Monthly Archives: March 2019

Jesus the Christ

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Jesus: The Christ

Summary: Sunday, March 22-Friday, March 27, 2015

https://cac.org/jesus-christ-weekly-summary-2015-03-28/

Christ is a word for the macrocosm, Jesus is the microcosmic moment in time, and all else is the whole cosmos—including you and me. (Sunday)

Whenever the material and the spiritual coincide, there is the Christ. (Monday)

What was personified in the body of Jesus was a manifestation of this one universal truth: Matter is, and has always been, the hiding place for Spirit, forever offering itself to be discovered anew. (Tuesday)

I am making the whole of creation new. . . . It will come true. . . . It is already done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. –Revelation 21:5-6 (Wednesday)

As John Duns Scotus taught, “Christ was the first idea in the mind of God,” and then Teilhard de Chardin completed the cosmic schema by calling Christ the final “Omega Point” of history! (Thursday)

Authentic mystical experience connects us and keeps connecting us at ever-newer levels, breadths, and depths, “until God can be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). (Friday)

Practice: Unitive Seeing

Some of us may experience the mystical reality of oneness in our lifetimes. It might come through meditation or psychedelic substances, in washing the dishes or love-making. These encounters are always grace, never contrived by us nor given as a reward for being holy. Cynthia Bourgeault describes mystical experiences beautifully: “To perceive oneself as one with everything is to directly experience the flow of divine abundance that holds everything together; to know directly (rather than merely deduce) the extravagant Trinitarian joy with which everything is at all times giving itself away and receiving itself back from the molten flow of love at the center of everything.”

These experiences of ultimate and intimate belonging are not the norm for most of us. And when we do stumble upon and through them, the temptation is to cling to the feelings of bliss. Unless we let the experience move us out of our dualistic thinking—beyond the moment of ecstasy—our ego attaches to the mountain-top and claims it as its own. Mystical experiences are only a “sneak preview of what the universe looks like from the point of view of non-dual consciousness,” Cynthia says, and they invite us to integrate the momentary unitive perspective into our ordinary thinking. The goal is a permanent rewiring of our operating system. We must actually let go of mystical experiences in order to move into unitive seeing, which can happen at all times, in all places, with practice and patience.

Perhaps Jesus experienced profound union during his baptism, but we don’t know if there were many, if any, other such encounters with Oneness. Yet clearly, throughout his life, Jesus saw through unitive eyes. He saw the Kingdom of Heaven even “in the midst” of the Pharisees; he saw the real woman behind the label of Samaritan; he saw the thief on the cross with him in paradise.

So welcome mystical experience when/if it comes, but don’t measure your life by it, judging yourself neither as a spiritual hero nor loser. What matters is letting the awareness of your inherent union with God flow into every part of your life. The only way to do this is to die to self, as Jesus did, though for us it happens slowly, steadily, day-by-day through contemplation and letting go.

Gateway to Silence:
In Christ, we become God’s Love.

For further study:
The Cosmic Christ (CD, MP3 download)

Hell, No! (CD, MP3 download)

The Cosmic Christ

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https://cac.org/the-cosmic-christ-2015-11-05/

The Cosmic Christ
Thursday, November 5, 2015

Franciscan mysticism has a unique place in the world through its absolutely Christocentric lens, although the Franciscan emphasis is actually nothing more nor less than the full Gospel itself. Most Christians know about Jesus of Nazareth, but very few know about the Christ, and even fewer were ever taught how to put the two together (which we are trying to do in these meditations). Many still seem to think that Christ is Jesus’ last name. By proclaiming my faith in Jesus Christ, I have made two acts of faith, one in Jesus and another in Christ. The times are demanding this full Gospel of us now.

Though it overlaps with many aspects of non-Christian mysticism—such as nature mysticism, Islamic Sufi mysticism (ecstasy and joy), Hindu mysticism (unitive consciousness and asceticism), Buddhism (non-violence and simplicity), and Jewish prophetic oracles—Franciscan mysticism is both deeply personal and cosmic/historical at the same time. [1] We must know that Franciscanism is not primarily about Francis of Assisi. It is about God, and the utter incarnate availability of God. In fact, when some fixate on Francis and Clare too long their spirituality invariably becomes sentimental, cheap, and harmless. Franciscan mysticism is about an intuition of Jesus as both the Incarnate Human One and the Eternal Cosmic Christ at the same time. (For a deeper exploration of the Cosmic Christ, see my meditations from earlier this year.)

The first and cosmic incarnation of the Eternal Christ, the perfect co-inherence of matter and Spirit (Ephesians 1:3-11), happened at the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the human incarnation of that same Mystery a mere 2,000 years ago, when we were perhaps ready for this revelation. Christ is not Jesus’ last name, but the title of his historical and cosmic purpose. Jesus presents himself as the “Anointed” or Christened One who was human and divine united in one human body—as our model and exemplar. Peter seems to get this, at least once (Matthew 16:16), but like most of the church, he also seems to regress. Christ is our shortcut word for “The Body of God” or “God materialized.” [2] This Christ is much bigger and older than either Jesus of Nazareth or the Christian religion, because the Christ is whenever the material and the divine co-exist—which is always and everywhere.

Ilia Delio writes, “The conventional visualization of the physical world was changed by Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which showed that matter itself was a form of energy. . . . For all practical purposes, energy is the ‘real world.’” [3] There it is: science revealing that everything is both matter and energy/spirit co-inhering as one; this is a Christocentric world. This realization changes everything. Matter has become a holy thing and the material world is the place where we can comfortably worship God just by walking on matter, by loving it, by respecting it. The Christ is God’s active power inside of the physical world. [4]

Delio continues: “Through his penetrating view of the universe Teilhard found Christ present in the entire cosmos, from the least particle of matter to the convergent human community. ‘The Incarnation,’ he declared, ‘is a making new . . . of all the universe’s forces and powers.’ Personal divine love is invested organically with all of creation, in the heart of matter, unifying the world.” [5] For many years, imitating Teilhard de Chardin, I used to end my letters with his own complementary close,

“Christ Ever Greater!” This had little to do with my hopes for the expanding of organized Christianity, not that there is anything wrong with that. I think we are all sad to admit that organized Christianity has often resisted and opposed the true coming of the Cosmic Christ. The coming of the Cosmic Christ is not the same as the growth of the Christian religion. It is the unification of all things.

Gateway to Silence:
Evolving toward love

References:
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Franciscan Mysticism: A Cosmic Vision,” Radical Grace, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2012). You can read the full article in the Fall 2015 issue of CAC’s newsletter, the Mendicant.

[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (Jossey-Bass: 2013), 77.

[3] Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love (Orbis Books: 2013), 24-25.

[4] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Christ, Cosmology, and Consciousness (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2010), MP3 download.

[5] Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, 127.