HOW DO I KNOW THAT CHRIST IS REAL AND NOT A FANTASY?

How do I know Christ lives in me and is not some fantasy of my imagination? If I make up my blogs and books about my Lectio Divina experiences of being in the presence of the Holy Spirit and just listen with the “ear of my heart,” isn’t that all made up by me? Yes, it is. Who else can “make up” what I think of as the deepest and most intimate room of my being, and what transformations occur there because of being in the presence of Christ? Is it fantasy? You bet.

Unlike Star Wars or Game of Thrones, the best kind of fantasy is fiction. This fiction is a sign of contradiction; only those who know the language can understand it. Rather than fall into the rat trap of thinking as a neo-gnostic or sat trap of being relative to the point that no one has a clue as to what is true absolutely, the results I have gathered in my lifetime in what I would describe as trying to discover the deepest level of my humanness, my voluntarily placing The Christ Principle as the template of absolute truth informs what I don’t know (Faith) with what I do know (Reason and Freedom to Choose what is good or evil for me).

I am in constant contact with Christ through the energy of the Holy Spirit (not my own limited energy of my mind), a living flood of physical, mental, and spiritual energy available to everyone who ever lived. In this context, it is not a cult or private fiefdom based on what some human guru says, but open to all of our species (Catholic), only limited by the ability of each person to know how to listen to the whispers from God and “do what he tells you.”

The reason I am Roman Catholic, the purpose of my being accepted as a Lay Cistercian by the monastic community of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit (Trappist), is so that I can voluntarily place myself in the presence of Christ in that upper room of my inner self each day, using my Catholic heritage and the Cistercian practices and charisms as they interpret the Rule of St. Benedict and be content to wait.

I don’t seek super knowledge or to be better than any other human who may or may not believe in God as I do. I am not a theologian, guru, specialist, or expert. Gone are the peripherals of the Catholic Church that seem to drive the intelligencia crazy with the power of the Pope, and also my making any judgments about anyone else and how they try to find out the meaning of what it means to be human, the meaning of authentic love, and seek a truth that is beyond human corruption. St. Paul says it with eloquence and conviction, much better than I ever could.

Righteousness from God.

7 [But] whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider a loss^* because of Christ.^g

8 More than that, I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ

9 and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ,^h the righteousness from God, depending on faith

10 to know him and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,ⁱ

11 if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.^j

Forward in Christ.^*

12^k It is not that I have already taken hold of it or have already attained perfect maturity,^* but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ [Jesus].

13 Brothers, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead,

14 I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.^l

15 Let us, then, who are “perfectly mature” adopt this attitude. And if you have a different attitude, this too God will reveal to you.

16 Only, with regard to what we have attained, continue on the same course.^* https://bible.usccb.org/bible/philippians/3

I have come full circle from listening to that seemingly innocuous lecture in 1963 about Mrs. Murphy that Father Aidan Kavanaugh, O.S.B., rest his soul, where he spoke of an avatar, Mrs. Murphy, a little old lady in tennis shoes, who just sat in the back of a darkened church in silence and solitude, eyes lowered, repeating over and over, “Be it done unto me according to your word.” I now know, Father Aidan, I now know. It is the peace that the world cannot give, the abandonment of St. Charles de Foucault to the future, the realization that all I need is to seek first the kingdom of heaven in all things, and my priorities fall into place.

How do I know I am not making up all this to feed a sense of guilt about this or that? I don’t. If I am making all this up, and there is no god, I have the absolute most effective way to discover the depths of my humanity and bring resonance to the dissonance of my nature. I hope in the Lord.

All I can offer to God through Christ is to say, “Thank You. I don’t deserve this gift.”

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