job 37:16)—afforded them an exhaustless source of instruction and delight. The laws and operations of nature, which have engaged men’s study for six thousand years, were opened to their minds by the infinite Framer and Upholder of all. They held converse with leaf and flower and tree, gathering from each the secrets of its life. With every living creature, from the mighty leviathan that playeth among the waters to the insect mote that floats in the sunbeam, Adam was familiar. He had given to each its name, and he was acquainted with the nature and habits of all. God’s glory in the heavens, the innumerable worlds in their orderly revolutions, “the balancings of the clouds,” the mysteries of light and sound, of day and night—all were open to the study of our first parents. On every leaf of the forest or stone of the mountains, in every shining star, in earth and air and sky, God’s name was written. The order and harmony of creation spoke to them of infinite wisdom and power. They were ever discovering some attraction that filled their hearts with deeper love and called forth fresh expressions of gratitude.

To be an Eikon means, first of all, to be in union with God as Eikons; second, it means to be in communion with other Eikons; and third, it means to participate with God in his creating, his ruling, his speaking, his naming, his ordering, his variety and beauty, his location, his partnering, and his resting, and to oblige God in his obligating of us. Thus, an Eikon is God-oriented, self-oriented, other-oriented, and cosmos oriented. To be an Eikon is to be a missional being – one designed to love God, self, and others and to represent God by participating in God’s rule in this world. We are now back to perichoresis: to be an Eikon means to be summond to participate in God’s overflowing perichoretic love – both within the Trinity and in the missio Dei with respect to the cosmos God has created. When we participate in this missio Dei we become Eikonic. To be an Eikon means to be in relationship.

and, holy Mary Mother of Christ, he became as gentle as a lamb. The Pope is coming next week to give him first communion and confirmation.’ The guru spoke next. He was in a wheelchair with an IV drip and both legs in casts.

What if the church became the first place, instead of the last place, that people went looking for this kind of friendship? What if the church were filled with unmarried people but had no “single” people, because married and unmarried people were as family to one another—surrogate brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters to the rest of the church? What if the church were the place where people discovered that being unmarried is not a prison sentence but an opportunity for grace and communion with Jesus and service to God’s Kingdom and mission? What if the church were the place where being unmarried was not only accepted, but seen as a high and noble calling as it was for Jesus and Paul? What if it is true that God sets the lonely in families? What if it is true that “there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for [Jesus’] sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands”? What if the church were the place where anyone in the world could find refuge and solace from the age-old malediction that to be alone is to be lonely?[28] This is exactly what God intends the church to be.

It was the twentieth-century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre who described the café as a ‘fullness of being’. Throughout its history, Sartre and many others like him have found at the café table something life-giving. Most often it has to do with its provision of space that is both personal and public, secluded yet connected. This communion of the café table is not first about intimacy but connection no less. Very often the communal nature of the café is found in its anonymity amidst life.

bring us back again into right and eternal relationship with Himself. This required that our sins be disposed of satisfactorily, that a full reconciliation be effected and the way opened for us to return again into conscious communion with God and to live again in the Presence as before. Then by His prevenient working within us He moves us to return. This first comes to our notice when our restless hearts feel a yearning for the Presence of God and we say within ourselves, "I will arise and go to my Father." That is the first step, and as the Chinese sage Lao-tze has said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step.

Happy Holidays (The Sonnet) Spirit of Christmas doesn't grow on a fir tree, Christmas blooms wherever the heart is hatefree. Ramadan isn't fulfilled by feasting on some tasty beef, The greatest of feast is haram if others go hungry. Hanukkah's miracle isn't about the oil lasting 8 days, Rather it's about the resilience of light amidst darkness. Fireworks may be diwali for those still in kindergarten, Everyday is diwali for an existence rooted in kindness. The will to love and the will to lift are the backbone, Of all human celebration, tradition and communion. Take that fundamental will out of the equation, All you have left are rituals without meaning and mission. Fasting, feasting and decorating are step two of any festival. First and foremost, at our altar within, we gotta light a candle.

Martin the Charitable The example of Martin’s life is ample evidence that we can strive for holiness and salvation as Christ Jesus has shown us: first, by loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind; and second, by loving our neighbour as ourselves. When Martin had come to realise that Christ Jesus suffered for us and that he carried our sins on his body to the cross, he would meditate with remarkable ardour and affection about Christ on the cross. Whenever he would contemplate Christ’s terrible torture he would be reduced to tears. He had an exceptional love for the great sacrament of the eucharist and often spent long hours in prayer before the blessed sacrament. His desire was to receive the sacrament in communion as often as he could. Saint Martin, always obedient and inspired by his divine teacher, dealt with his brothers with that profound love which comes from pure faith and humility of spirit. He loved men because he honestly looked on them as God’s children and as his own brothers and sisters. Such was his humility that he loved them even more than himself and considered them to be better and more righteous than he was. He did not blame others for their shortcomings. Certain that he deserved more severe punishment for his sins than others did, he would overlook their worst offences. He was tireless in his efforts to reform the criminal, and he would sit up with the sick to bring them comfort. For the poor he would provide food, clothing and medicine. He did all he could to care for poor farmhands, blacks and mulattoes who were looked down upon as slaves, the dregs of society in their time. Common people responded by calling him “Martin the charitable.” The virtuous example and even the conversation of this saintly man exerted a powerful influence in drawing men to religion. It is remarkable how even today his influence can still move us towards the things of heaven. Sad to say, not all of us understand these spiritual values as well as we should, nor do we give them a proper place in our lives. Many of us, in fact, strongly attracted by sin, may look upon these values as of little moment, even something of a nuisance, or we ignore them altogether. It is deeply rewarding for men striving for salvation to follow in Christ’s footsteps and to obey God’s commandments. If only everyone could learn this lesson from the example that Martin gave us.

It is fashionable today to praise the Church of the first four centuries, to extol primative practice. How would the Church of the first four centuries have regarded Archbishop Whealon? Anyone who is remotely acquainted with Church history can give one answer and one answer only. Archbishop Whealon would have been regarded as an apostate; he would have been anathemized, and every true Catholic bishop would have broken off communion with him. I believe that the Church of the first four centuries was right. I believe that Archbishop Whealon is at least a de facto apostate. It seems a harsh thing to say. It may make me appear harsh and intolerant - but nonetheless it is the truth. Cardinal Newman has a magnificent sermon upon this very point, "Tolerance of Religious Error". He castigates those who concern us not to uphold truth but to avoid the appearance of being intolerant. Once again I must repeat, those who possess the truth, those who love the truth, cannot tolerate error . . . Furthermore, I submit that Archbishop Whealon's conduct would have been considered incompatible with Catholicism not only by the Church of the first four centuries - it would have resulted in his immediate excommunication by every Roman Pontiff up to and including Pope John XXIII. I accept that what I am saying will make me appear singular, intemperate, and extreme in the ecumenical climate of the Conciliar Church but the viewpoint I am putting forward would have been accepted by 99% of Catholics up to Vatican II. Read the encyclical Mortalium Animos of Pope Pius XI, read the relevant encyclicals of Pope Pius XII. If Archbishop Whealon is right, the the Church has been wrong for 2,000 years. (chapter 8)

As communal and composite creatures, we human beings often symbolize our important relationships in physical ways. Nations create flags to represent their country, and pledging allegiance to those flags displays and reinforces the patriotism of its citizens. Couples exchange rings during a wedding ceremony, embodying their commitments to each other into wearable symbols that become a part of everything they do from then on. These symbols not only help us stay mindful of the fundamental relationships that shape our activity, they actually make those relationships stronger. That same dynamic, then, can be seen in the way sacraments function in the church's worship of God. First through the waters of baptism and thereafter through the bread and the wine of communion, we express and extend our devotion to God in physical ways. To be entirely devoted to God, we must make God a part of everything that we do. What better way to symbolize that than by eating and drinking the representations (i.e., “presenting to us again”) of Christ's broken body and shed blood. Sanctification is about living as a representation of Christ, and we become more mindful that Christ fills us and empowers us spiritually when we celebrate that filling and empowering physically. By recognizing our dependance on God in this way, we demonstrate to ourselves and others how important God is to us; we “worth-ship” God. Because this is an act of “communion,” the very same sacrament that celebrates our dependance on Christ also celebrates our interdependence on one another. It is hard to imagine a better medicine for sin-sick, self-addicted people to take than one that celebrates how much God loves them and calls them to love one another.

This image-restoring calling comes with, and requires, a new family: the church. No one can restore the image alone—only a people can do that, mirroring the original creation of human beings as male and female, the divine communion foreshadowed in the words ‘let us make,’ and the revelation of God as three in one. Whatever our family of origin, the church becomes our ‘first family,’ bound together in the creative love of the one from whom every family takes its name (Ephesians 3 v 15). And the church is especially for those who, in the twists and turns of a broken world, have lost their human family—widows, orphans, refugees, strangers. They above all are our brothers and sisters, our companions in discovering our new identity in Christ. Our image-restoring calling cannot happen without the church—without each other.” [17]

Empirical science told me there was not—but empirical science, empiricism, takes no account of the soul, no account of what constitutes and determines personal being. Perhaps there is a philosophical as well as a clinical lesson here: that in Korsakov’s, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation.

It is not only the highly creative who would not whole-heartedly agree with Bowlby’s contention that intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life revolves. For the deeply religious, and especially for those whose vocation demands celibacy, attachment to God takes precedence over attachment to persons. Although such people may succeed in loving their neighbours as themselves, the injunction ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind’ is truly ‘the first and great commandment’.15 Throughout most of Europe’s recorded history, it was assumed that ultimate happiness was not to be expected from human relationships and institutions, but could only be found in man’s relation with the divine. Indeed, many of the devout believed that human relationships were an obstacle to communion with God. The founders of the monastic movement were the hermits of the Egyptian desert, whose ideal of perfection was only to be achieved through renunciation of the world, mortification of the flesh, and a solitary life of contemplation and rigorous discipline. It was recognized very early that the life of the anchorite was not possible for everyone, and so the ‘coenobitic’ tradition arose in which monks no longer lived alone but shared the life of dedication to God in communities. Intimate attachments, or desires for such attachments, are not unknown within the walls of monasteries, but they are regarded as intrusive distractions and firmly discouraged. Although learning was not a necessary feature of monastic life, the libraries of the monasteries preserved the learning of the past, and attracted those monks who had scholarly interests. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the monasteries led an intellectual revival, and were pre-eminent in history and biography.16 Perhaps monastic discipline and the absence of close personal ties not only facilitated the individual’s relation with God, but also fostered scholarship. It would, I think, be quite wrong to assume that all those who have put their relation with God before their relations with their fellows are abnormal or neurotic. Some of those who choose the monastic or celibate life certainly do so for the ‘wrong’ reasons: because their human relationships have failed, or because they dislike taking responsibility, or because they want a secure haven from the world. But this is not true of all; and even if it were so, would not imply that a life in which intimate attachments to other human beings played little part was necessarily incomplete or inferior. The religious person might argue that modern psycho-analysts have idealized intimate attachments; that human relationships are, because of the nature of man, necessarily imperfect; and that encouraging people to look for complete fulfilment in this way has done more harm than good.

And Mary and the Church both, like You, labor for the world. Mary's labor figures, reveals, and clarifies the Church's own labor. The Church, like Mary labors to bear divine presence into the world. The Church, like Mary, participates in Your new creation and hearkens to Your first. In the figure of Mary, creation, church, and pregnancy all entwine as images of one another. A pregnant woman's body, the Church expectant, and You, the womb of creation, all come together in the image of pregnancy.

The Museum's function, like the Library's, is not entirely beneficent. It certainly enables us to see dead productions scattered about the world and engulfed in cults or civilizations they sought to ornament as unified aspects of a single effort. In this sense our consciousness of painting as painting is based upon the Museum, But painting exists first of all in each painter who works, and it is there in a pure state, whereas the Museum compromises it with the somber pleasures of retrospection. One should go to the Museum as the painters go there, in the sober joy of work; and not as we go there, with a somewhat spurious reverence. The Museum gives us a thieves' conscience. We occasionally sense that these works were not after аll intended to end up between these morose walls, for the pleasure of Sunday strollers or Monday "intellectuals." We are well aware that something has been lost and that this self-communion with the dead is not the true milieu of art—that so many joys and sorrows, so much anger, and so many labors were not destined to reflect one day the Museum's mournful light...The Museum adds a false prestige to the true value of the works by detaching them from the chance circumstances they arose from and making us believe that the artist's hand was guided from the start by fate. Whereas the style of each painter throbbed in his life like his heart beat, and was just what enabled him to recognize every effort which differed from his own, the Museum converts this secret, modest, non-deliberated, involuntary, and, in short, living historicity into official and pompous history.

Cultural Christianity is a mindset that places one’s security in heritage, values, rites of passage (such as a first communion or a baptism from childhood), and a generic deity, rather than the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

It hadn't been easy to fit into the suitcase the day the three of them made their First Communion. The veil, the prayerbook, the photo taken outside the church all fit in pretty well, but not the taste of the tamales and atole Nacha had made, which they had eaten afterward with their friends and families. The little colored apricot pits had gone in, but not their laughter when they played with them in the schoolyard, nor Jovita their teacher, the swing, the smell of her bedroom or of freshly whipped chocolate. Luckily, Mama Elena's scoldings and spankings hadn't fit in either; Tita had slammed the suitcase shut before they could sneak in.

For what gave order to things heavenly and earthly and to all that pass through air and live under water, and mode than that to what came before them-I mean heaven, earth, air, and the element of water themselves? Who combines these elements and divided them out? What a wonderful communion they have with each other, and also harmony and arrangement! I praise the man, non-Christian though he was, who asked: 'What set these elements in motion and leads their ceaseless, unimpeded flow?' It was surely their designer, who implants in all things reason whereby the universe is conducted and carried along. And who is their designer? Surely he who has made them and brought them into existence. Great power like this cannot be ascribed to chance. Supposing chance brought them into existence, what gave them order? Granting this possibility too, if you like, to chance, what of their first constitution? Chance again, or something else? Clearly something beyond chance. What can this 'something' be if not God? Thus God-derived reason, bound up, connected, with the whole of nature, man's most ancient law, has led us up from things of sight to God.

Indeed, what we have discovered in our digitally saturated society is that we have a remarkable endurance and capacity to remain attuned to our devices—it is the first thing we greet in the morning and it is the last thing we take into bed with us at night. In between meetings and activities, at any given pause whether we are standing in line or sitting in wait, we diligently tend to our devices. Why? Because we are waiting and searching for joy, for satisfaction, for purpose, for love. We are waiting and therefore abiding in the digital. What would it be like if we were to cultivate such a permanent state of expectancy for God’s desire to communicate with us? What if my antennae were always outstretched toward checking in with God as much as I am always checking my smartphone? What if I was filled with great expectancy that there would be a word for me? And that I could trust that that word would not be a word that simply demanded something from me but a word that came to nourish me? What if I knew that there was a word that revealed God’s very nature . . . waiting just for me. And that his nature was defined by a wild and faithful love that actually likes who I am, enjoys my company, and even takes delight in me. To be with someone who delights in you is a precious thing that we all long to experience. To live with the permission to be fully oneself, fearless because we know we are loved, not condemned or pegged as a sad-sack failure or disappointment. This is what it is to hear from God. But even beyond that sheer joy of being crowned with God’s delight, this notion of abiding also calls forth the idea of staying close to the Source of Life. Staying in touch, not just within ear shot but mindful and expectant—not because the Law demands it but in order to be in communion with the loving security of God, as expressed through the presence of the Holy Spirit. This is the way, the truth, and the life.

Among the essentials the Eastern churches include also their polity, and so do the Roman, the Anglican, and most of the Reformed churches. All of them, of course, regard as essential also the Church’s doctrine. Disunity in the proclamation is a sad sign. It cannot be remedied by viewing it as unimportant. To set up, in the face of this disunity, a merely external unity or union is not only to use a poor substitute but also to deny that which makes an assembly of people the Church in the first place.

Communion, wardship, chaocracy. Those were the magics tied up in Merritt’s blood. He’d love to get rid of the first. He’d still seen no sign of the last.

There is no fulfilment of the law apart from communion with God, and no communion with God apart from fulfilment of the law. To forget the first condition was the mistake of the Jews, and to forget the second the temptation of the disciples.

Sometimes I feel like there are two of me. One who is a good hija. She helps Mom cook. She does what she’s told. She gets perfect grades. She is going to be a nurse just like Mom. I think of the picture of me in my white First Communion dress. The other me is bold and queer. He has hair dyed red. He wraps himself in a trans flag. He doesn’t care what his family thinks. I don’t know who I am sometimes between the two of me or what it would look like for those two mes to come together.

That it is not lawful for a godly man to have communion in family prayer or in an oath with such as they judge unregenerate, and therefore he refused the oath of fidelity, and taught others so to do. That it is not lawful for an unregenerate man to pray. That the magistrate has nothing to do in matters of the first table.

This was also my introduction to the kind of prayer called a "collect" (KA-lict, emphasis on the first syllably). A collect is a short written prayer that gathers up (or collects) similar prayer concerns and articulates them in a broad, general way. Put differently, it crystallizes or condenses a variety of similar ideas into one prayer that,,, is something that an entire communion can lift up together.

This was also my introduction to the kind of prayer called a "collect" (KA-lict, emphasis on the first syllable). A collect is a short written prayer that gathers up (or collects) similar prayer concerns and articulates them in a broad, general way. Put differently, it crystallizes or condenses a variety of similar ideas into one prayer that... is something that an entire communion can lift up together.

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?” (2 Corinthians 6:14–15) “But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone, name a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.” (1 Corinthians 5:11) “A man that is a heretick after the first and second admonition reject; knowing that the that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself

Because in Western Christian circles worship is largely regarded as a matter of personal taste, Orthodox worship—indeed, traditional Christian worship—tends to be understood as just one of many preferences for how to worship. “Smells and bells,” as it were. It is assumed to be some form of Greek, Russian, Middle Eastern, or other arcane cultural expression of Christian worship. This, however, is far from the truth. The patterns, and even details, of Orthodox worship are based on a consistent interpretation of God’s commandments in the Torah, now grasped more fully and deeply in Christ. New Testament worship did not start over with a clean slate after abandoning the worship of the Old Testament. The apostles applied the commandments of the Torah regarding worship to the Christian communities they founded. This apostolic worship is continued in the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church. This is the worship that God has given to humanity to allow them to make a pleasing offering to the Father, united to the Son, in the communion of the Holy Spirit.

Here is a body of Christ.' The priest put a wafer into the mouth of the first person on the right of the altar. I lurked through the red curtain, preparing a thick line of amphetamine on the edge of the confessional. 'Amen.' I swallowed the body of God in the ritual of holy communion. Speed disappeared in my right nostril. The pressure struck straight away in my brain, sending me somewhere over the altar and beyond holy figures of the saints. The bell was tolling. Organs played in the background. People were singing a holy song. I could feel my hair rise up to reach heaven at that holy moment. I was high. I was a High Priest!

The first recalls Genesis 49:10-11—Jacob’s blessing, in which Judah is promised the scepter, the ruler’s staff, which is not to depart from between his feet “until he comes to whom it belongs; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples”. Of him it is said that he binds his donkey to the vine (49:11). The tethered donkey, then, indicates the one who is to come, “to [whom] shall be the obedience of the peoples”. Even more important is Zechariah 9:9, the text that Matthew and John quote explicitly for an understanding of “Palm Sunday”: “Tell the daughter of Zion, Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Mt 21:5; cf. Zech 9:9; Jn 12:15). The meaning of these prophetic words for the understanding of the figure of Jesus we have already considered at some length in our exegesis of the beatitude concerning the meek (cf. Part One, pp. 80-84). He is a king who destroys the weapons of war, a king of peace and a king of simplicity, a king of the poor. And finally we saw that he reigns over a kingdom that stretches from sea to sea, embracing the whole world (cf. ibid., pp. 81-82); we were reminded of the new world-encompassing kingdom of Jesus that extends from sea to sea in the communities of the breaking of bread in communion with Jesus Christ, as the kingdom of his peace (cf. ibid., p. 84). None of this could be seen at the time, but in retrospect those things that could be indicated only from afar, hidden in the prophetic vision, are revealed.

Monkstown Hospital by Stewart Stafford My first time away from Mam, Tonsillectomy at six years old, Teddy bear fights Action Man, Pinball Pocketeer for company. Silver torch lights the dark hours, A miniscule pack of playing cards, A made-up game played undercover, My best guess of what picture follows. An older man awaits surgery too, Seeing that I'm alone and scared, He draws pictures to amuse me or, We watch "funnies" in the TV room. Waking from the operation in the bed, Congealed blood covers my pyjamas, My mother makes her shock known, We go home for my First Communion. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

Every day, saline was pumped through his body to clean out his pleura and scar tissue. A chest tube was connected to a drainage system, producing a trickle of water. The pain was enormous. Bergoglio didn’t care for the usual platitudes that people kept telling him, things like “This will pass” or “Won’t it be nice when you’re back home?” But one visitor broke away from the clichés and truly comforted him. It was a nun whom he had remembered ever since she had prepared him to receive his First Communion, Sister Dolores. “She said something that truly stuck with me and made me feel at peace. ‘You are imitating Christ,’” he recalled.

A priest, a vicar and a rabbi have a bet on, who would be the first to covert a bear to their faith.’ The rabbi began. The priest smiled and a few heads of fellow diners turned. ‘So’ the rabbi went on, ‘they set out to complete the task, and reconvened in their favourite cafe a week later. The vicar had his arm in a sling, and said, “well at first the bear wanted nothing to do with me or the word of God, and in fact he attacked me and we wrestled and rolled into a stream, but there in the water I acted quickly, baptised him, and now he’s gentle as a lamb, we spent the rest of the day praying together.” Then the priest, who was in a wheelchair spoke, “I had a similar experience, the bear was furious at first, and he really slapped me around, but I managed to pull out my bottle of holy water, sprinkled him with it and now he’s as gentle as a lamb, he’s getting First Holy Communion next week.” The rabbi knew he had the attention of the whole cafe by now and he grinned. ‘Then the rabbi spoke up, he was in a full body cast, neck to ankles, his head bandaged, all of his fingers in splints.

New Testament often uses the language of “sharing,” “participation,” and “communion” when referring to our life with God. For example, we are called to share in God’s own holiness (Heb 12:10); we are made “partakers” of the Holy Spirit (Heb 6:4) and have “communion” with the Spirit (2 Cor 13:13; Phil 2:1); and we have “communion” with Christ in the Eucharist (1 Cor 10:16). Christian life is not just something we do—that is, ethics—but is grounded in a real communion with God, a sharing in his own life.

In the Christian tradition, 2 Pet 1:4 is normally understood to refer to God’s life that comes to us through faith and baptism, that increases in us day by day as we live out a way of life in communion with him, and that comes to completion when we are fully transformed and divinized in eternal life. It is important to recognize that the beginning of this participation in the divine life is already underway.

The ritual performance of Eucharist, and the communal memory on which it rests, in large measure generated the profound theological insights that unfolded in the first few centuries of Christian traditions. Early Christian worship orbited around a remarkable insight: God makes God’s own self vulnerable to the ecstasies and foibles of bodily human intimacy. “Take, eat,” Jesus says; “this is my body given for you” (Matthew 26:26). He says this with no guarantee whatsoever that this offering will be received well if at all. Notably, God initiates this moment of self-giving, and not in response to any request from God’s creatures but instead from God’s own desire for intimacy and union with us and indeed the rest of God’s creation. The audacity of Christian faith shimmers most vividly there, in a liturgical act routinely performed weekly by the vast majority of worldwide Christians and sometimes daily. Perhaps the rite’s repetition has blunted our collective awareness of the extravagance of that ostensibly simple act. Gathering to share a meal of bread and wine offers a profound declaration at the core of Christian faith: the meaning of human life and of the whole creation derives from the hope for communion. This is first and foremost God’s desire, which is only then the hope of God’s creatures. More audaciously still, this desire and this hope for communion constitutes the one story of the cosmos, of God’s own creation, to which Christian faith bears witness and in which Christians participate every time we celebrate the Eucharist. One further step remains to bring this theological audacity more fully into view: we can refresh our Christian witness to this profound story by turning to human sexual intimacy as a poignant instance of divine desire. Christians might readily imagine turning there when we experience such intimacy as ecstatically fulfilling; but we can also reflect on sexual intimacy, and perhaps especially so, when it leaves residual disappointment or even trauma in its wake. In all its delicate rhythms and relational frustrations, this bodily signpost in spiritual practice can stimulate Christian witness to the One Story—the deep desire and abiding hope for divine communion.7

The ritual performance of Eucharist, and the communal memory on which it rests, in large measure generated the profound theological insights that unfolded in the first few centuries of Christian traditions. Early Christian worship orbited around a remarkable insight: God makes God’s own self vulnerable to the ecstasies and foibles of bodily human intimacy. “Take, eat,” Jesus says; “this is my body given for you” (Matthew 26:26). He says this with no guarantee whatsoever that this offering will be received well if at all. Notably, God initiates this moment of self-giving, and not in response to any request from God’s creatures but instead from God’s own desire for intimacy and union with us and indeed the rest of God’s creation. The audacity of Christian faith shimmers most vividly there, in a liturgical act routinely performed weekly by the vast majority of worldwide Christians and sometimes daily. Perhaps the rite’s repetition has blunted our collective awareness of the extravagance of that ostensibly simple act. Gathering to share a meal of bread and wine offers a profound declaration at the core of Christian faith: the meaning of human life and of the whole creation derives from the hope for communion. This is first and foremost God’s desire, which is only then the hope of God’s creatures. More audaciously still, this desire and this hope for communion constitutes the one story of the cosmos, of God’s own creation, to which Christian faith bears witness and in which Christians participate every time we celebrate the Eucharist. One further step remains to bring this theological audacity more fully into view: we can refresh our Christian witness to this profound story by turning to human sexual intimacy as a poignant instance of divine desire. Christians might readily imagine turning there when we experience such intimacy as ecstatically fulfilling; but we can also reflect on sexual intimacy, and perhaps especially so, when it leaves residual disappointment or even trauma in its wake. In all its delicate rhythms and relational frustrations, this bodily signpost in spiritual practice can stimulate Christian witness to the One Story—the deep desire and abiding hope for divine communion.

Basically, Church law only bans from Communion those who “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin.”[3] Since what is “grave sin” (or whether someone is “obstinately persisting” in it) is not always “manifest,” we should recognize that the law allows room for pastoral judgment. John Paul II himself espoused the time-honored principle: “In what is doubtful, freedom; in what is necessary, unity; in all things, charity.”[4] We should lean toward leniency. What should be most “manifest” to our minds is the “first and greatest commandment” of pastoral ministry, which Jesus gave to Peter: “If you love me, feed my sheep” (John 21:17).

Prayer is not first and foremost talking to God, it's first and foremost listening to God.

But it can be affirmed that an aesthetically successful pot is a utensil satisfying life-sustaining needs with an element of its creator’s character ever present. In recognizing this one can see that using pottery is a daily communion and a celebration of life. This spirit is first given freely in the creation of the pot and then again in the daily activities that literally sustain and celebrate life. And

Arius, upon his excommunication at Alexandria, in 321, retired to Palestine, and wrote various letters to men of distinction, in which he labored to demonstrate the truth of his doctrines, thereby drawing over immense numbers to his side, and particularly Eusebius, Bishop of Nicomedia, a man of vast influence. These bishops held a council in Bithynia, probably at Nicomedia, in which two hundred and fifty bishops are reported to have been present. All we know of their acts and decisions is, that they sent letters to all the bishops of Christendom, entreating them not to exclude the friends of Arius from their communion, and requesting them to intercede with Alexander that he would not do so.