Amazing Grace

Jesus did not come to earth in order to found another religion but to bring us new life, the life of God Himself, the life lived by the Holy Trinity: the communion between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. --from the homily by Msgr. Aldo Giordano to the Council of Europe, on Oct. 10, 2009).

 

Here is the entire message of Christianity in one sentence.  But, like the 10 Commandments, unfolding its meaning and implication takes -- and has taken -- a multitude of volumes and thousands of years of reflection.

 

I have written before of St. Seraphim revealing that the whole purpose of any religious practice is to acquire the Holy Spirit -- that is, the Spirit of Jesus and of the Father -- to enter into the communion of life shared by the Divine Trinity.  In order for us to receive that Spirit, our own spirits must be purified by the death of our 'natural' man, the man who "cannot receive or comprehend the things of God."  We must put on the Spirit of the Son, who receives all things from the Father.  We must, in the words of Scripture, be "alive to God." 

 

That gift was given to us in the Resurrection of Jesus as "the last Adam, the second man" (1Cor. 15).  In Him, we are set free from the works of the flesh, the way of life we learned as we grew up -- envy, hatred, bitterness, anger, lust, etc -- and we are given the fruit of the Spirit dwelling within -- love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, self-control, kindness.  This is not "human nature," but the nature of God in us.  Only then are we able to commune Spirit-to-spirit with God Himself.

 

John tells us that the Light of the world came into the world, but the world received it not because the "darkness has never comprehended" the Light.  Light and darkness cannot co-exist at the same time; one must drive out the other.  It may be possible to live "peacefully" next door to an angry person, but it is not possible to enter into communion with that person, spirit-to-spirit.  The spirits will repel one another.  This is the reason that Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews and any Christian that sympathized with the Jews.  This is the reason Communism had as its goal to wipe all Christian churches, but especially the Catholic church, off the map in any region it entered.

 

Communion with God and with the "world," in the Biblical sense cannot co-exist, or as Jesus put it, "You cannot love both God and mammon....you will either hate the one and serve the other, or serve the one and hate the other."  But here is the good news: once we begin  to worship God in spirit and in truth -- that is, to commune with God through the Holy Spirit -- we automatically begin to commune spirit-to-spirit with others who are in communion with Him also.  As we obey the first and greatest commandment, the second becomes automatic and 'natural' to us.  It is God's own love in us that loves our neighbor in us -- even the angry person next door.

 

Religion is simply the gathering of those who wish to commune with God, or who are learning to commune with God, as they share their stories with one another.  The story of Jacob, the "cheater," the "grabber" who walked with God long enough to "prevail with God and man" and who became "Israel" is our story too.  We all begin as the natural man, but as we walk with God and learn to hear His voice, our story changes.  We begin to walk one another home, to the One Who calls us "out of darkness into His marvelous light."