Notice to the Anawim: This ebook may be lengthy. Please stop whenever you feel tired or when a visitor comes to the door, and take it up again later where you left off.
All scriptural references were taken from USCCB. org This book may not be reproduced by photocopying without permission in writing from the publisher. The Center for Contemplative Practice 2402 Glenshire Lane Tallahassee, FL 32309 Printed in the United States of America in November 2020 Copyright 2020, 2026 (REVISED) All Rights Reserved My latest book, based on my blog posts, is what I have chosen to be the answers to The Divine Equation: my six questions each human must answer, or not, to move to that next level of evolution in their natural progression. I wanted to share some of my ideas about spiritual reality and how Lay Cistercian practices and charisms have helped me expand or deepen my appreciation of what Christ came to teach and show us.
At the beginning of this series of contemplative readings about spirituality, I don’t want to fly false colors by claiming these ideas are solely my own. These ideas come from the Holy Spirit. I like to say that I take dictation (my typos, of course), but that may be too simplistic. I can say that these reflections come from my Lectio Divina practice each day (Philippians 2:5). Having given you what I consider to be my source of ideas, I must also tell you that my ideas do not represent anything official from the Catholic Church (my faith heritage), the Cistercian Order of Strict Observance, and Lay Cistercian organization. I don’t want anyone following what I have proposed in any of these blogs or books. All I want is to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2;5) and share the results of these meditations and contemplations with you. You will find resources on the Internet to access the URL where I obtained my thoughts.
You will find inside meditation or reflection for you to consider as you sit in silence and solitude before the Blessed Sacrament or in some space that you have made sacred. It may provide some needed respite from the “politics of personal calumny and detraction” that comprise so much of what I used to enjoy on the evening news on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, and National Public Radio. I say “used to” because I refuse to watch news commentary from any source these days. Why? Too much hatred. Television and news organizations have become so politicized that I get mentally ill when looking at all the personal attacks on any political side. Whenever I see politicians debating the issues, it is not so much a discussion as it is a shouting match and name-calling. There is no respect like in the days of Senators Edward Kennedy and Alan Simpson. Their debates were genuine civility while discussing various viewpoints. Where is Charles Krauthammer when you need him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zSVF5a07gU
A FEW OF MY ASSUMPTIONS
Anytime you read anything or hear a commentator on television news give an opinion, there are always assumptions underlying their thoughts. I have some assumptions about what it means to deny oneself, take up my cross, and follow Christ using five Cistercian practices (silence, solitude, work, prayer, and community).
– I am a Lay Cistercian. I am using the five Cistercian practices of silence, solitude, prayer, work, and community as the basis of my contemplative approach to spirituality. I use them each day as I seek God in whatever life brings.
– My spirituality comes from Cistercian practices and charisms (humility, obedience, hospitality, and daily conversion of life from self to God). https://www.trappists.org/
– My personal Lectio comes from Philippians 2:5.” Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” – These ideas are my own and do not reflect any official doctrine or teachings of the Catholic Church or Cistercian/Lay Cistercian spirituality. They are based entirely on how I view what is core to being Catholic, to love each other as Christ loved us. Inching slowly from self to God is a process that takes a lifetime. Some days are better than others. Fortunately, Christ walks with me as I seek God each day. I share what I have learned as a broken-down, old Lay Cistercian, not an expert in anything except getting old and losing some of my memory.
– I use the full quote from the Scriptures rather than just a citation. I was hoping you could read and reread the passage to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to you.
– Many of these lessons come from blogs I have previously published on
https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org
WHAT IS A LAY CISTERCIAN?
Since I put Lay Cistercian on the cover, I thought you might want to know what a Lay Cistercian is. This term is used for someone who follows the practices of Cistercian monks and nuns while not living in a monastery. www.trappist.net/lay-cistercian
I have chosen to be a Lay Cistercian and have been blessed to be accepted by the Monastery of the Holy Spirit as someone who tries to love those around them with their minds, hearts, and strength. It is not as easy as it looks. I don’t always succeed. What is love? How in the world can you love with ALL your heart? How do you keep from being passionate about love? Who do you love, and what does that mean? I follow the Cistercian spiritual traditions, going back to the year c. 1100 A.D., before St. Benedict of Nursia c.540 A.D. In writing this book, I will try to share some of the Cistercian practices and techniques that I have learned to use to enter the one place none of us wants to go–inside us in the depths of our consciousness, the hidden room of our unconsciousness. Facing ourselves is frightening in the extreme without any of the false faces or avoidances we use in our ordinary life. Ironically, it is one of the premier places we meet Christ.
Other websites are:
http://www.ben.edu/center-for-mission-and-identity/resources/rule-of-st- benedict.cfm
https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org
I forget who it was, but someone asked me the difference between a Cistercian monk (Trappist) and a Lay Cistercian. I thought a moment and told her that both seek to be present to God in whatever way plays out each day. The environment of the monastery is a closed space with its temptations and challenges. The Lay Cistercian lives in the World (my world is whatever I encounter each day as I seek God as I am), and the temptations and challenges are different but no less real. It is not where you are that makes you contemplative, but how you are transformed by Christ using what life presents to you each day. The Cistercian practices and charisms help both the monk and me focus on having the mind of Christ Jesus within us. (Philippians 2:5)
I wrote this book to give you an interactive way to raise and answer some critical questions about the Art of Contemplation. You guessed it. It takes effort and deliberate focus to place yourself in the real presence of Christ and wait for whatever God has in store for you.
https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org
[A snow covered bench in a forest Description automatically generated]
I am waiting to sit next to the heart of Christ.
PREPARING THE MIND AND HEART TO APPROACH THAT WHICH HAS NO BEGINNING NOR ENDING
. Imagine yourself on a park bench in the dead of winter, looking down the road for Christ to sit beside you. Waiting for the Lord is itself a prayer of intimacy. Take some time, in silence and solitude, to read the following blog
WAITING FOR THE MASTER
Imagine yourself seated on a park bench in the dead of winter. Jesus told you that He would pass by the bench sometime soon. You sit and look down the path, straining to see Christ as he comes around the bend of the trees. You don’t know what he looks like, but you have an invitation to meet with him today, and all your senses are at their peak. You don’t want to miss him.
The first person to view through the trees is an older woman pushing a cart full of what looks like bottles and rags. You smile as she passes and wishes her a good day. She turns to you and asks if you have a water bottle. She says she has not had water in two days. You only have half a bottle of water left, but you give it to her, asking her to excuse your germs. She trudges away, smiling.
You look up, and there is what looks like a teenager. He asks if he can sit on the bench with you. You do not know him and are reluctant to let him sit down, but he wears only a thin T-shirt and short pants, and it is freezing outside. “Thanks,” he says. He talks about how he is homeless, and the shelter kicks them out at 7:00 a.m., and he has no place to go. Again, you look to the pathway straining to see if Christ is coming. No Christ. The teenager says he is twenty-seven years old and out of a job with no family and nowhere to go. You get out your cell phone, call the local Catholic Charities, and speak to someone you know about helping the young man. You help out there once a month with packing food for the homeless, so you are familiar with their services. It happens that the City has a long-term shelter for people who need job skills and a safe place to stay until they get a job. You give him the directions to the shelter, about eight blocks away. He hugs you and shuffles away.
It is going on two hours now, and no Jesus. A dog comes up to you, a Weimaraner, tail wagging, happy to see you. “Hey girl,” you say. “Where is your Master?” She sits down and offers you one of her paws to shake. Friendly dog, you think, but who could be its owner?
It is going on three hours now, and it seems to be getting colder. Just you and the dog are there, which you have named Michele. Just as you wonder once more if you have been stood up and inconvenienced, you notice an older man approach. He has a long, gray beard, somewhat matted together, and uses a cane to help him wobble down the path. His clothes are neat but certainly well worn. His face has a gnarly look about him as if he had weathered many hardships, and they had taken their toll. He asked if he could sit down since he was tired. You say, “Of course, I am just waiting for a friend to come by.” “You look cold,” he says. “Here, take this scarf that my mother knit for me. It will keep you warm.” The dog sits next to the man as if he was its owner. All the while, he kept stroking the dog’s head and petting it on the head. “Oh, by the way,” the old man says, “this is my dog. Thank you for finding it for me.” Two more hours went by, but you did not notice because the conversation was warm and intimate. You tell the kind gentleman about your trials and successes and how you want to seek God wherever that might be and whoever it might be. The gentleman tells you that He must go home to see his father, to whom he owes everything. You think of how lucky the older man is to have such a loving Father. The man gets up and smiles at you. “You are a good person,” he says, “and I look forward to seeing you again in the future,” his face just beaming with kindness. Turning to his dog, he says, “Coming?” The dog jumped up and down a few times, wagging his tail fiercely, and they both set off shuffling slowly away from the bench.
You look at your clock and see that five hours have passed but passed so quickly. You are a bit disappointed that Christ did not stop by. You think maybe you got the time wrong and left to go home. As you are going, you remember you have on you the scarf which the older man gave you as a gift. You are shocked by what you see. On the scarf is embroidered your name in the gold thread. You think to yourself; he said his mother made it for him— another thing you noticed. You felt your heart burning as the older man talked to you on the bench. I wonder, you think, …I wonder. You slowly realize that Christ has been seated next to you all the time, just waiting for you to be silent and still enough for Him to speak. You have not shown up on the park bench as you sat there and expected Christ to show up. The only prayer you can think of comes into your mind. Praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.
CONTEMPLATIVE ACTIVITY
The first time you read the story, just read it as you usually do but make a deliberate effort to read it slowly and don’t rush to finish it. The second time read it even slower but try to pick out one idea or theme you want to explore. You may wish to write it down. I have heard it said that the third time is the charm. The third time reread it, but this time as prayer. Take ten minutes or more to reflect on the story. Look at the photo of the park bench for five minutes. In silence and solitude of your heart, wait for Christ. What is the Holy Spirit trying to tell you? You don’t have to do anything now but wait.
Monastery Church at Our Lady of the Holy Spirit (Trappist)
Six paradigm shifts that help clarify how all reality fits
together.
I must warn you that this is an exceedingly long and complicated Lectio Divina. I have never done this type of chain-linking contemplation like this before. I usually do one of my Lectio Divina meditations leading to contemplation every morning at 2:50 a.m. Nothing heroic about this. I need to get up for a bathroom break every morning. Instead of my usual Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5), I have had the same contemplation for the last three weeks: having in me the mind of Christ Jesus. I have attempted to write down the next day that I can remember (my mind is not what it used to be, or maybe it is). Each day, I add to this compendium of reflections on reality. It is rather long. Also, I don’t pretend to speak for The Catholic Church, the Cistercian (Trappist) Order, or any Lay Cistercian organizations. I am just an old (85+ year old), broken-down, Professed Lay Cistercian. What you read on my blog is what I wrote down from the Holy Spirit. Nothing more.
PARADIGM SHIFTS, CHANGE, AND IMMUTABILITY
I became interested in paradigms about twenty years ago after watching one of Joel Barker’s videotapes. He is a futurist and has been one of the ten great thinkers that have influenced my view that makes up reality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0m6KJwwyNk It all started with a starfish video. Look at the story of the starfish thrower. If Jesus is the starfish thrower, throwing each of us back into the life-giving water, is that not salvation? Joel Barker provides us with the idea of a paradigm shift, a change of thinking, adding new assumptions about something while discarding others. Christ calls that “making all things new” and invites us to live an extraordinary life where love is the center of all reality. God is love. If you realize that the Church constantly changes how it adapts to the world with immutable principles, you are ahead of the game. You won’t be trapped by your paradigm of what is truth. Listen to what Joel Barker says about change.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uL2CXVTpp4 https://amzn.to/35USXCs
A paradigm shift causes a change in what, to this point, has been considered the basis of all thinking. It is deemed to be immutable. I will look at these significant cosmic mega-shifts from the beginning to the end of whatever is left. You might want to call them epochs of time or how what seems immutable is subject to change. Since its inception, I see life as having six paradigm shifts, constantly moving and adapting to its environment physically, mentally, and spiritually. From dissonance to resonance, it is the natural progression of reality, of humanity growing towards its destiny, growing ever more profound in the truth rather than just changing directions.
WHAT ARE PARADIGM SHIFTS?
Suppose, during my wanderings through the forest of Internet sites. I come across an exceptionally provocative idea. In that case, I find that it somehow wiggles its way into my Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5). It lurks in the background, begging me to try to integrate its ideas into my Meditatio (Meditation). Such is the case with my fascination with paradigms. You already have seen the YouTube from Joel Barker. Paradigm shifts happen when a new way of thinking occurs, resulting in a new direction or outlook on life. I hypothesize how these paradigm shifts affect time and space since we can know anything about them. These are reflections about one reality containing three universes, fortified by some Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5) meditations.
I asked myself, what has the power to create a shift in a paradigm? What is so powerful that it can create an entire universe out of nothing? What is so influential is that it not only made all that has a beginning and an end but exists in, with, and through it. As reality moves, ever so slowly growing in complexity as though to an unseen point in space and time, it moves beyond that to be pure energy with no beginning and end. It defies measurement with any mental or physical instruments that have or are ever too likely to be invented to measure and define matter, time, physical energy, space, and distances between galaxies. It is energy beyond our capability to even consider as being authentic because it does not make sense. People who hold that the spiritual universe is part of reality are often compared with those who write fiction and believe in fairy tales.
We have not evolved to a place to consider something that might be more powerful than what we know, can see, what fits into our human history, something outside of our wheelhouse of human experiences. I asked myself how all of reality fits together in resonance and not dissonance? The answer that kept presenting itself was so disturbing that I dismissed it for the last four years as being so much fantasy and make-believe. That answer to what is so powerful that it created all that is (not just all that we currently can observe) is Nothing. The “Nothingness of God” is the presence of pure energy. Suppose I think of billions upon billions of universes, each having trillions of galaxies, each having millions upon millions of star systems, such as our solar system. In that case, this pales in comparison to the measurement of the pure energy of God. Why? We still use a human measure to define pure energy that is so astounding that it is a living person, one that can reason and the freedom to choose what it is. Pure energy is the missing part of the equation about reality that allows me to answer WHY all is.
In my experience, paradigms are mental constructs that exist only in humans. What if God has a paradigm, one that is? When humans looked at this reality, they ignored it because it didn’t fit their way of thinking. In the case of God, as I speculate, He creates with a simple Word (John 1:1), a sign of intelligence beyond our human experience to comprehend. God creates by just being present in His Word. It astounds me that this reality, with no beginning and no end, is the complexity of one yet three distinct entities. Pure energy exists now and yet is the cause of all that exists in the universe. The Nothingness of God is greater than all of the universes that are or ever will be.
Even L. Ron Hubbard could not have come up with a better fantasy tale, one that is accessed only through Faith. Like my favorite magicians, Penn and Teller and Matt Franco, this faith is not magic. Faith does not even come from human nature or the physical or mental universes but is the gift of sharing pure energy with humans to enable us to get a glimpse of what awaits us, a titillation of the heart to love without limits and be sons and daughters of that pure energy Forever. It is utterly ridiculous for those who do not realize what is going on and use the correct measurement to see what we cannot see with physical and mental reality alone.
TYPES OF PARADIGM SHIFTS
– COSMIC OR NATURAL — Given that pure energy does not have a beginning nor an end, created matter does have a beginning and an end; this paradigm shift is one of the cosmic forces of nature brought on by the reaction of the elements with each other. The laws of nature interact, sometimes causing violent bursts of energy. This cosmic shift does not often happen, unlike personal paradigm shifts. It is the first paradigm shift. All life exists in this physical universe, the base that sustains the next level of paradigm shift.
– HUMAN -This shift occurs in the mental universe, which affects all of humanity and our future direction. Humans cause this type of paradigm shift. It happens every day, so much so that we have become immune to noticing it. We humans have reason for a reason and the ability to choose what we have reasoned. Humans evolved ways of communicating with others and languages to explain what they observe about the physical universe. Science has multiple languages to discover what it is, why it is, and what makes up its components. Poetry and art are languages to take us to the edges of the human condition and reflect on why something is. The spiritual language comes from that pure energy through Jesus Christ. It gives humans who understand that language the missing part of the equation of reality, discovered because spiritual reality is the opposite of what the physical and mental universe proposes. Some see it, others do not, and others ignore it as folly.
– SPIRITUAL– You can observe the effects of the paradigm shift happening but do not see its cause. This spiritual universe of reality contains pure energy, pure love, pure service, and pure knowledge. It begins with the Christ Principle when all humans have the opportunity (invitation) to move from rationality to spirituality. The shift is from being human to being an adopted son or daughter of the Father. We are all destined to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven after we die, to live the paradox of why a God who made all that would want to share that life with sinful humans and constantly abandon the way, truth, and life.
– INDIVIDUAL OR PERSONAL– We can reason and then choose what we think is good. The choices we make define who we are. Some options are authentic and lead us to fulfill our human destiny. Other choices make us captive to our delusions and false assumptions. What we choose has consequences for us and those around us. We use paradigm shifts all the time but don’t call it that. We change our assumptions about what is true because we know more or have experienced situations that confirm our beliefs.
SIX PARADIGM SHIFTS THAT HAVE CHANGED TIME
The following paradigm shifts are the results of my Lectio Divina over the past year (five or six different times). Like Heraclitus, I observe that change is the only constant in my reality. I offer these cosmic and personal paradigm shifts for your consideration and reflection about one reality with three separate universes. These reflections on reality are from my assumptions as a Lay Cistercian trying to seek God each day where I am and as I am. There are certainly more paradigm shifts than what I am sharing with you, but these are the ones I use to look at reality. Don’t follow me or do what I do. Follow yourself and do what you do, but make sure that what you do is consistent with what pure energy had prepared for you from before time was.
– All paradigm shifts go from assumptions about what is fundamental to another group with different consequences.
– All paradigms, except the first and last, all have a beginning and an ending.
– These shifts begin with the nothingness of pure energy continue to be infused by their energy and end as they started with the nothingness of pure energy.
– The nothingness of pure energy (we call this God so that the human mind can begin to describe Him) is without beginning or end. It just is. Nothingness means nothing in the sense of the physical universe. Still, it describes the Mystery of pure energy, the nature of God whose nothingness is more significant than all the universes. We cannot comprehend what that is because humans lack the capability and capacity to see pure energy as a person whose power is pure love. It is for this reason to redeem humanity from just being locked into just a human paradigm to provide a choice to the next level of existence, the spiritual universe.
– All paradigm shifts involve reasoning and free choice. All of these paradigm shifts go from something to something else.
– All paradigm shifts, you will notice, build on one another in my model.
– Each significant paradigm shift contains multiple sub-level shifts, which I am not addressing in these reflections. I offer six such major paradigm shifts in this model for your consideration.
– That which has no beginning nor ending pervades each paradigm and is the only energy capable of lifting the cosmos to a deeper and more complex level.
– This pure energy is present as each paradigm shifts to a new level of evolution and complexity.
I use the three-universe hypothesis whenever I look at paradigm shifts. I use the three-universe explanation for everything that is in my wheelhouse of control. Since this assumption is critical to viewing reality, let me take some of your time to drill down a bit deeper.
SIX CORE QUESTIONS THAT DEFINE EACH PARADIGM SHIFT
The six paradigm shifts do not happen in a vacuum. It is interesting to note that all these shifts, be they cosmic, spiritual, or individual, are precipitated by reason and free choice. A person is involved in moving it from one level of maturity to a deeper one. Looking at reality, here are my six questions that precipitated and necessitated the paradigm shift and my rationale for selecting them. The paradigm shift is the answer to the question posed by the paradigm, which takes it to the next level, which has been predetermined from before matter.
QUESTION ONE: WHAT IS POWERFUL ENOUGH TO CREATE THE COMPLETE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE? MOVING FROM THAT WHICH HAS NO BEGINNING NOR END TO EVERYTHING THAT HAS A BEGINNING AND AN END.
This energy is divine power that can create something from nothing, the point beyond time, space, physical energy, and human knowing. It is the Alpha and the Omega; only this pure energy that has no beginning and no end is its purpose. In creating that which has a beginning and an end, the physical universe, this energy unleashed a cosmic movement, i e, physical time. This energy is divine, pure energy, pure love, pure service, and pure knowledge. This energy stamps all that is with the DNA of the one who created it. This energy is 100% of its nature. This energy is not only the source of all that is but the destination of everything with a beginning and an end. It is a Supreme Being that humans have difficulty comprehending, much like the mind-blowing distances between galaxies in space. Even that analogy is just a way for us to describe and not define this pure energy that has one nature and three distinct persons. What follows is a blog that I wrote on the nothingness of God. Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. inspired me with his statement that we cannot know who God is but rather more who He isn’t.
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1012.htm A series of thoughts from one of my recent Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5) meditations is a series of ideas. I experienced these thoughts while sitting on a park bench in the density of winter, waiting for Christ to come and share His Real Presence. I thought, “Here I am, sitting on a park bench in the dead cold, waiting for Christ to visit me, while not presupposing that I am even worthy enough for God to sit next to a broken-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit, but hoping He will do so.” There is a strange consequence of silence and solitude, the stillness that comes with letting go of every “THING” in your life that ties you to being human, the complete abandonment to a person you love but have never seen, and the realization that you can never approach God because He is God and you are, well, you. Yet, here you sit in the hope Christ will come into your heart and sit there with you, no words, no thoughts, no need to fill up the time with idle chatter. This reminds me of the look between two people who have lived together for many years and are enduring the rocky fastness of their chosen paths, which now have become just one road they share. It is the look of deep, abiding, unconditional love, which the World and death cannot break apart in the hope that they will live together forever. That happiness is what I felt while in my contemplation. For lack of a good description, it is the joy that comes from doing nothing.
THE QUESTION BEHIND THE QUESTIONS
Where do you get all these wonderful ideas, you might ask. I just ask questions and wait for the answers from the Holy Spirit. But that is not logical. No, it is not. That is not scientific. No, it is not.
THE NOTHINGNESS OF GOD
In my view of what is real, the World (living only in the physical and mental universes) says that nothing makes you genuinely human except what excites you, entertains you, and what distracts you from all those foolish ideas that come from God, such as denying yourself daily, taking up your cross and following Christ. As I sit on the park bench, uncomfortable because it is so freezing, wishing I could be somewhere warm, the thought occurs to me that I must look at happiness and nothingness from the viewpoint of God, not the World. Then, I realized that the nothingness of God is more accurate than the nothingness espoused by the World. The paradox of God is at work. When I accept nothingness but the presence of Christ in my heart, I can understand what St. Benedict wrote to his monks about humility in Chapter 7 of his Rule. I have read Chapter 7 and the commentary by Abbot Phillip Lawrence, O.S.B., Abbey of Christ in the Desert, and I encourage you to do the same.
https://christdesert.org/prayer/rule-of-st-benedict/chapter-7-humility/
“Chapter 7: Humility
1 Brothers, Divine Scripture calls to us saying: Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted (Luke 14:11; 18:14). 2 In saying this, therefore, it shows us that every exaltation is a kind of pride, 3 which the Prophet indicates he has shunned, saying: Lord, my heart is not exalted; my eyes are not lifted up and I have not walked in the ways of the great nor gone after marvels beyond me (Ps 130[131]:1). 4 And why? If I had not a humble spirit but were exalted instead, then you would treat me like a weaned child on its mother’s lap (Ps 130[131]:2). 5 Accordingly, brothers, if we want to reach the highest summit of humility, if we desire to attain speedily that exaltation in heaven to which we climb by the humility of this present life, 6 then by our ascending actions we must set up that ladder on which Jacob in a dream saw angels descending and ascending (Gen 28: 12). 7 Without doubt, this descent and ascent signify only that we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility. 8 Now, the ladder erected is our life on earth, and if we humble our hearts the Lord will raise it to heaven. 9 We may call our body and soul the sides of this ladder, into which our divine vocation has fitted the various steps of humility and discipline as we ascend.
10 The first step of humility is that a man always keeps the fear of God before his eyes (Ps 35[36]:2) and never forgets it. 11 He must constantly remember everything God has commanded, keeping in mind that all who despise God will burn in hell for their sins, and all who fear God have everlasting life awaiting them. 12 While he guards himself at every moment from sins and vices of thought or tongue, of hand or foot, of self-will or bodily desire, 13 let him recall that he is always seen by God in heaven, that his actions everywhere are in God’s sight and are reported by angels at every hour.
The nothingness of God is more significant than any reality in our physical or mental universes. If you look at the spiritual universe as the opposite of what the World says is meaningful, nothingness means everything is one in Christ or no-THING-ness.
³¹ Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.³² And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people^([a) to myself.”³³He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.” John 12:31-32 This notion of “drawing all people to myself” is the only energy that can lift up each paradigm shift to move to the next level of maturation.
Here are some random reflections from one of my Lectio Divina meditations.
How can nothing make me happy? It sounds like a conundrum. The nothingness of Christ is the presence of the Supreme Being. Like a person who gets closer and closer to the Sun, the presence of God can annihilate our physical, mental, and spiritual being if we approach him directly. Baptism allows us to get close to Jesus Christ, Son of God, because he is our mediator, the transformer that enables us to call God Abba, Father. When we say we pray to the Blessed Mother or for the intercession of the Saints, what we mean is that our prayer does not stop with Mary or the Saint, but we ask them to join us as to give glory, praise, and honor to the Father through, with and in Jesus in the unity of the Holy Spirit. The nothingness of God contains everything that is of value.
In the World, nothingness does not make me happy. I am uncomfortable with doing nothing. I must be productive and fill the time with anything to keep myself busy. I fill this hole with reading, watching television, or traveling to Cape San Blas, Florida, on the weekends to pass the time. This nothingness is doing something to fill the void left by the World. It neither inspires nor transforms. It is just a way to count time. I am not proposing that something like work, a hobby, family reunions, or love as the World sees it is intrinsically evil. It is just not complete without the Christ Principle.
As the name implies, the nothingness of God contains no “thing,” the thing being matter, physical energy, time, or space. The nothingness of God is all that is in Heaven, where there is only being who stands before the Throne of the Lamb, at the right hand of the Father, One God, yet three distinct persons, the Supreme Existence, the One who just is.
St. Paul in I Corinthians 2:9 says, “⁹ But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” When I try to move from self to God, using the tools of Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict, or my daily Lectio Divina meditations and contemplation, I make a conscious effort to just sit in silence and solitude and just “let it be done to me according to your word.” I want to move from the nothingness of the world, which means they lack anything, to the nothingness of God, which means the presence of everything. In this context, whenever I sit on a park bench in the dead of winter in silence and solitude, all I do is wait to be in the presence of Christ and ask only one thing.
Psalm 27.
(a)Of David. The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear? |The LORD is my life’s refuge; of whom should I be afraid? When evildoers come at me to devour my flesh, My enemies and foes stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart does not fear; Though war be waged against me, even then do I trust. One thing I ask of the LORD; this I seek: To dwell in the LORD’s house all the days of my life, To gaze on the LORD’s beauty, to visit his temple. For God will hide me in his shelter in time of trouble, He will conceal me in the cover of his tent; and set me high upon a rock. Even now, my head is held high above my enemies on every side! I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and chant praise to the LORD. Hear my voice, LORD, when I call; have mercy on me and answer me. “Come,” says my heart, “seek his face” your face, LORD, do I seek! Do not hide your face from me; do not repel your servant in anger. You are my salvation; do not cast me off; do not forsake me, God my savior! Even if my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me in. LORD, show me your way; lead me on a level path because of my enemies. Do not abandon me to the desire of my foes; malicious and lying witnesses have risen against me. I believe I shall see the LORD’s goodness in the land of the living. Wait for the LORD, take courage; be stouthearted, wait for the LORD! https://bible.usccb.org/bible/psalms/27
In this first paradigm shift, do not make the mistake of thinking that this nothingness of God somehow creates the physical universe, and then it stops. This pure energy overshadows everything that has a beginning and an end. It existed before there was matter and time, while there was matter and time, and as time slowly traveled to its end, beyond time itself.
– QUESTION TWO: WHY ARE HUMANS THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE REASON AND THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE WHAT THEY REASON? MOVING FROM ANIMALITY TO RATIONALITY. Humans are the only species on the earth capable of reason and choosing what they reason freely. Why is that? This is the mental universe where only humans can live. We have reason for a reason. When divine nature creates something, such as all matter, all physical energy, and all living things, it leaves its mark on how those move through space and time. I like to think of it as God’s DNA, with the analogy to human DNA. God’s products use natural law as the foundation of evolution from beginning to end.
– QUESTION THREE: WHAT IS THE NEXT LEVEL OF EVOLUTION FOR HUMANS? MOVING FROM RATIONALITY TO SPIRITUALITY. As part of the relentless movement of all physical matter, energy, time, and space, from beginning to end, what happens in between is an ever-increasing complexity of energy. When that which has no beginning and no end lifted humanity from animality to rationality, humans caused a problem. They have the DNA of the Supreme Being, remember? Humans now have what no other living species has, the ability to reason and choose something other than the natural law. It is a significant paradigm shift from what went before, a cosmic shift. We continue to move down the human yardstick of time, but we also grow because of our collective and individual choices. They define what it means to be human and, within that unique species, what it means to be an individual. To get humans to the next level of their evolution, we need a universe of voluntary choice and reason that does seem reasonable to the World (physical and mental universes only). Animal nature does not possess this ability. Once again, Pure Energy enables a Mystery paradigm shift from rationality to spirituality (my term for the spiritual universe or the Kingdom of Heaven). This movement from simplicity to complexity is part of the plan for the physical, mental, and spiritual universes. Humans have reason to know and are aware of this grand plan of evolution. Humans have the freedom to choose the spiritual universe, God’s playground, where we must think the opposite of the World to enter. As a young boy of twelve, I learned that God re-opened the gates of heaven to humans by sending his only Son, the Christ, to die on the cross to redeem all humanity from its tendency to choose what will lead to death, not life. (Philippians 2:5-12) With the Christ Principle, God not only became human but extended the Kingdom of Heaven to humans on earth, for those who choose this gift of Faith. Baptism is our ticket to enter this universe, where we continue to grow from self to God until we die (death of the body) and move to the final destiny for humans, life with pure energy forever. – QUESTION FOUR: HOW TO SUSTAIN AND NURTURE THE GIFT OF FOREVER IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN? THE SCHOOL OF LOVING OTHERS AS CHRIST LOVES US. Humans have a problem. With this next paradigm shift, we can see the wisdom of God, who gives us what we need to sustain this free choice to love as Christ loved us. God sends Jesus to provide those who choose the spiritual universe the help they need to sustain themselves as they live out their lives amid the condition of Original Sin. The School of Love is to learn how to love others as Christ loved us. That is the only rule we must master, and it takes a lifetime of struggle to move from self to God daily. The third new paradigm, the Christ Principle, is actualized from the Apostles’ time until the end. Christ is the headmaster of the School on how to love others. The Holy Spirit, our second advocate, is present through the Church Universal in each age to provide the energy to make all things new. Christ is present to us today, tomorrow, and forever through the living presence in the Eucharist.
– QUESTION FIVE: HOW TO SUSTAIN AND NURTURE THE INDIVIDUAL’S MIND AND HEART WITH LOVE? I AM LOVED AND ADOPTED SON OR DAUGHTER OF THE FATHER. All paradigms are consecutive and also cumulative. The movement from the beginning of existence to the end is infused with the pure energy of God. Are humans, as individuals, just here for seventy or eighty years and then die off, or is there a reason why Christ founded the school of love? Love is the medium of the spiritual universe. Do you see a pattern in this plan to get humans to live in Heaven? If paradigm three is the WHAT and paradigm four answers the HOW then the next logical progression is to answer WHY. This is the fifth paradigm, the person who is at the free choice of the next shift. It is to support me from my beginning to my end. This paradigm concerns my ability to reason that love is at the center of all reality love is a person, or more specifically, three persons in one nature. All of reality exists so that I can have the opportunity to say, “let it be ” as God thought in paradigm one, as the Father created in paradigm two, and as the Son of God became human to allow us to reason and choose the way, the truth, and the life, in paradigm three, as the Holy Spirit sustained the collective gathering of all those in heaven, on earth, and awaiting purification in paradigm four, as I must make a choice to enter the Kingdom of Heaven using Faith informed by reason, in paradigm five, as I fulfill my destiny created for me from the beginning of time, in paradigm five.
– QUESTION SIX: WHAT IS THE DESTINY OF ALL HUMANS? LIVING IN THE ALPHA AND OMEGA…FOREVER. YOU KNOW YOU ARE GOING TO DIE; NOW WHAT? If you ask, “What caused the physical, and mental universes, don’t forget that this question assumes you also ask, “What happens after there is an end to the physical, mental, and now spiritual universe?” We are back to the beginning again with this exception. It is now the playground of the Supreme Being, where there is only one pure energy that overshadows all physical, mental, and spiritual universes, the pure energy of the nothingness of God. Because of all these paradigm shifts as growth and movement, we have a platform for human consciousness, the ability to reason and choose freely for humans, the option to choose a relationship with the Trinity of God, and a final destiny as humans to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father. However, we don’t quite know all there is to know about that. We have hope that the words of Jesus to us are true. The end of the physical universe, the mental universe, is the beginning, as in paradigm one. Pure energy created reality; pure energy has no beginning and end. Because of the Christ Principle, I am an adopted son of the Father, and I will have no end with the mercy of God.
How can humans live in any place, physical or even spiritual, where the frame of reference is God’s playground and not earth’s? They cannot without help. Fortunately, that help comes from pure energy, knowledge, and love.
Read the reflections of my blog on three universe approaches to reality.
POWER AND GLORY
To clarify, “What is the most powerful object in the universe?” which is the most powerful person you know? My answer is my wife! I had to look it up on Google Search. It turns out that there is a YouTube video on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DFdAHiDljc
Power is one of those exciting phenomena that captivate the curiosity of many of us. In one of my Lectio Divina meditations (Philippians 2:5), I thought about the various kinds of power I had experienced in my lifetime, none of which contained the hyper-nova mentioned above. In the face of such power, humans would not last a nano-second.
As I always do when trying to decipher the reality about me, I use the “three universes” description tool to break down what I observe into three distinct, separate universes, each with its assumptions and measurements. I refer to the physical universe where all time, matter, energy, and humans reside. There is the mental universe, where only humans live (unless you know of some other sentient beings). Finally, there is the spiritual universe, where God lives and encompasses all three universes. This is a universe where you must seek admittance. Let me explain how I use the three universes to distinguish power levels. Let us say that the most powerful object in the physical universe (all matter and time) is a hyper-nova. No question that it can destroy everything around it, and no human or any life form could exist within the range of its influence. But is it the most powerful object in all reality? To answer that, let me ask you a question; “Why is it that you know about a hyper-nova, but it does not know about you?” If you can even ask the question, much less answer it, you live in a universe composed of only humans who have reason and the ability to choose what is good for them, the mental universe, for lack of a better title. We have reason for a reason, and the ability to choose what that reason tells us is good for us. So, we have the physical and mental power to discover the why, where, how, what, and so what of all matter and its properties. We develop languages to search for meaning, both outside and within us. Sciences of the physical universe and the mental universes all have their languages, many of them only known to a few. Humans have learned how to harness some power to help us live more comfortably. Everything in both the physical and mental universes has a beginning and an ending. We humans find ourselves on a rocky planet of gases and water, trying to find out how to use what we must better ourselves. There is the power of a power plant that makes electricity or wind energy to help us light our houses and cook our food. There is an added dimension in the mental universe because of reason and the freedom to choose. Sometimes these choices are bad for either us or society. Humans developed laws to help keep order and to uphold the dignity that “all men are created equal, that their Creator endows them with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” But is that the only type of power that exists in reality? There is another power not accepted by all humans (remember, they can reason and choose whatever they think is good for them), the spiritual universe. In our lifetime, we are defined not by our accomplishments and successes but by the choices we make and their consequences. Remember, you must choose to enter the spiritual universe only if you have an invitation. You accept that gift, and you accept the conditions of membership. You will always be a part of the physical universe.
On top of that, you are a member of the mental universe with all its consequences. The two universes, the platform for life and the platform for human reasoning and choice, are there to allow you to choose the spiritual universe or not. In the mental universe, you begin to realize the importance of immutable values and meaning, especially what it means to love. Why is this? Where does that choice take you? This next level of power is not human at all. It is the power of God, for lack of a better term. How do you know that? Because He revealed it to us. Humans from time immemorial created gods of stone and myth to satisfy a desire for communication with a higher level of power, one outside of themselves. They created gods such as the Greek Pantheon of Gods or Roman deities.
Jesus Christ becomes one of us (Philippians 2:5-12) to tell us how to use the power of being adopted sons and daughters of the Father to know love and serve God and others and be fulfilled as human beings in Heaven. Here are some characteristics of this spiritual universe that you need to be able to do to have the power to move from self to God.
– Heaven is God’s playground, and if you want to play in his sandbox, you must respect His rules. – There is only one rule: “Love one another as I have loved you.”
– Everything in the spiritual universe does not make human sense to the world. In Chapter 4 of the Rule, Benedict provides us with a list of those things we need to do to become more like Christ and less like our sinful and inconsistent selves.
– https://christdesert.org/prayer/rule-of-st-benedict/chapter-4-the-tools- for-good-works/
– Taking up your cross daily means to seek God where you are and as you are. If it is easy, you are probably carrying the wrong cross.
– All power and energy in the spiritual universe come from God. It is the energy of love, the relationship of service between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
– The gulf between God and humans is so great that Christ (Son of God, Savior) had to become one of us to give us a clue of our inheritance as adopted sons and daughters of the Father.
– In the physical and mental universes alone, individual humans are the center of their lives and are happy to do what makes them satisfied. In the physical, mental, and spiritual universes, we can realize the fulness of what it means to be human, not because of personal power but because all reality is in resonance and not dissonance. All existence is One.
– When we say the Lord’s Prayer privately or recite it together in the Eucharist, we say: “For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, Forever and Ever.” In humility, we approach the Father through Christ to make a profession of Faith, The Christ Principle, a daily conversion from self to God.
– https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p4s2.htm
– In our age, being corrupted by hatred and calumny and detractions, there are those whose center is hatred and burn incense at the altars of their selves. These choices seem strong to their believers but will not last long. They have no power. Harboring hatred only hurts you, not the person you hate.
WHAT’S MISSING? ROMANCING REALITY
These three universes each have their purpose, laws, measurement, and power. The constant in all three universes is energy. If my reality contains only physical and mental universes, there seems to be something missing. It is like dark matter that scientists are massaging. They can’t see it, but they hypothesize that it exists because they can measure its effects on the dispersal of galaxies moving away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cadNZJvfl7s
Science connects us with what is real and what is not. Science uses languages (chemistry, physics, mathematics, and logic) to delve more deeply into how things are in our physical and mental universes. It deals with the material universe, its study and inquiry objects, and what can be seen. We don’t need less science and more spirituality; we need more science and more spirituality. There is only one truth, and both the physical and mental universe must align. I think that the spiritual universe is the natural consequence or the missing piece of the actual equation. Granted that all these ideas are my assumptions about what is real and what is not, I can only look around and see how all this fits together. Again, truth is one and not subject to change. What is subject to change are the assumptions we make about what that truly means. Nothing fit when I tried to force all three universes together using the tools I had acquired over a lifetime. By that, I mean, if I look at science and logic as the measurements of what is, the spirituality that I know doesn’t make sense, doesn’t fit. It is the complete opposite of the physical and mental universes to make a more dramatic observation. That cannot be right.
I kept saying for ten or more years. After Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery (Trappist) and the Lay Cistercians acce[ted me as a novice, I began to peek at the part where I fear to go, the door is there, but I am afraid to open it. It took me five years of study and practice having in me the mind of Christ Jesus, sitting on that park bench in the middle of winter and just waiting in silence and solitude. One day, during Lectio Divina meditations, the door opened by itself. Do you know what I found? The other side of the door looked like the side of living where I had just come. All this longing to seek God every day, move from self to God, and have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5) disappointed me.
“Nothing has changed,” I thought, “It is the same world.” But wait! The thoughts that I received were nothing like I had ever imagined before. I could see reality now in three distinct universes, each with different assumptions yet necessary for unity. I realized that I was living in a world of contradictions and ambiguities. Still, now I knew that the spiritual universe contained the opposite of what the physical and mental universes count as meaningful. I am not implying that everything in the physical and mental universe is terrible; far from it. I am saying that the full meaning of being human, the reason for living, is the opposite of the World. This third universe, the spiritual one, is accessed by reason and free choice. I liken it to polar reversals that happen on earth. The earth remains the same, but the shift is in the magnetic North. In one of the paradigm shifts below, I will discuss how these reversals (paradigm shifts) influence what is better—a form of growth from what is good to the movement toward more complexity.
THE FIRST PARADIGM SHIFT:
EVERYTHING HAS A BEGINNING AND AN END — All shifts have a FROM, the default paradigm of current assumptions to the addition of new ones, and a TO, the unique view of reality, not necessarily different but with more knowledge and growth consistent with pure energy.
THE PARADIGM: The pure energy of God does not have a beginning or end and is.
THE NEW PARADIGM SHIFT: The beginning of the physical universe, which has both a beginning and an end, moving because of time from simplicity to complexity.
In the first paradigm shift, everything has a beginning, and an end is the TO part. It is the beginning of matter, time, energy, and gases. One characteristic is that everything in the physical universe has a beginning and an end. Look around you and name something that lasts forever. You will only live seventy or eighty years if you are lucky. All galaxies and stars will dissolve eventually, according to what I read.
The answer comes at the beginning of what is the physical universe. Science gives us a marvelous description of what that might be like, but no one was there to see it. Humans are the only ones that can ask WHY and WHAT and HOW questions about what existed before time. When I ask those questions, using my three-universe hypothesis, I think of how energy is the constant in all three universes, and, as each unique universe and, there are three distinct types of energy, one for the physical universe, one for the mental universe, and one for the spiritual universe. Allow me to elaborate.
Physical energy – We are most familiar with this type of energy. It is the energy of matter within the parameters of space and time. If something happened to our Sun and it flamed out, we would all be goners, dead. We depend on the physical universe as our platform for existence. The human mind and our natural curiosity for why things are and how to improve them have led us to marvelous discoveries about energy.
Characteristics
– The physical universe does not depend upon the mental universe for its existence. The laws of nature govern this universe.
– Everything in the physical universe has a beginning and an end. There is a past, a present, and a future. Everything moves forward in time from what went before.
– Humans are a part of this physical universe and live in it with all other matter and energy, with one exception–they are the only ones that know that they know. Humans are delicate, existing within specific parameters (oxygen, correct temperature, water, immune system to combat diseases).
– Humans have discovered how to harness some energy and use it to make life better. – Astronomy says the universe began some 13 billion years ago. In the fulness of time, life, then humans began to subdue and fill the earth. According to the Genesis account, Adam and Eve, the beginning of humanity, were indeed archetypes for humanity. The mystery paradigm is God, who has no beginning, and no end, became human to save us from just being hostage to what the world says is purpose. The person of Jesus had a beginning but no end. As the archetype of Adam and Eve, he was the chosen one of God, and indeed He was God the Son, revealed to us as such. According to the Scriptures, he suffered, died on the cross, and rose from the dead, all consistent with the literary devices of the time that describe the hero myth. He sustained his real presence through the Holy Spirit for those who gathered in his name and loved others as He loved them. Pentecost is the beginning of this new paradigm and is without end. This unique gathering is a collection of individuals who are one, holy, catholic, and join their Faith in each age with the Apostles through the real presence of the Holy Spirit. All of this so far is so that I can know, love, and serve God in this life and be happy with Him in the next.
Mental energy — Of all the species living on earth, we are the only ones that know that we know. Why is that? We use mental energy to look at the physical universe and try to discover meaning and purpose. Science and logic allow us to look at the macro physical universe and its micro components and draw back the curtain on why and how things are. Mental energy is the power of the collective and individual minds to make life better for all of us. We look at the physical universe with our minds and try to find ways to answer “Why? How? Where? When? How much? and So What?” questions.
Characteristics – Humans are the only ones who live in this universe. Why is that?
– Everything in this universe has a beginning and an end.
– Humans have reason for a reason: to choose between what is good for us and what is bad for us. Humans have been challenged to figure out what is good and what doesn’t work.
– The mental universe is one of the choices we make to move forward. We are defined not by our activities, talents, or station in life. Our choices determine who we are and what we will become.
– The mental universe is where we discover the meaning of love and the purpose of why we are here.
– The energy of the mental universe is enlightenment. It is not physical energy.
– The mental universe provides us with the possibility of moving from the Physical and Mental Universes (the world) to a separate and complimentary universe, the spiritual universe.
– The mental universe permits us to use Faith informed by reason to make choices that do not fit the usual paradigm of nature. We call that supernatural because it does not make complete sense, using the world’s measurements.
– Mental energy is all we know about science, medicine, philosophy, spirituality, and literature. All knowledge helps us figure out what is meaningful and our place in this space and time. – The mental universe is the collective and cumulative knowledge of humanity. It addressed the fundamental questions of life’s purpose and how it all fits together. Science is a vital part of the equation, but it is not alone in its quest for truth. Logic, philosophy, and trends in spiritual thinking also give us a perspective on what is real.
– The mental universe is one of the keys that bring us face to face with the spiritual universe, one that requires an act of the will to enter. No one enters unless they know what they are entering, maybe not totally, but certainly, enough to participate in Baptism.
Spiritual Energy — In this model, spiritual energy is so mysterious and unknowable, just with human reasoning, that we only catch glimpses of what it might be. Spiritual energy is one nature having three persons. It is not three Gods. One God interacts with this pure love, pure knowledge, and pure service. This divine energy is not consumed by using it but is pure energy, 100% of God’s nature, filled to the brim, just like Mary was after the Holy Spirit overshadowed her and filled to the brim with human nature. Humans access spiritual energy by being in their presence and waiting patiently. Our free will given to God through the Holy Spirit can access God’s energy according to the capacity we have within us to receive it. Jesus, possessing both divine and human natures, volunteered to become one of us so that we would even have the rudimentary knowledge of what it means to be an adopted son or daughter of the Father. Jesus showed us how to act (through Scripture) and receive gifts to help us walk through the minefields of life, e.g., Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Healing of body and spirit.
Characteristics – As you will read, this pure energy does not live in the world nor has a beginning and end. This universe has no beginning or end. Yet, God shared his divinity with humans by sending His only begotten Son so they might have life and have it fully.
– This energy is so powerful that it has a distinct nature, one whose beginning is its end. It is living, in as much as we humans can appreciate the meaning of that word.
– This is the universe of the Christ Principle, which makes sense out of the seeming contradiction of the world. (Philippians 2:5-12)
– This spiritual energy does not make sense to the world (physical and mental universes alone) but makes perfect sense when you apply the rule of opposites. This rule (of my model) states that to make sense of the spiritual universe, you must see the opposite of what the world teaches. Even the words such as love, peace, meaning, and purpose have different meanings in the spiritual universe.
– This universe does not contain matter, physical energy, or time or occupies physical space.
– This universe has only one principle, love. This is not loved as the world perceives it, although human love is not bad. It is just that human love will not get you to the kingdom of heaven by itself.
– This universe is alien to the human experience because we do not have measurements to qualify or quantify pure energy. Reason will only take us so far, and then we lack the capability and the capacity to define this universe. In the spiritual universe, we can only see what Heaven is. It is like looking through foggy glass, as St. Paul says in I Corinthians 2:
In the photo below, even though it is in black and white, look at the picture below as to how you can see what awaits us in Heaven. The glass is cloudy and all marked up, a sign of the wear and tear of your life as you spend a lifetime trying to know the purpose of why you are here. You are the cup, and you are filled with love and peace or hatred and jealousy. God will take a drink from your cup when you die and stand before Him to give an accounting of your stewardship. (Matthew 25) What does your life taste like? Is it full of all those times you tried to love God, even if you failed? If God does not like the taste of what is in your cup, He will spit it out. And then what? (Revelations 3:24-25)
I am the cup. The foggy window is what awaits me in Heaven. I fill my cup with Christ.
Read these reflections on the spiritual universe from Scripture. If I use one citation (e.g., John 1:1) to show you the anchor in the Scriptures, I use it as a source. In my writings, I favor putting the full quote in its context rather than just using a sentence to justify my views.
“When I came to you, brothers, proclaiming the mystery of God,^(*)I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom.^(a)2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.^(b) 3 I came to you in weakness^(*)and fear and much trembling, 4 and my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive (words of) wisdom,^(*)but with a demonstration of spirit and power,^(c)5 so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.^(d) The True Wisdom.^(*)6 Yet we do speak a wisdom to those who are mature, but not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away.7 Rather, we speak God’s wisdom,^(*)mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory, 8 and which none of the rulers of this age^(*)knew; for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written:
“What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him,”^(e) 10^(f) this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.
For the Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God. 11 Among human beings, who knows what pertains to a person except the spirit of the person that is within? Similarly, no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God. 12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.^(*)14 Now the natural person^(*)does not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God, for to him it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it, because it is judged spiritually.15 The spiritual person, however, can judge everything but is not subject to judgment^(*)by anyone.16 For “who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him?” But we have the mind of Christ.^(g)”
The spiritual energy in the kingdom of Heaven begins on earth with your baptism and for all of us when Christ loved us so much that he gave up his life for the forgiveness of sin (Original Sin of Adam and Eve). So, at last, we come to the question, “What is the default, the FROM, that caused the TO in this paradigm shift?” I propose that it is pure energy that comes from the Spiritual Universe. It is a universe without a beginning or end. It is a universe without matter, time, physical energy, light, dark energy, or matter. It always was, always is, and always will be at the exact moment. It is the Alpha and the Omega. It is the mystery of Faith. The paradigm shift is from what is without a beginning or end to everything that has a beginning and an end. Human science, philosophy, or reason does not yet have the capability or capacity to grasp concepts beyond their nature (human nature). The paradigm for all reality is the spiritual universe.
The spiritual universe envelopes all matter, time, and energy in the physical and mental universes and surrounds it with Being, like a mother covers her child with a warm blanket. The spiritual universe is the divine nature that consists of three distinct persons. We could not come to this revelation without someone telling us about it. We could not have reasoned to this by human intelligence alone because we did not even know what we did not know and still don’t. Christ became one of us to tell and show us how to live in this spiritual universe, one for which we are aliens. Having a human frame of reference for whatever is meaningful, our nature is incapable of grasping the truth as it is in the spiritual universe. We needed someone human to tell us, “Don’t be afraid. I have your back.”
As I continued my meditations about my meditation, these thoughts about the highly controversial beginning of the physical universe squeezed themselves into my consciousness.
Here are some thoughts from the edge of time itself. That is another way of saying that they are “out there.” This pure energy was the creator of physical, mental, and spiritual energy. There is but one reality with three different types of energy: their characteristics, ways to measure it, and power. This energy corresponds to the physical universe, the mental universe, and also the spiritual universe. As a Lay Cistercian, I use this notion of one reality containing three separate and distinct universes as a template for how I look at anything. My spirituality makes sense to me using this Rule of Threes. There is one other benefit for me. This Rule of Threes answers what reality looks like, the third question each human must ask and respond to fulfill their destiny as a human being.
To review: The Six Questions We must ask and answer before we die.
– What is the purpose of life? (What is the purpose of everything?)
– What is the purpose of my life within that purpose? (What is the center of my life?)
– What does reality look like? (The Rule of Threes)
– How does it all fit together (Six Paradigm Shifts)
– How can I love fiercely? (Pure Energy)
– I know that I am going to die; now what? (Spiritual Universe)
There is more. Pure energy is pure thought, pure love, and pure service (pure being 100% of its divine nature, using a very inadequate human analogy). Each of these dimensions is a distinct person, all having one nature.
THE COMPONENTS OF PURE ENERGY
I. PURE ENERGY: FROM SINGULARITY TO COMPLEXITY Pure energy is a being, a Divine Nature, for lack of a better term. The movement within this Being is from singularity to complexity (One God having three distinct persons, for example). This singularity has three distinct persons (revealed by Jesus Christ), pure knowledge, pure love, and pure service. There is no movement in this Trinity of Persons. It overshadows all that is. There is no time frame within this pure energy because it just is, unlike humans, who must live in a succession of moments. Whatever is created by this singularity (not the black hole singularity) leaves its DNA on its product (the angels and the physical universe). The movement within the physical universe is based on time which has a beginning and an end. Within those parameters, physical energy and mental energy (the power to reason and choose what we have reasoned), matter, energy, time, and space, are subject to the influence of this pure energy, much like our DNA contains the building blocks of who we are and how we will be. This is the first paradigm shift from invisible (pure energy) to visible (matter, time, energy, space, and all life).
The laws of this pure energy are only one law with three dimensions, i.e., knowledge, love, and service. The laws of this pure energy (the physical and mental universe and spiritual universe) are paradigms about knowledge, love, and service. Paradigm shifts happen when these paradigms have moved so much in the fullness of time that they “bubble over” into a new paradigm shift. (See the concepts of Teilhard de Chardin as he describes the movement of all reality from Alpha to Omega.) http://www.teilharddechardin.org/index.php/biography
Movement in the physical, mental and spiritual universes comes from the evolution (don’t freak out at the term) of each universe to reflect the pure energy of its source. Natural law is the foundation of the physical and mental universes. It existed before humans usurped its power with their laws, sometimes in opposition to what comes naturally.
The point: When God touches anything with pure energy, He leaves the imprint of His DNA. With the first paradigm, pure energy connects us with a Word (John 1:1). The physical universe has a beginning and an end, and it naturally begins to march from simplicity to complexity. Can you, as an individual, stop time from its relentless growth to its end? No! With all its sophisticated technology, can humanity stop time from moving even one second? No! Can Christ stop time from moving even one second? Yes! How can this be? By showing us how to live in the spiritual universe, which has no beginning and no end. Death has no more hold over us, St. Paul says. For those who have Faith (God’s energy) and belief (Be it done to me according to your Word), we inherit the Kingdom of Heaven prepared for us since before the beginning of time.
II. PURE ENERGY THAT HAS NO BEGINNING AND END MAKES ALL THINGS NEW.
Pure energy, thought, love, and service exist as One Being with three distinct dimensions (or persons). This interaction has no boundaries, as does matter, time, space, and physical energy. This pure energy created all physical and mental reality with a Word, but one continues to make everything new.
– Using the Rule of Threes model, the physical universe began from the nothingness of pure energy, which created all physical matter and energy by overshadowing the beginning with the principle of Life. – The next level, the principle of Human Life, came from pure energy lifting and overshadowing animality to allow it to be the next level of complexity, i.e., the human being, a separate species, unique to all living things and endowed with the reason and freedom to choose what they had reasoned.
– The third level of complexity was from rationality to spirituality. Pure energy overshadowed Mary in the form of the Holy Spirit to enable human nature to experience a new dimension in keeping with the DNA of God. Everything looked normal both before and after this event. Still, humanity was able to shed its bondage to corruption and imperfection by having the opportunity to be one with Christ, who is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This caused resonance once again and made all things new once more. There is only one rule for the followers of Christ: to love others as He loved us. The Church is the collective believers who must practice what Christ taught us and make new the good news in each age.
III. PURE ENERGY: FROM RESONANCE TO DISSONANCE These two concepts are all about reality aligning up in a condition of equilibrium and natural default. I use this concept of how all truth fits together to help me identify some of the trends in my research on paradigm shifts. Resonance means everything is as it should be, the way it was intended according to its nature and grace. Dissonance means discord, misalignment, being off- balance, not hitting the mark, and sin. I can discern resonance in the cosmic sense (the physical universe), how humans are endowed with reason, the ability to choose what they reason (the mental universe), and the capstone. This spiritual universe holds reality together. Let me share a Lectio Divina experience about resonance some time ago. (Philippians 2:5). I have been intrigued with the subject of one reality with various components, such as simplicity to complexity, nothingness creating somethingness, and resonance to dissonance.
IV. DEEP DIVE INTO RESONANCE AND DISSONANCE AND WHY IT MATTERS TO THE PARADIGM SHIFTS
What follows comes from a blog I wrote some months ago about how everything fits with the Christ Principle. https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org
My latest Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5) has taken me to a place I would never have thought possible, linking Christ as the Messiah and the fulfillment of the Old and New Testaments. The way my thinking progressed, as I sat in silence and solitude, waiting for Christ to visit me as I sat on my park bench in the dead of winter, was in terms of resonance or dissonance. To ensure that I don’t fly with false colors, let me say from the outset that my opinions come from beyond the edge of space and time (Holy Spirit) and reflect only my thoughts, not those of any Lay Cistercian group of Cistercian (Trappist) writings. These are my thoughts. Take them for what they are.
Once God (pure energy) touches something, and by this, I mean it is present in it, several things happen. This presence is so powerful that it creates something for its nothingness. Paradoxically, the nothingness of God, the sign of contradiction, makes its imprint, its DNA, on everything.
For behold! I make all things new.
As I always do, I begin with the hope of contemplation on Philippians 2:5. “Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” While waiting for Christ to visit me on a park bench in the dead of winter, I thought about why Christ had to become one of us (human nature). The notion of the Messiah coming to rescue his people is lost on me, and I suspect anyone who is not Jewish. I am living in the year 2020, far removed from the prickly problems facing the transition of the Church from Twelve Tribes to Twelve Apostles. I place my faith in the reality of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, a “sine qua non” of belief (I love to use that phrase). If the resurrection did not happen, as St. Paul writes, Christ is not God but, like many devout Jewish believers think, just one more in a line of false messiahs. Belief is a position or something spiritual and does not depend on the believer to be true. There is a struggle between what is true and what I think is true. My belief does not make something accurate, but what is true makes me believe through the pure energy of God (Faith). How can some people believe in one God and others in one God but with three distinct persons, one of whom is Jesus the Messiah? Are these poles symptomatic of something more significant going on in reality?
V. PURE ENERGY IS NOT MEASURABLE WITH ANY YARDSTICKS THAT HUMANS USE.
If, as I have come to believe, there are three separate, distinct universes, all making up one reality, how we approach each of these three levels of reality is essential. The scientific approach to reality is that everything has the exact measurements and assumptions about what is real. It is correct if you use this approach to look at what is. It falls short of any explanation if you do not admit to the premises. What about the concept that God has no beginning nor end and created all that has a beginning and an end? How could you verify that this is true? The purpose of the third paradigm shift was to make known what could not be reasoned to by the human mind. This third paradigm shift needed pure energy to lift human nature from being only an animal nature forever.
VI. PURE ENERGY: THE PARADOX OF ALL THAT IS: THE COSMIC STRUGGLE OF SEEMING OPPOSITES
Are these two opposite positions part of some larger design, more cosmic, more sophisticated than we could have ever imagined? This is getting far afield of Lectio Divina, don’t you think?
There is a concept out there call the theory of everything, popularized by a book and a movie of the same name, about the late, great Steven Hawking and his quest to find one view of the physical universe. I have been developing a theory of existence for the past thirty years. I am not a trained scientist, nor do I aspire to be. I do try to think about a unified theory of all that is and have come up with the notion of three separate universes, each distinct yet all one. My criticism of this approach, although admirable, is that it assumes a reality that is only one of three universes (the physical universe and not the mental or spiritual universes). The characteristics and measurements for each universe are entirely different. In one of them, the spiritual universe is directly opposite from that of both the physical and mental universes.
Here is where I use the Rule of Threes to examine reality.
THE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE: In my model, the physical universe is all that we can see or reason with the aid of our human languages. All physical matter, space, time, every star, and the black hole, all exploding hypernovas, all live anywhere in the universe. Humans, all animals, plants, even mosquitoes are part of this observable universe. The problem with this universe has always been, why do we humans know about it, but it does not know about us? There must be a purpose and reason why we find ourselves on this rocky platform of gases. Humans are part of this universe and all other life forms because it forms the base for our existence. Why do we not find lifeforms on other planets, anywhere?
THE MENTAL UNIVERSE: This universe answers the questions about the Physical Universe. Only humans live in this universe. It is the universe of reason. Why do only humans have the ability to build languages, discover relationships, and seek to find the meaning of all that is? You don’t ask your pet dog what time it is, although it will let you know when they are hungry. Without the Mental Universe, no one would ask why it is, how it is, what it is, and so what? The two attributes that separate us from the animals are: you can reason for a reason, and, based on that reasoning, you can make choices free from nature or any other ideology. There must be a reason we find ourselves on this rock, the only persons we know of, anywhere. There must be a reason humans developed from other life forms with the ability to reason and to select what is good for them. For me, the theory of everything just looks at the physical universe using the mental universe to find meaning. The problem is that this is incomplete, something is missing, something like 1 + 1 =, and there is no answer. I am not playing the game that says all science is lacking in perspective. Tell me, which person would you want to perform ear surgery on you, a priest or a board-certified ENT physician? Science is the only discipline that can move us forward to even more remarkable discoveries about reality.
For me, this led to a third universe, one which we could not have either reasoned to or chosen without someone giving us the code. THE SPIRITUAL UNIVERSE: We are discovering so much about physical reality through the sciences and literature. If left only to science and logic, humans would never have accessed a level of consciousness that does not fit the physical and mental universe paradigm. We don’t do well with invisible relationships. The problem with invisibility is you can’t see it. This universe has to do with solving the equation of what is real. Reality is not just what we can see but what we cannot see. Not all religious traditions can transform you into what you were designed to be. This is why you have reason and why there is an earth to give you time to discover the code of eternity. You can choose whatever you find out and place at the center of your life. This is the energy source that will propel you to the next reality, one for which we need to begin preparing in this lifetime. Again, the energy that has no beginning or ending pops up to propel us to look at reality as the opposite of what the World says is real. It does not make sense, and it should not. Christ told us that we must lose our lives to gain them. For me, this is the explanation that makes sense to a question that seems to have no answer. Think about it. The nothingness of pure energy, the Christ Principle, the sign of contradiction, is the answer to how all reality makes sense. Once again, I am only speaking of the macro level of how things fit together. Science seeks to make all things new through knowledge, scientific inquiry, asking why something is and how it works. The spiritual universe aims to make individuals (including scientists) new to love others and prepare to live Forever with pure energy.
It is interesting to note the interdependence of the three universes. The physical universe exists, the platform for where we find ourselves today. All matter, all time, all energy has a beginning and an end, including each one of us. That is the paradigm in which we humans wake up to the reality of where we are and who we are. As we look around us, we notice that we are not like the other animals we have as pets or food (pork and beef). We have something they don’t have self-awareness. Where does that come from all of a sudden? Did it randomly happen by chance, or is it part of a larger dynamic, the language of which we are not familiar? The mental universe allows us to look at the physical world and ask why, how, when, where something is. Far from being anti-spiritual, the physical and mental universes exist for us to wonder about all this and seek a conclusion. I like to think of it as being in dissonance or without purpose, even though we might know the meaning of the physical and the mental universe. Now comes the seeming paradox, the spiritual universe, the solution to the equation of life. The resonance to the dissonance of the cosmos is the opposite of what the physical and mental universe holds is real. Reason and free choice allow each individual to choose to live in this universe or not. The choices are clear: you are the center of reality, or God is the center. Every time you choose yourself as the center of existence, there is dissonance; every time you choose God as your center, there is resonance. That is how nature is. This concept is so alien to the human way of thinking that God Himself had to tell us how to be authentically human, and he did it in stages.
Three Stages of Reality
Stage one is the creation of the physical universe. All living things live here, including humans. This stage uses the natural law (What would happen if humans did not intervene?). The giant cosmic intervention goes from nothing (pure energy) to what we can observe and know about the universe present to us now.
Stage two is the creation of the mental universe. Adam was fashioned from the earth, and Eve came from Adam’s rib. Only humans here. Humans can reason and have the freedom to choose what they reason, but with consequences to each choice. Our choices define who we are, not our abilities. Adam and Eve had a chance to choose God but chose themselves instead. This was a poor choice and resulted in dissonance with God until Christ would restore it. All reality was thrown into chaos by this choice. Humans would never regain resonance with God by themselves, even with all their sacrifices and prayers. All humans born of the flesh are subject to the laws of nature, but their destiny is to live with God forever as adopted sons and daughters. That was not going to happen until God Himself rescued us from the grip of death and took on the nature that, in Philippians 2:5-12 tells us, is akin to being a slave. This YES from the Blessed Mother was not only a nice-sounding gesture meant to edify the pious. Still, it was the nexus between the physical and mental universes and the addition of the spiritual universe. In terms of a cosmic, polar shift, reality had changed. It looked the same, it smelled the same, and no one even noticed that now, the beginnings of cosmic resonance were falling into place.
Stage three is the creation of the spiritual universe. Only humans and God live in this universe. This universe uses reason and free choice, as does the physical and mental universes but with a difference. Humans must use their reason to choose God as their center and not themselves. The purpose of this universe is to bring all things together as one, once more, to restore relationship with God once more, to create resonance in time and space once more. Those who choose this way must continue to struggle against the effects of the flesh (physical and mental universes) each day.
Let’s look at these three universes of reality. Each one is quite different, each one with its purpose, each having measurements that may vastly stretch the mind of those trying to cram all reality into just one universe, the physical one. Rather than thinking something is wrong with science or that spirituality is a bunch of personal opinions that cannot possibly be true, all three universes fit nicely together. Science continues to explain how the physical universe is, why it is, and how it is. Science is limited because the spiritual universe turns logic upside down. God’s playground is the opposite of what the world, physical and mental universes, think. Only the Messiah of God has the code to unlock the consequences of that Original Sin of Adam and Eve. Read Romans 5. The Messiah would be one to unlock the gates of Heaven to give us a chance, like the chance He gave to Adam and Eve, to enter the spiritual universe. He would be a sign of contradiction to the gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews; Everything He says would not make sense to those who just have the mind of the world, thinking that they are God. Everything he says would make complete sense to those who are filled with the Spirit of Truth at Baptism and use that grace to make real what cannot be seen and hear what cannot be heard. None of this is a secret or the exclusive knowledge of a group to be kept pure from other forms of thinking (Gnostics). It is to be catholic, that is, open to all who accept the gift of faith into their hearts, thus becoming adopted sons and daughters of the Father. Jesus is the great teacher of how to live our lives to resonate with all reality. To do that, we must die to ourselves to rise to a new life in Christ. Again, none of this makes sense to the world (physical and mental universes) unless Christ is indeed the Messiah, the one St. John the Baptist asked: “are you the one, or should we look for another?” (Matthew 11:3)
Once again, sounding like a never-ending story, we face two choices, both of which have consequences, for being resonant or dissonant. These are cosmic choices as well as personal ones. Remember, you have reason for a reason and the ability to choose what you reason. The Messiah in my thinking would not be someone to free me from the power of the Romans or Arabs or whomever, but rather free me from the tyranny of becoming my god, the consequences of which are dissonance with the rest of reality.
It is the reason why, as a Lay Cistercian, I focus on reading Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict as one of my Cistercian practices each day
https://christdesert.org/prayer/rule-of-st-benedict/chapter-4-the-tools- for-good-works/
Making the resurrection real each day is now my goal. That is another way of saying that my mindset at this moment is trying to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus each day. I use the practices and charisms of Cistercian spirituality to provide structure and accountability.
I began thinking that science, the study of the physical phenomenon with the languages of mathematics, chemistry, physics, research, and wonder, doesn’t fit with the spiritual universe. I am at the point in my thinking that says when you burn away all of the dross of truth about reality, what remains, however improbable, is what it is, even if it does not make sense to the world. I am not implying that scientific inquiry into our physical and mental universe is somehow flawed or evil. I am stating that reality contains more than we can see and measure with the instruments we use to look at what is real.
Baptism provides each of us with the sign of contradiction, a paradox to the world, which is the cross. We carry that with us throughout our whole lifetime. We use the Church Universal to help us anchor, in times of storm and sail in times of challenge and everyday living. We have not been left orphans in each age, subject to being seduced by Satan without hope of any help. We have Christ, Son of God, Savior as our brother and the Father, who has said that we are adopted sons and daughters and will inherit the kingdom. It is what the Messiah is. My wish will not make the Messiah real, but the real Messiah will allow me the energy to make the resurrection accurate in my heart.
I. PURE ENERGY: FROM THE POWER OF NOTHINGNESS TO THE FORMATION OF SOMETHINGNESS THAT HAS A BEGINNING AND AN END, GOD LEAVES THE IMPRINT OF HIS DNA
Of course, you are probably thinking, this is just your opinion. Of course, it is. Who else’s opinion would it be? Maybe that is not the right question to ask. I prefer to think of myself using the help of the Holy Spirit to go places no one wants to go, i.e., in that darkened room inside me where I alone can ponder the great questions that have haunted humans since time immemorial. Here are my six questions. These six questions and the search for reasonable answers are why this book exists.
– What is the purpose of all life?
– What is the purpose of my life within that purpose?
– What does reality look like?
– How does it all fit together?
– How to love fiercely?
– You know you are going to die, now what?
Later on, you will read a more detailed explanation of each of the questions in this reflection. For now, just know that my answer to question number four, “How does it all fit together?” is the same answer I have based on six paradigm shifts.
Humans don’t have a language to explain the complexity of a divine nature, so we say it is a Mystery of Faith. The cosmic sense of having everything in the physical universe at the beginning begins with pure energy. The problem is, we don’t have the human experience of what or who pure energy is. Pure energy, or 100% of God’s nature, is beyond the capability or our capacity to grasp that the nothingness of God is greater than that which He created (the physical universe).
POINTS OF IMPORTANCE
– What has no beginning and no end created a beginning and an end, the physical universe?
– The law of nature directs all time and matter to its destiny. Time is the measure humans use to calculate the beginning to the end of what is.
– Humans live in this physical universe as the platform of life.
– As far as we know, the earth is the only planet that supports various life forms. Why is that?
– The spiritual universe surrounds and envelopes all matter and time and allows it to seek its nature. Everything has a beginning and an end in the physical universe.
– The spiritual universe is beyond human comprehension. It is one nature containing three distinct persons. All three are one. – Each of these paradigms and their shifts exists because a living being, who possesses reason and the freedom to choose, said a Word that moved them forward. What was that Word? “Let it be! Yes!” The only energy capable of driving time and creating resonance from dissonance is the nature we call God.
– March 7 is the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P., the great Doctor of the Church with an even greater love for the Blessed Sacrament. These three persons exist in pure energy, using 100% of their nature, producing pure love, pure service, sharing this love with all it touches. After completing what many learned scholars think is the Church’s most crucial systematic explanation of theology, he never finished it using the categories of Aristotle. God is so unknowable that we can only know him by what he is not.
– The divine intelligence left its DNA on all of the physical universes. Not only does physical time move from Alpha to Omega, but there are stages of growth. This viewpoint is how I view evolution, moving from simplicity to complexity.
– Read the comments from Father Alban Butler (1711-1773) https://archive.org/stream/ButlersLivesOfTheSaintsCompleteEdition/Butl ersLivesOfTheSaintsCompleteEdition_djvu.txt
“During his second, as during his first, period in Paris the university was torn by dissensions of different kinds, and in 1272 there was a sort of ” general strike ” among the faculties, in the midst of which St Thomas was recalled to Italy and appointed regent of the study-house at Naples. It was to prove the last scene of his labors. On the feast of St Nicholas the following year, he celebrated Mass when he received a revelation that so affected him that he wrote and dictated no more, leaving his great work, the Summa Theologiae, unfinished. To Brother Reginald’s expostulations, he replied, ” The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.”
In his Gospel John1:1, he speaks as a poet when he describes what is essentially undefinable, which existed before there was a beginning and an end to everything. The Word denotes reason, and the free choice was to enable the physical and mental universes to prepare us to do what we need to get to Heaven to be with the Father. How eloquent and profound are these words about how reality began, written by God through St. John. (John 1:1)
“1 In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.2 He was at the beginning with God. 3 All things came to be through him, and without him, nothing came to be. What came to be 4through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; 5 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (www.usccb.com)
PURE ENERGY: THE ENDURING POWER OF LOVE. There is nothing more upsetting to one who measures reality only in the physical universe with the measurements of the mental universe than applying the analogy of the complex interaction between gases and atoms in nuclear fusion (that powers the Sun) to what happens when authentic love (100% pure knowledge. 100% pure love and 100% pure service interact. It produces a power we can’t even bring into our limited frame of existence, much less measure it. But the ironic thing is, it can and is calculated each day.
Do you remember the story of the grasshopper in the television series Kung Fu? To those who seem blind to those who look at reality only with their minds, these paradigm shifts make no sense whatsoever. And, they would be correct if there was only one theory of everything with only one set of measurements. What if three separate universes are interconnected with the pure energy of love, so great that it is living, a Supreme Being that does not live in space or time? How can you see that, being a broken-down, old temple of the Holy Spirit? My response: how is it you cannot? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbNCBVzPYak
II. THE SECOND PARADIGM SHIFT: FROM ANIMALITY TO RATIONALITY —
THE OLD PARADIGM: The existence of the physical universe which has a beginning and an end and which moves from simplicity to complexity
THE NEW PARADIGM SHIFT: The movement of the physical universe to the beginning of the mental universe where only humans have reason and the ability to choose.
You will notice that, in my model, each successive paradigm shift builds on the one before it. Where do you get this new paradigm shift? Was it always there? I asked myself the question, “Why are humans the only living beings that know that we know, and why is that?” To even ask that question means I am not like my pet dog, Tucker, nor any animal, bird, or mammal. I enjoy watching YouTube videos on the distances between Galaxies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy7NzjCmUf0 Something happened to cause this paradigm shift from the physical universe (all matter, all energy, time, and all life) as the platform for all living things. But, and here is the paradigm shift, one species made it from animality to rationality. In all of reality, humans are alone in this mental universe (unless we identify other alien species). Why is that? What do humans have that other living things don’t? The Jesuit philosopher, cosmologist, and paleontologist, Henri Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., wrote a book entitled The Phenomenon of Man (Human).
In part, I take my understanding of reality from his notion of movement from matter, life, thought, and spirituality. In the first paradigm, reality begins with a mind and consciousness that is itself three persons in one nature: divine. This living reality created the physical universe, which we take for granted. This Unknowable Being left a divine DNA imprinted on reality as it moves from the beginning to the end, part of the natural progression. In the second paradigm shift, this DNA evolved from matter, time, gases, planets, galaxies, earth, life on earth to rudimentary rationality. Like time itself, life keeps progressing towards the Omega Point in the future. Humans live in a separate universe, the mental one and a physical one, which contains the platform for life. This is a cosmic paradigm shift, not dependent on humanity for its existence but grounded in the natural flow of consciousness as it moves toward Omega. Once again, what propelled pure energy to create that which has no beginning and no end, now took animality or all life to this point and lifted humans to a new level of cosmic resonance. The core of this new universe, the mental universe in which only humans exist, is a continued evolution of consciousness. The pure energy here is pure knowledge shared with our archetypal progenitors. Genesis speaks of Adam and Eve having that which other living things did not have, reason and free choice. There was a test, one that involved knowledge, human knowledge. Adam and Eve failed this test, which involved not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. The Genesis account of creation is the most profound commentary on the human condition I have ever read.
POINTS OF IMPORTANCE
The only power capable of moving from animality to rationality is divine nature. God’s DNA was the natural (I use this word advisedly) progression contained in that original Word. (John 1:1) This second paradigm shift is triggered by divine nature, God, but more specifically by one person, The Lord of Creation and Life, The Father. This person is creator, pure knowledge, pure love, pure service, and pure energy.
Reality began with consciousness, one that has no beginning nor end, pure energy, pure thought, pure love, and pure service. That concept does violence to our reasoning if all we use to see reality is just the scientific model that we can only believe in what we can see and measure.
Reality so far has two universes that of the physical world, the platform humans use to exercise their ability to reason and to choose what they have asserted.
Reality is not only the physical manifestation of matter, energy, time, progression. There is a dimension that not only can ask WHY, HOW, HOW FAR, WHAT IS ITS COMPOSITION, but an invisible one that seeks to looked deeper into reality to see meaning, purpose, causality, the evolution of consciousness, and beauty.
Poets and writers probe about the meaning of life and ask the question, WHY? HOW DOES IT ALL FIT TOGETHER? and THE MEANING OF LOVE. Scientists and philosophers investigate WHY? HOW? WHAT? WHEN? and WHERE? to discover reality using the various languages of mathematics, physics, medicine, and chemistry, nationalities, and literature. All of this is not only good but needed for us to keep searching for the truth. Why do only humans have the ability to reason and to make choices that affect them? Choices all have consequences. Life is about choosing the correct choice.
Humans all have God’s DNA. St. Augustine says, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”
For me, moving from self to God means I become more and more aware of that divine imprint in my daily seeking of the truth. So, what is the measurement I must use to discover what is valid in all of reality?
III. THE THIRD PARADIGM
THE OLD PARADIGM: The movement of the physical universe to the beginning of the mental universe where only humans have reason and the ability to choose.
THE NEW PARADIGM: Movement from the physical universe and the mental universes to the addition of the spiritual universe,
Philippians 2:5-12 is my “go-to” statement for this dynamic. When I use the word “principle,” I think of it as the spokes of a wheel that allows movement and action. It is that which flows from anything in any way. In this sense, using the paradigm shift from rationality (the World) to spirituality (the Spirit), that which has no beginning nor end (God) becomes human (that which has a start and end). If you remember, in the first paradigm shift, that which has no beginning nor end created all time, matter, physical energy, and life. In the third paradigm shift, God, once again, re-created reality so that humanity could fulfill its rightful destiny and claim adoption as sons and daughters of the Father. This shift was a change in the fabric of time itself, not physical or mental time, but the addition of spiritual time, which has no beginning nor end. We use terms to describe it (not define it), such as the Kingdom of Heaven.
Jesus Christ is the historical figure that is the shift in this third paradigm, the Christ Principle, one through whom all reality in the past flows and the center that points to Omega through which all truth makes sense.
There is always a person at the core of any paradigm shift, i.e., from rationality to spirituality.
Jesus, Son of God, became human with all its limitations (except sin) to tell us and show us in person how to prepare to live in a condition of pure love, pure energy, pure knowledge, and pure service. But how can God become one of us that is consistent with natural law? He must be born like all of us.
Here we encounter one of the most extraordinary examples of God’s love for humanity, to select a humble woman to be the mother, the one to nurture and teach God only begotten Son. Mary, the Church’s mother, was chosen by God to be the occasion for this third paradigm shift, but only if she consented wholly and freely.
Through Mary and the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, that which has no beginning nor end, entered into our world to allow us to live with God forever, even though we were imperfect, sinful, and not divine. Christ is the principle because it is only through him, with him, and in him that we can approach the Father in union with the Holy Spirit.
Christ revealed there is one God but three separate persons, each being Lord of a paradigm. God is Lord of the first paradigm. The Father is Lord of all creation which includes humans (the physical universe and mental universe). The Son is the Lord of the Spiritual Universe who paid the price by dying on the cross for our redemption. He rose from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, awaiting each of us as Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior. (John 20:30-31.) The Holy Spirit is our second advocate, the Lord of God’s energy for the Church with Christ as the head, and we the members, who gather together to fulfill our destiny as humans. There is only one God, living and true, but three distinct persons, as revealed to us by Jesus Himself.
– As the Christ Principle, everything that came before Him, all reality, is because of Him.
– As the Christ Principle, He transforms rationality to spirituality because of his love for us.
– As the Christ Principle, everything that came after Christ has a new meaning, one that allows humans to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father and to claim our inheritance in Heaven.
– Only God has the capability, the energy to move humanity from rationality to spirituality.
– The Christ Principle brings resonance and harmony to all reality (physical, mental and spiritual universes).
– For us now, and in each age, since the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Apostles, we are free to approach the Father with honor and glory due to His name, but only with, through, and in the transformative power of Christ Jesus, our redeemer, and our messiah. – We can approach the Father only through the Son with the energy of the Holy Spirit. No one has seen the Father, only the Son or anyone to whom He has revealed him.
– The Christ Principle is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. As St. Paul writes in his letter to the Hebrews, Chapter 13:
“Let mutual love continue. 2 Do not neglect hospitality, for, through it, some have unknowingly entertained angels.^(a) 3 Be mindful of prisoners as if sharing their imprisonment, and of the ill-treated as of yourselves, for you also are in the body.^(b) 4 Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge the immoral and adulterers.^(c) 5 Let your life be free from love of money but be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never forsake you or abandon you.”^(d) 6 Thus we may say with confidence: “The Lord is my helper, [and] I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?”^(e) 7 Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. 8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.^(f) 9 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teaching.^(*)It is good to have our hearts strengthened by grace and not by foods, which do not benefit those who live by them.^(g) 10 We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.11The bodies of the animals whose blood the high priest brings into the sanctuary as a sin offering are burned outside the camp.^(h) 12 Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the gate to consecrate the people by his own blood. 13 Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach that he bore.14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come.^(j) 15 Through him [then] let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name 16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have; God is pleased by sacrifices of that kind.^(l) 17^(*) Obey your leaders and defer to them, for they keep watch over you and will have to give an account, that they may fulfill their task with joy and not with sorrow, for that would be of no advantage to you. 18 Pray for us, for we are confident that we have a clear conscience, wishing to act rightly in every respect. 19 I especially ask for your prayers that I may be restored to you very soon. 20^(*)May the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant, Jesus our Lord,^(m) 21 furnish you with all that is good, that you may do his will. May he carry out in you what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever [and ever]. Amen. 22 Brothers, I ask you to bear with this message of encouragement, for I have written to you rather briefly. 23 I must let you know that our brother Timothy has been set free. If he comes soon, I shall see you together with him.^(n) 24 Greetings to all your leaders and to all the holy ones. Those from Italy send you greetings. 25 Grace be with all of you.^(o)”
This Chapter is a wonderful checklist for the Hebrews to put before them how to love Christ as He loved us. Remember, the word for Messiah is Mashiach in Hebrew. (the anointed by God) The word Christ means the anointed one and refers to Him as Messiah. I write down the whole passage so you can get the feeling expressed by St. Paul and hopefully transform yourself into that which you read.
In my model, which has a beginning and an end, the World is lifted by God (no beginning nor end) so that humans may become adopted sons and daughters of the Father. God has a problem, that of being of divine nature. Remember, there is animal nature, human nature, and divine nature. Only God could move humanity (Adam and Eve) from animality to rationality. Only the divine essence could lift up rationality to spirituality. The difficulty is humans are not divine, only human, yet God wants our destiny to be one where we can share in the inheritance planned for us from before the beginning of the first paradigm. Read Matthew 25 very carefully and very slowly.
The Judgment of the Nations.”^(*)31^(f)“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, 32 and all the nations^(*)will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.33 He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34 Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.35^(h) For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 naked and you clothed me, ill, and you cared for me, in prison, and you visited me.’37Then the righteous^(*) will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’40^(i) And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ 41 Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.42^(k) For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,43a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’44^(*) Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’45He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’46 ^(l)and these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/25
Put another way, how can humans, who only live in reality with a beginning and an end, move from those limitations to exist in a foreign reality, the Kingdom of Heaven, where there is no time, space, physical energy, and matter? That does make sense to those just using the measuring stick of science and that of logic. The Christ Principle is the way, the truth, and the life.
POINTS OF IMPORTANCE
All paradigms build on all the ones that precede them. In moving from rationality to spirituality (the Spiritual Universe), there is a cosmic paradigm shift. Once again, it begins with a person making a choice, in this case, Mary, choosing to obey the will of the Father and be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit so that her Son, both God, and Man, would have the freedom to redeem us from Original Sin. (Philippians 2:5-12)
Reality so far has two universes that of the physical world, the platform humans used to exercise their ability to reason and to choose what they have reasoned. This third universe, the spiritual one, is the movement of spiritual apes from their ability to reason to the second choice for that reasoning– God, who, if you remember, started reality with His Word. (John 1:1).
Up to this point, there was no option, only the physical universe, and the mental universe, which together make up what St. Paul calls The World. If humans were going to fulfill the DNA of God, they must move to this next deepest level of reality, the Spirit.
The source of energy for the third paradigm shift is the same as for the first one. We call God, which has no beginning nor end, opened up to us the spiritual universe. This is the pure energy of God becoming human nature in the form of Jesus Christ. As an individual, The Kingdom of Heaven begins with our Baptism and ends with our claiming our inheritance as an adopted son or daughter…Forever.
This third paradigm shift, the Christ Principle, gave humans another option rather than just having a beginning and an end. In this option, revealed by God, through Jesus Christ, humans use their reason to choose to enter a universe without beginning or end. And it begins with the Christ Principle, the way, the truth, and the life.
As I like to view it, this is a universe or playground where God’s rules apply, not those of the World. It is like the free choice that Mary had when she accepted her destiny in the Faith of the Holy Spirit, like the free choice of Christ to empty Himself to take on our nature and freely suffer and die to save us from just one option (the physical and mental universes). This paradigm allowed those who wish to choose to become adopted sons and daughters of the Father through, with, and in the loving heart of Jesus Christ, who is both God and human. It is the template for those to follow in Faith.
THE FULFILLMENT OF THE PAST AND THE SIGN OF CONTRADICTION FOR THE FUTURE
This third paradigm, the spiritual universe, is where the Christ Principle transforms reality that preceded Him and fulfilled the spiritual heritage that led up to his passion, death, and resurrection. Jesus told us that he did not come to destroy but to fulfill what went before. (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:36)
If humans find themselves able to reason and choose, and if the two choices are: The World and its meaning and The Spirit, and its meaning, then there are some vast hurdles for humans to jump. It goes from what their human experience tells them to someone that may not seem logical, indeed the opposite of what they know. If you feel like all this God stuff doesn’t make sense and is illogical, you have two possibilities: you are correct, and none of it makes sense, or it does make sense, but you can’t see how this dissonance can lead to resonance.
A reminder: what the World teaches is not all bad as much as it is incapable of lifting us up to the next level of our evolution. The Christ Principle, the personification of the sign of contradiction and paradox to those who make their assumptions about reality with the World’s view, makes all things new and is the cornerstone that the builders rejected. Once we enter this realm or universe, the Kingdom of Heaven, everything is the opposite of what the World teaches. It is just incomplete in terms of our ultimate destiny, to be sons and daughters of the Father.
Using God’s gift of Energy to humans, we enter the Spiritual Universe (the Kingdom of Heaven) through Baptism and now find ourselves as pilgrims in a foreign land. Our destiny is not of this world, although we must live in it until we die. The Christ Principle becomes the Center for reality because of him as our advocate. We can exist in this next level of human existence without frying our neurons. The Christ Principle is “light from light and true God of true Gods,” as we recite in the Nicene Creed. All of us are linked together with Christ as the head, and we are components of His body. Time continues to tick down from Alpha and Omega.
This third paradigm shift was so significant that God Himself had to come down to reveal what we humans could not figure out just with reason alone. (Philippians 2:5-12) Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God, is the Messiah proclaimed by all the Prophets. He was, and is, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. The Christ Principle is Lord of Salvation and an advocate who stands with us as we make our way down whatever life throws at us. This new paradigm is the fulfillment of the first two. It is the product of God’s DNA with the beginning of time, space, matter, and energy. It is why we have reason for a reason and the ability to choose what we reason freely. It is why we have purpose and meaning to a reality that lacks the big WHY by itself.
This third paradigm shift is similar to that of a spaceship. The first stage or the main engines propel human nature off its base with the energy that only God can provide. This second stage is one where humanity continues its way to its destiny using God’s power to lift up to the next level of resonance, where humans use their reason and free will to choose to continue the journey to Omega either with their own resources or to use the maps provided by God. The third stage is the consequence of choosing the way of God versus the course of the World. This third stage is the spiritual boost from God’s own energy to help us navigate the perils of a journey without knowing how to use the instruments God provided us to reach our destiny. Humans would never have arrived at this third paradigm by reason alone, no matter how much sophistication they used with science and logic. This third stage is not the realm of the human mind nor any language we create. Remember the story in Genesis of the Tower of Babel? This is an archetypal story of how humans won’t move to God without using God’s language. God sent us Himself in the form of Jesus. (Philippians 2:5), to not only show us how to live in such a way that we can learn the language of one God, that of pure knowledge (the Father), pure love (the Son), and pure service (the Spirit). It is the language of the sign of contradiction, where logic is turned topsy turvy, not destroyed, mind you. Still, with the coming of the Christ Principle and fulfillment of the heroic myth paradigm, all existence that comes after the Resurrection event changes the assumptions humans had or will ever have about what is valid. Our direction is to be sons and daughters of the Father and spend time beyond our death enjoying the happiness of God. This third paradigm shift enabled us to see WHY all of this took place, although we still see, as St. Paul says, with foggy lenses. That is why I have adopted this photo of the window that is steamed up with me being the cup, trying to fill myself up with Christ Jesus.
I am the cup, and Christ fills me with His love if I allow it. I long to see what is on the other side of the window, one that I can catch a glimpse of what awaits me.
This third paradigm shift means that we now have a way to communicate directly with God that is a step up from the Old Testament, not better than, but fulfilled. This third paradigm turns what we think we know about God on its head. Rather than using the categories of the world (physical and mental universes alone) to measure the spiritual universe, Jesus, Son of God, shows us how to claim our inheritance as adopted sons and daughters of the Father but maintain that Spirit in each age and the heart of each individual. Christ died on the cross for all humans, even if they don’t recognize it or know about it.
If Christ is the Master Teacher, he founded a school to love others as He loves us. This moves us towards the next paradigm shift, the fourth time the cosmic paradigm shifted. Love is the energy of God in the Trinity. In His divine wisdom and love, God shared with humans that energy. But there is a problem. Humans have human nature, and the gulf between humans and the divine is too great for us to jump using our physical and mental universes. God had to reach across this impenetrable gulf and become one of us. (Philippians 2:5-12) This act of supreme, unconditional love had to include not only being born and being a teacher in how to love others as He has loved us but also being willing to give up his life on the cross so that we have the opportunity to enter the spiritual universe. As Christ voluntarily gave His life for us, He asks us to do the same by entering the spiritual universe through Baptism and ratifying the sustaining energy of the Holy Spirit daily. This brings us to the next paradigm shift, where humans in each generation seek God through their daily experiences and contacts with reality. When Christ founded a school of Love, being the Master teacher, He did not leave his disciples abandoned. The Church is the continuation of his work, but with a few exceptions. Unlike many people who found schools of thinking, this school was a living part of His presence in each age. The teacher would trust his disciples to take this message of faith, hope, and love to the world as part of the following significant paradigm shift.
Christ is the Messiah awaited by the prophets and foretold in their writings. The Jews saw his coming of the time, and even now, as their exclusive savior to perpetuate a people of the covenant with God. Read what Jewish rabbis say about the messiah. https://www.aish.com/jl/li/m/The-Messiah-in- Judaism.html?s=rab Remember, you are given reason for a reason and the ability to choose for a purpose. A Jew or a Catholic might hold differing views of the Messiah. You must believe in your approach in sincerity and truth. Both methods cannot be correct, but we will all find out what truth is when we are judged against the way, the truth, and the life. John 20:30-31.
Jesus Christ fulfilled what had gone before him in the Old Covenant and what was to follow until the end of time. Remember, everything has a beginning and an end. What is remarkable and part of the shift from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant is to see how Jesus fulfilled the prophets and the Law.
The Christ Principle means all reality (physical, mental and spiritual universes) live and have being in, with, and through the Christ, the anointed one.
WHAT AIDEN KAVANAUGH, O.S.B. TAUGHT ME ABOUT THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE
The following is a blog that I wrote on Christ as an archetypal hero and how He is the shift in the paradigm.
All of us are, in large part, the result of people we have bumped into during our solitary sojourn down whatever paths life has taken us. People and sometimes events have shaped who we have become, and that process continues until death has it due. In my case, as I reflect upon my Lectio Divina verse (Philippians 2:5), I feel immense gratitude that Christ bumped into me and continues to be merciful to such a broken-down, old Lay Cistercian, such as myself. I call this the Christ Principle because I base my life on that encounter (not just a one-time meeting, but seeking God every day), your life might be different, but I don’t control that, only my own. Of course, many, many more people have contributed to where I am today. One of the learning points I have noticed since becoming a Lay Cistercian is seeing the Holy Spirit in other people with whom I meet as I seek God daily. They form a sort of tree with Christ as the vine, and we are the branches. Ten people have left their mark on how I look at reality, ten that have an enduring influence on how I approach Christ, The Center of all Reality.
– Jesus Christ, The Christ Principle, and Center of All Reality
– Mary, Mother of God, Master of Humility and Obedience to God’s Will
– Paul of Tarsus, Master Teacher of The Christ Principle
– Sts Benedict and Scholastica, Masters of Living The Christ Principle
– St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Master of the Contemplative Heart of Christ
– Aidan Kavanaugh, O.S.B. Master of the Liturgy as the highest expression of The Christ Principle
– Erich Fromm, Master of Authentic Love in the Secular World
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., Master of Perspective of All Reality using the Christ Principle
– Antoine de St. Exupère, Master of Looking at what is essential
– Joel Barker, futurist and noted author, Master of how Paradigm Shifts move humanity forward
In a series of blogs in the future, I will examine each of these people and how they have helped me have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5). In this blog, I will share my experiences with the late Father Aidan Kavanaugh and why that is important in looking at reality.
My relationship with Father Aidan is personal in that he was my instructor at St. Meinrad School of Theology in 1963, teaching a course on Sacramental Theology. That was the extent of my contact with Father Aidan. His classes were memorable in that I still hold onto four situations and examples that were to remain with me and guide me in how I view reality. In the later part of this blog, you can read for yourself about Father Aidan’s impact on liturgy in the United States Catholic Church.
THE ENDURING EXAMPLE OF MRS. MURPHY
My first exposure to Mrs. Murphy, a fictionalized, archetypal character used by Father Aidan to ground the academic theologians in the practical expression of Liturgy as the Body of Christ in the local community, was in the year 1963. Father Aidan told us that this lady knows more about the meaning of Faith than all the sophisticated theologians and academics combined. I remember him saying about Mrs. Murphy that she is the little, old lady in the backbench of Church, eyes closed, faithfully praying to God with all her soul. She brings all her struggles and aspirations and lays them at the feet of Christ in humility, simplicity of words, fidelity to the love of Christ, seeking only to be in the presence of the Holy Spirit. At the time, this example just passed right over my head, like so many of the other ideas I encountered. Being in Father Aidan’s class was like taking a sip of water from a fully functioning fire hose. He presented so many astounding and scintillating ideas in such a modest way that I found myself struggling to catch just a gulp of what he was saying. I only now can begin to process what Father Aidan told us. I remember Mrs. Murphy because it has taken me a lifetime to flesh out the significance of what Father Aidan was trying to communicate. It has been only in the last six or seven years that this image has even begun to make some sense to me.
My inspiration came from the Lay Cistercians of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery in their monthly Gathering Days. Being from Tallahassee, Florida, my drive to the monastery once per month was five hours away in Atlanta, Georgia. I very slowly came to see what Father Aidan was alluding to in his avatar of Mrs. Murphy. It is time I take to place myself in the presence of Christ, in the company of my fellow Lay Cistercians on gathering day, that makes me open to the Holy Spirit in the community. Liturgy is the expression of this living body of Christ that culminates in the Eucharist but which is sustained in the local Gathering in the name of Christ. I am very slowly coming to expand my Faith horizon from Church as someplace I go to for the Sacraments to believing that I am the Church wherever I am and that, joined with others of like Faith. We offer our whole day as a sacrament in our search to find God wherever we are. Spirituality becomes not just those times where we formally pray in silence and solitude. However, much more significant is the time we take in our whole day joined with our community of Faith. All of this links the Church Universal together as the acceptable sacrifice of our lives in with and through Christ to the glory of the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. Practicing the five Cistercian charisms of silence, solitude, work, prayer, and community is how I have come to address Mrs. Mruphy’s challenge of simply being in the presence of Christ and listening. St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P., great Doctor of the Church, states it so: “One day when Thomas Aquinas was preaching to the local populace on the love of God, he saw an old woman listening attentively to his every word. And inspired by her eagerness to learn more about her God, whom she loved so dearly, he said to the people: It is better to be this unlearned woman, loving God with all her heart, than the most learned theologian lacking love.”
https://www.azquotes.com/author/490-Thomas_Aquinas
Learning Points
– Mrs. Murphy is an avatar for the person who does not possess profound knowledge about liturgy but instead uses this overshadowing experience of the Holy Spirit to become closer to Christ by doing liturgy.
– The purpose of both Sacramental Liturgy (Church Universal) and local expressions is to remove obstacles to Christ through the Holy Spirit.
– The local Church needs to have a way to show new catechumens how to be present to Christ, not just intellectually by through the practices and charisms of Cistercian spirituality.
THE ENDURING EXAMPLE OF CHRIST AS A HEROIC, MYTHIC FIGURE
I can still see Father Aidan writing on the chalkboard. He talked about how Christ fulfilled the Old Testament prophets and the hero myth model of Greek and Roman mythology. The Gospel structure did not just pop out of the air. Still, it was actually a literary device that cultures used to show a hero who had a mission to overcome, faced tremendous obstacles and overcame them, and rose above (resurrection) all his adversaries and blockages to bring new life to the whole world. The late Dr. Joseph Campbell has written extensively about hero, savior, messiah, king of kings. Here is one synopsis of the steps he uses to explain the journey of the hero. In researching this idea of a hero, I am struck by the last applications in the literature about Christ as a heroic figure for the human race. I bring that up because that is precisely what Father Aidan proposed back in 1963. It is not exactly the model that Dr. Campbell uses, but there are so many variations out there that I give Father Aidan poetic license to interpolate it for his purposes. Here is what he wrote on the chalkboard that day (keep in mind that it was back in 1963, and I am not 80 years old). Father Aidan adapted the classic hero myth form from Joseph Campbell, and I adapted Father Aidan’s list based on what I remember what he wrote.
– The Anticipation of the Hero
– Birth of God/Man Jesus into Ordinary Time
– The Hero prepares for his mission.
– The Hero is challenged to abandon his mission
– The Mission as Journey
– Helpers in the Mission
– The Hero faces and overcomes trials and barriers
– The Hero suffers and dies for his Mission
– The Hero Rises (Resurrection) with humanity to new life
– The Hero Descends into Hell to unite all reality into one holy, apostolic and catholic Universal Church – The Hero Ascends to ordinary life again, but this time it is supernatural. Like looks the same to a casual observer, there is a deeper reality present, the Kingdom of Heaven.
– The Hero has changed physical and mental reality by adding spiritual truth to the equation.
– The Hero passes on this supernatural life to his followers.
Learning Points
– I am still learning the application of the hero myth to the Gospels account of Christ’s life journey to complete his mission from the Father.
– This standard literary device seems to me to be at the heart of the four Gospels. Each Gospel is different because each writer is different, but all use the same literary formula.
– Notice in this diagram that Christ’s Hero journey was similar but not exactly like what you see below. Dr. Joseph Campbell’s chart shows how the Hero suffers and even dies so that a new reality emerges. The Hero Ascends to ordinary life again, but this time it is supernatural. Like looks the same to a casual observer, there is a deeper reality present, the Kingdom of Heaven.
– Reality is not what it was before the Christ Principle opened up the spiritual universe to those who choose to enter. The Christ Principle restored humanity to its original purpose, i.e., to live as adopted sons and daughters in the Garden of Eden, now called the Kingdom of Heaven. This Kingdom begins with our Baptism and does not have an end. We don’t quite get the full impact of that purpose in this life but trust God to overshadow us with knowledge, love, and service. The Apostles saw that the physical and mental universes looked the same before and after the veil in the temple was torn in two, and life was its same, boring routine. But now, there was a difference, known and seen only to those who have accepted the call of discipleship. After Baptism, the followers are pilgrims living in a foreign land, and their home is the Kingdom of Heaven. Nothing has changed in all these centuries. As a Lay Cistercian seeking God every day, I must do so within the constraints of Nature and the limitations of my mental capabilities. After Pentecost, the Holy Spirit overshadowed everyone that follows until the end of either time or the extinction of the human species, with the energy to see what cannot be seen, to know what cannot be known with just the vision of the world, to learn how to love others as Christ loved us. This overshadowing is handed down unbroken from Pentecost itself.
THE ENDURING EXAMPLE OF LITURGY IS LIFTING UP THE CHURCH AND ALSO YOU THROUGH, WITH, AND IN CHRIST
So far, I have just touched on the importance of Mrs. Murphy as being one who is open to the possibility of all Being and is content to be in the presence of Christ. Next, the heroic myth story is one that Christ did to fulfill the prophets and leave the local Gathering of the Baptized to do what Christ did. And what did he do?
Christ loved each one of us in the context of our faith community so much that he became our nature (Philippians 2:5-12). He did that to not only tell us how to love others but to show us how to love others as He loved us. Liturgy is not just a Eucharistic moment in the community’s life, although it is indeed that. The Church gathers the faithful together to lift their life situations to the Father, as did Christ. These would be the obstacles he would face to sidetrack him from his mission in the myth hero formula. This mission was to re-establish the relationship between divinity and humanity lost by the archetypal choice of Adam and Eve to be gods.
In the liturgy of the Hours, the liturgy of the Eucharist, there are moments where we offer up to the Father with, through, and in Christ the glory due to his name as God, living and true. What Father Aidan exposed for me was the purpose of liturgy as a dynamic way to transform my everyday hurts, sufferings, accomplishments, and successes into praise and glory of the Father. I lift up my weakness, my fears, my insecurities, the pain that my sins may have caused others and the Blessed Mother, and my daily petition for God to have mercy on me and all with whom I have linked the golden thread of Christ’s love. Mrs. Murphy is everyman, everywoman, all who use the externals moments provided by the local Gathering to see what cannot be seen and hear what cannot be heard. The community is the living body of Christ, composed of all the individual leaves on that branch, Christ being the trunk and the roots. Liturgy in the broad sense is prayer, those of the community of faithful but also the Church Universal. In this sense, the Church Universal is holy while all of its members are sinners in need of God’s constant mercy.
THE ENDURING TASK OF SEEKING GOD EVERY DAY
Everything in the above three categories seems to point to the individual in the context of the Church seeking God every day with what life serves up. This was brought home to me in this era of COVID-19 self-isolation when my wife asked me why I don’t go to church anymore. I made a feeble attempt to tell her that my doctor thought I was at high risk of being out in public because of my past battles with Leukemia (CLL type) and having a pacemaker implanted four weeks ago. She argued that I was not a good Catholic anymore because I did not go to Church as often as before, and she never saw me praying out loud. I used this experience to measure myself against Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict, which I read every day, to ground myself in what is essential. In one of my Lectio Divina (Philippians 2:5) meditations, I asked the Holy Spirit if I was a slacker and lost faith. The thought came back immediately that, far from being lacking in Faith, this COVID-19 test made me stronger. Instead of being a lax catholic because I did not attend church as frequently as before, I realized, thanks to Mrs. Murphy and Father Aidan, that I am Church and that Church goes with me wherever I go. The fact that I think I am Church does not mean I speak for the Church Universal. It does mean that, like one leaf on the branch of my tree of Christ at Good Shepherd Community, I am one of many leaves who tries to move from self to God each day. When I join in my thoughts and Cistercian practices, I also realized that I am linked together with all other individuals who make up the Gathering know as Church. We share one faith, one Lord, one Baptism and are the living, tangible presence of Christ on our journey. Seeking God in my daily life is not an isolated event between just Christ and me. Still, it is the presence of others Baptized in the Faith and adopted sons and daughters of the Father who, together and individually, long to move from self to God in the context of community. The Cistercian charisms of silence, solitude, work, prayer, and community enable me to join with others to praise the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who will be at the end of the ages. – Cistercian doxology.
Thank you, Father Aidan, and my other professors who planted the seed. Even though it has taken a very long time, Christ has given the issue. The choices I make are informed by all those who have, in some way, touched my mind and heart.
https://dsc.duq.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1597&context=etd
At the heart of this paradigm shift is the product of Christ’s mission (Philippians 2:5-12), the reason why there is even a paradigm shift at all. In his letter to the faithful in Corinth, I Corinthians 15, St. Paul explains why Christ Jesus came to save us from death (physical and mental universes only). He writes about the resurrection of Christ from the dead in eloquent terms, saying: “For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised,17 and if Christ has not been raised,^(*) your faith is vain; you are still in your sins.18 Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.19 If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/1corinthians/15
For some time, I have been romancing the idea that trying to define the Resurrection is somehow not the point of my spirituality. In inching slowly from self to God, it is becoming more and more apparent that my Faith is like relaxing in a big, overstuffed chair with a nice glass of iced tea, confident that Christ is sitting next to me waiting for me to listen “with the ear of my heart.” (Prologue from St. Benedict’s Rule.
THE FOURTH PARADIGM: SUSTAINING THE ENERGY OF GOD AMID ORIGINAL SIN
THE OLD PARADIGM: Movement from the physical universe and the mental universes to the addition of the spiritual universe. THE NEW PARADIGM SHIFT: Movement from the Christ Principle to sustaining love in the hearts of believers who struggle while living in the corruption due to Original Sin. Imagine this! Sinful persons are asked to pass on the love of Christ to all other humans so that they can make decisions based on new principles of sharing, caring for each other, and doing the will of God each day.
Let’s review where we are to this point. In my view of reality, there have been three cosmological paradigm shifts so far.
1. The foundation of the physical universe;
2. The foundation for moving from the physical universe (all matter, time, energy, and space) to the mental universe (only humans of all living species live in this universe).
3. The introduction of the Christ Principle as the defining moment in all of reality, translated and mediated between pure energy, which is unapproachable for any human to being adopted as sons and daughters of the Father and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven.
I think it interesting that God, who is pure energy and does not move, influences the physical universe, which moves in space and time and corrupts itself (not in the sense of sin but of deterioration).
Remember that a paradigm shift always moves from what is to something that moves it forward towards its destiny as God’s DNA. Suppose the purpose of the first paradigm shift is the base of matter, energy, time, animality of living things to include humans. In that case, this next step in our cosmic evolution is going from animality to rationality. Why is that? Is there an unseen force at work propelling matter, time, energy toward a purpose? That is what I have termed God’s DNA or the laws of nature. As intelligent as they are, humans cannot stop time, the evolution of energy, and our cosmic journey to Forever. We can observe the physical universe because we alone can reason and seek answers to the purpose. Not every thought or philosophy will lead us to fulfill our destiny in the bigger picture. Humans have been given reason for a reason and the ability to choose. Some will decide what is authentic, and some will choose their view of God. All of us will answer to God when we stand before him and show the results of our stewardship while on earth. Christ, as both divine and human nature did for all humans what they could not do for themselves, re-established the link between all humans and God. Christ, St. Paul says, became sin for us.
“The Ministry of Reconciliation.11^(*)Therefore, since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we are clearly apparent to God, and I hope we are also apparent to your consciousness.^(g)12 We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you an opportunity to boast of us, so that you may have something to say to those who boast of external appearance rather than of the heart.^(h)13 For if we are out of our minds,^(*)it is for God; if we are rational, it is for you. 14^(*)For the love of Christ impels us, once we have come to the conviction that one died for all; therefore, all have died.^(i)15 He indeed died for all, so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. ^(j) 16 Consequently, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh; even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.17 So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come. 18^(*) And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation,19 namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.^(l)20 So we are ambassadors for Christ as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ^(*)For our sake, he made him be sin who did not know sin so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
This is such a rich passage, filled with wonderful ideas about why Christ came to save us and your place in that new paradigm. If you take some time to read this passage very slowly, out loud, you will allow the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart. What does St. Paul want us to know about the spiritual universe and our place in it?
POINTS OF IMPORTANCE IN THE FOURTH PARADIGM SHIFT
– The Father created all that is (first and second paradigm shifts), the Son, Jesus, restored humans to their original relationship with God (second paradigm shift). The Holy Spirit took over from Christ to sustain humans as they struggle to love others as Christ loved them. This is the realm of those who are faithful to the teachings of Christ through the power of the Second Advocate, the Holy Spirit.
– This fourth paradigm shift is about what happens in the Kingdom of Heaven in each age. It is how Christ passes on to those who have not seen but yet believed.
– The fourth paradigm shift moves from the Word being made flesh and dwelling among us to making that same Christ Principle exist in each age as humans move towards their ultimate destiny, the Kingdom of Heaven. – The fourth paradigm shift is about how those who are gathered together with love others as Christ loves them. This paradigm begins with Pentecost and the Holy Spirit overshadowing the Apostles with tongues of fire. This is a paradigm about the gatherings of believers, Jews, Romans, Greeks, and others. This is a paradigm about how a group of Twelve, having no instructions on how to govern, had to address the questions of “Who is Jesus?” “Are the Jewish prescriptions of the Law binding on the followers of Jesus? How do you move from the New Jerusalem to include the whole world?” “Who determines what is true about all the letters and writings about who and what Jesus came to bring us?”
– If the third paradigm is now the WHAT, then this fourth paradigm shift is HOW this message of God’s love for us is played out in each age, consistent with what The Christ Principle taught us. Our energy, once again, like all the paradigms before, is the energy of God, this time revealed as the second Advocate, whom we call the Holy Spirit.
– This realm of the Spirit (Galatians 5) poses serious problems for human reasoning because it is invisible. As anyone knows, the problem with invisibility is you can’t see it. The challenge for human reason is to believe in a reality that does not seem reasonable.
– This paradigm is about the Church Universe, that which was intended to be how we as a collection of believers transmit what is proper to those who come behind us. His is the inheritance that comes from Christ Himself as chronicled in the Scriptures by his followers. There were hundreds of letters and gospels that popped up after Christ ascended into Heaven. The problem these believers had was, “Who determines what is true and not true?” It sounds like the problem faced by Adam and Eve. – Once Christ ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father and be our Advocate, He did not leave us orphans. Still, He left the Holy Spirit, our Second Advocate, the revealed third person of the Trinity, to help sustain us against choosing what the world sees as meaningful to what God says we should do. To do this requires energy from the Holy Spirit, present in the collective gathering of those who long for the coming of Christ again. Those who believe in Christ as those who have not seen him but are blessed because their Faith overcomes the disbelief of the World who scoffs at the resurrection of Christ. We freely choose at Baptism it is indeed folly for the Gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews, yet, for those who persevere to the end, it is with Christ…Forever. This is what enabled the early disciples of Christ to endure pain, suffering, persecution, and martyrdom if only they could be one with Christ and Him crucified. When Christ leaves us one command: love one another as I have loved you, living that out in the context of the local Church is the challenge of each age.
– I stay away from the truth temptation where Satan plays on my insecurities with my Faith to the point that I believe that I, alone, am the appointed speaker for God.
WHOSE CHURCH IS IT?
The Church is the visible manifestation of God whom we cannot see. The Church, or gathering of believers, is the living Body of Christ on earth and those living in heaven and those awaiting purification. Many humans only view the Church as a building or something for old ladies to go to when they feel guilty about their lives. As time passes in this fourth paradigm from Pentecost to this very day, there seem to be four quadrants evolving out of the Christ Principle. In my view of reality, they are: – THE ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNANCE OF THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE– It shows that God must have a sense of humor because he entrusted his commandment to love one another to sinful humans who are prone to error. Luckily, Christ promised that, even if we messed up having Christ as the center of our Church, the Holy Spirit would not allow us to crash and burn, like so many other human institutions who try to sustain their momentum. Jesus gives authority on earth to Peter and the Twelve Apostles, sending them out to tell humanity that they are free at last. This is not the freedom for each individual to create their own Christ, although individuals who believe make up the Church. It is the freedom to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father and act like that while alive (with each person).
– THE INFORMATION AND AIDS TO HUMAN REASONING FROM THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE
(How to know God with all your mind)
– THE FORMATION OF A SCHOOL OF LOVE TO DO THE TEACHINGS OF THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE (How to love God with all your heart) We humans are a fickle lot, prone to love yet with the schizophrenic insanity of instantly rejecting God when things get tough. What happened when Moses went up on the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments? When he returned, people had sold their valuables to melt down into a golden calf they were adoring and asking it to lead them out of the desert and the inconvenience of little food and water. (Genesis 32.) There were consequences to this betrayal of God, just as there were consequences to the Sin of Adam and Eve. (Genesis 1-2) To help each of us as we make our journey down the pathway of time, Christ left us with the Church as a place to learn how to love others as He loved us. In each age, with each person, the Church is the occasion where you and I can approach the presence of Christ and see to make all things new in our journey. St. Benedict founded a school of charity for his monks and nuns. Others have also created particular ways to communicate with Christ, such as St. Dominic, St. Francis, St. Ignatius, and many other ways. I follow the Lay Cistercian way of life, which takes its spirituality from the Cistercian Order’s constitutions and policies as they interpret the Rule of St. Benedict. There is only one way to contact THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE in each of these ways.
– THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HUMAN MIND AND HEART TO SIT NEXT TO THE HEART OF THE CHRIST PRINCIPLE AND MOVE FROM SELF TO GOD (How to Serve God with all your strength)
Whoever gathers in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit recreates their Baptismal promises to reject Satan and all his allurement and false promises. Whenever I look at Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict, I am struck by the list of tools for good works, as St. Benedict terms them that have spiritual and corporal works of mercy in them. I would encourage you to access this URL and look at the following tools recommended to inch our way from self to God.
https://christdesert.org/prayer/rule-of-st-benedict/
“Chapter 4: The Tools for Good Works
1 First of all, love the Lord God with your whole heart, your whole soul, and all your strength, two and love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:37-39; Mark 12:30-31; Luke 10:27).
3 Then the following: You are not to kill, 4 not to commit adultery;
5 you are not to steal
6 nor to covet (Rom 13:9);
7 you are not to bear false witness (Matt 19:18; Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20).
8 You must honor everyone (1 Pet 2:17),
9 and never do to another what you do not want done to yourself (Tob 4:16; Matt 7:12; Luke 6:31).
10 Renounce yourself in order to follow Christ (Matt 16:24; Luke 9:23);
11 discipline your body (1 Cor 9:27);
12 do not pamper yourself,
13 but love fasting.
14 You must relieve the lot of the poor,
15 clothe the naked,
16 visit the sick (Matt 25:36),
17 and bury the dead.
18 Go to help the troubled
19 and console the sorrowing.
20 Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way;
21 the love of Christ must come before all else. The Church Universal alone is the only means humans have to reach Heaven. “Ecclesia sola” sounds like a statement that is exclusive of all other Churches except Roman Catholic, actually turns out to be all-inclusive, or “catholic.” First of all, there is only One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism, so to separate the Body of Christ from the Head would not be possible. Next, from early after Christ’s death, the notion of “extra ecclesiam nula salus,” outside the Church there is no salvation, is addressed by St. Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr in their writings. I think about this after any of us dies, there is only one Heaven? Do you believe Baptists go to one Heaven while Methodists go to another? That is not logical in my mind, nor what God intended by redeeming all humans and allowing them to choose to live in Heaven or not. The Church is one, not a bunch of various human interpretations, each at odds with the other. The crucible of truth will burn away sin and falsehood as each of us approaches the last judgment and must give an accounting of our stewardship. Matthew 22. In the end, I hope and pray that I make it to Heaven with the help of Christ’s redemption and resurrection love, but I also wish that all those who want to can make it there also. It is the destiny of all humanity to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father. Not everyone will accept that invitation nor realize what it is that they have rejected. God will judge us by our deeds. (Matthew 25) Believers have additional accountability because of their Baptism and loving others as Christ loved us. God has blessed us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extra_Ecclesiam_nulla_salus
God’s DNA, like our own, creates not only matter but also being. They are what we must do to sustain our Faith in times of conflict. We take up our cross daily to follow what The Master taught us. Each day is a lifetime with its beginning and its ending. We are not orphans on the road to Forever. We can sit down with God in the Sacraments and Contemplative prayer and just be. The Church from earliest times is seen as a Mother, much like Mary was for Jesus, who smothers us with the blanket of the collective Faith of all living beings who are in Heaven, on earth, and awaiting their second chance to love others as Christ loved them.
This paradigm is a continuation and fulfillment of the Old Covenant. With the Christ Principle, Church moves from salvation for a few to a universal statement of love for all humanity. When I went to Starbucks recently (of course observing all the social distancing protocols), I talked with a young college male who noticed I had been reading the late Dom Andre Louf’s book, The Cistercian Way. The conversation eventually turned to my reasoning for being a follower of Christ and making sense. His argument was: that is just your opinion, and I have my opposite opinion, and both are correct. I have the freedom to believe whatever I want and what I believe is right. I told him that he was wrong that it was just my opinion. I said that it was indeed a free choice on my part, but it was based on my desire to love others as Christ loved us, and I do that through a gathering of like-minded believers. I continued to explain that my individual belief in something doesn’t make it real, but I believe it because it is reality. My belief is based on those who have struggled with the same principles of meaning going back to the Christ Principle from whom all truth flows. This is the apostolic tradition from the Holy Spirit to safeguard our Faith from the gates of Hell prevailing against it. I believe that is when he got up, gave me a disdainful glance, and walked away. One of the great paradoxes of our Faith is how the Church can be holy and yet be filled with sinners (except for Christ and His Mother)? Part of the uniqueness of this paradigm shift is that it is a transfer of authority from Christ to his undisciplined and sinful Apostles. From now on, followers will be responsible for establishing the Kingdom of Heaven in the hearts and minds of their followers. This is a period of great uncertainty as the Apostles gathered in the upper room. There were only Eleven of them. Christ left them no book of instructions on “How to Build and Run a Church for Dummies,” and they were with a leader to tell them what to do.
^(*)1 When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.^(a)2 And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind,^(*)and it filled the entire house in which they were.^(b)3Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire,^(*)which parted and came to rest on each one of them.^(c)4 And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues,^(*)as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.^(”)
THE CHURCH IS A GRAND GATHERING OF ALL THOSE GATHERED THROUGHOUT TIME WITH ONE CHRIST AS THE HEAD
– The Church Triumphant is a gathering of all those God has accepted as sons and daughters of the Father.
– The Church Militants are those of us gathered earth who still struggle with loving others as Christ loves us each day. This is both collectively and individually.
– The Church Purgative are those gathered together for a second chance at trying to love others as Christ loves us. The Church is composed of all those who are alive now (Church Militant), those who have died in the peace of Christ and have been declared worthy by God to claim their inheritance as adopted sons and daughters of the Father, and finally, those who have died and need a second chance at how to love others as Christ loved us (Church Purgative). In this paradigm, Christ is head of the body, and we are all members.
When you think of Church, always think of those living, gathered with One Faith, One Lord, One Baptism.
The Church is a collective way for communities of those gathered together in Faith to practice love.
When you think of Church, it is a living extension of Christ. We are the real presence of Christ on earth to those in our particular world.
The concept of the Church is that of a mother who nourishes her children with food to sustain them as they walk their unique paths of choices to try to discover what is meaningful and authentic.
THE FIFTH PARADIGM SHIFT:
THE PARADIGM: Movement from the Christ Principle to sustaining love in the hearts of believers who struggle to believe while living in the corruption due to Original Sin.
TO THE NEW PARADIGM SHIFT Each individual is given a chance to believe in the Christ Principle and choose the opportunity to love others as Christ loved us.
Let’s do a quick review. In the first paradigm, reality moved from just being without a beginning or an end to the physical universes that contain all matter, time, energy, dark matter, dark energy, and life on earth. It exists right now as the base for our existence as humans. Humans live in the physical universe with other species and share characteristics with animals. e.g., procreation, a beginning and end, intelligence, and an atmosphere to sustain life. Remember, each paradigm shift is successive and builds upon the other, as reality moves from the beginning to the end.
In the second paradigm, something changed. Reality moved from just a physical base and evolution of life to humans, the only ones that live in the mental universe. The third paradigm shift is from rationality to spirituality. This is the defining principle of life or the purpose for all reality. It is the Christ Principle, or, that which has no beginning nor end agrees to take on a human nature which has a beginning and an end. (Philippians 2:5-12). Reality looks the same after the resurrection of Christ from the dead, but a new phase of evolution has begun, one that has a beginning with entry into the spiritual universe but has no end. It is a free choice offered to all humans.
The fourth paradigm shift is from the Christ Principle to a gathering of those who follow the teachings of the Master to love one another as He has loved them. This is the paradigm of the Church Universal, a paradox of sinful humans given the authority to practice what Christ taught in their age.
The fifth paradigm shift is from the Faith of the collective to that of individuals. This paradigm is where I am the center of all that went before me so that I would have the opportunity to proclaim that Jesus is Lord. John 20:30-31 tells us why all of these stories about Christ were collected. Each individual who makes the free choice to accept the resurrection of Christ as accurate and acts accordingly is Baptized or overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. The gathering of those seeking God through Christ to me helps sustain me as I present myself to what the day brings and transform myself through Cistercian practices and charisms to be more like Christ and less like me. I am still struggling in the secular world of Original Sin.
Read this passage from John 15, where he gives the analogy that Christ is the vine, and we are the branches. This is a Scripture for your meditation. Read it at least three times, each time slower than what came before. The key here is to slow down your mind and let the Holy Spirit speak to you. I want you to savor these words as ones that can nourish your spirit if you allow it,
The Vine and the Branches.
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower.
2 He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and everyone that does he prunes* so that it bears more fruit.
3 You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you.
4 Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.
5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit because, without me, you can do nothing.
6 Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire, and they will be burned.
7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want, and it will be done for you. 8 By this is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
9 As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.
10 If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
12 This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15 I no longer call you slaves because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
16
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
17 This I command you: love one another.
The World’s Hatred.
18 “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. 19 If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.
20 Remember the word I spoke to you, ‘No slave is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
21 And they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know the one who sent me.
22 If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but as it is, they have no excuse for their sin.
23 Whoever hates me also hates my Father.
24 If I had not done works among them that no one else ever did, they would not have sin; but as it is, they have seen and hated both me and my Father.
25 But in order that the word written in their law might be fulfilled, ‘They hated me without cause.
26 “When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, he will testify to me.
27 And you also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/15
If I am a leaf on the tree where Christ is the trunk and the Holy Spirit is the root, I am one of many other leaves. Christ is the vine, and we are the branches. John What gives life to the tree is its roots, nourished with the energy of the Father, the Grand Gardener. My individual life as a leaf is only for one year. According to my nature, I am born from the branch, grow as a leaf, and provide energy to those around me with photosynthesis (good works as in Matthew 25). I live for a season and then die. My value is to act according to my human nature to help the tree sustain itself in my leafy way. I am not the branch. I am not the other leaves, and I serve the others. In the analogy of the spiritual universe, all the leaves have One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism. Other trees do not bear good fruit because they do not possess the links to life-giving nutrients. They may be sincere and don’t know what they don’t know. St. Paul gives a poignant reflection on the unity of Faith in Ephesians 4.
“Unity in the Body. 1^(*)I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received,^(a)2 with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love,^(b)3 striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace:^(c)4^(*)one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call;^(d)5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism;^(e)6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. ”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/ephesians/4
Why read Scripture at all? If there is no resurrection of Christ from the dead, then save your time and read the white pages of the phone book. St. John, the last of the Apostles to die, wrote in his Gospel, Chapter 20:30-31, that these actions were written down so that you might come to believe that Jesus is the Son of Christ, and that believing, you might have life in his name. I will share the three levels I use when I read Scripture. 1. INFORMATION – I read the Scriptures daily in my spiritual reading and the Liturgy of the Hours in the Psalms. I always begin with the actual words. Sometimes that is as far as I get. This is the level of meditation as stated in Lectio Divina (lectio, meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio). It takes awareness on my part to go to the next level.
2. FORMATION –I am aware that this is God’s word to all humans and produces energy in those who read it. This energy does not come from me but is from God, and I move from reciting the words to praying the words to be present and communicate with Christ. That leads me to an even deeper level if I allow Christ to overshadow me.
3. TRANSFORMATION – This is the level of contemplation and being present to God with no restrictions, unconditionally. This is the area where I have no agenda to push, no prayers to say that might keep me from entering into oneness with The One who has no beginning and no end. This is the level where I don’t pray to be the one who controls the conversation but just allow Christ to be present to me and experience the conversion. I don’t even realize that there are levels of awareness.
Read what St. Bernard of Clairvaux says.
https://www.azquotes.com/author/19601-Bernard_of_Clairvaux
– There are four degrees of love: 1) Love of self for self’s sake. 2) Love of God for self’s sake. 3) Love of God for God’s own sake. 4) Love of self for God’s sake.
– He won me over entirely by giving Himself entirely to me.
– He rightly reads scripture who turns words into deeds. – Wherever…thou shalt be, pray secretly within thyself. If thou shalt be far from a house of prayer, give not thyself trouble to seek for one, for thou thyself art a sanctuary designed for worship. If thou shalt be in bed, or any other place, pray there; thy temple is there.
THE SIXTH PARADIGM SHIFT:
PARADIGM Each individual is given a choice to believe in the Christ Principle and the opportunity to love others as Christ loved us.
THE NEW PARADIGM SHIFT:
Using these six questions of life and the six paradigm shifts, I must use my reason to choose to make my center either Christ or me. One choice is life. One choice is death. There are consequences for each choice.
This last paradigm shifts from the collective you as an individual to me as I stand here in space and time and wonder where I am going with my next step. If you have noticed a pattern in these paradigm shifts, you are attentive. Here are some of my observations about this last paradigm.
I. ALL SIX PARADIGMS EXIST SO THAT I CAN KNOW, LOVE, AND SERVE GOD IN THIS LIFE AND BE HAPPY FOREVER IN THE NEXT. What distinguishes this paradigm number six from number five is that everything that goes before it from paradigms one through six exists just for me so that I might have a choice to love God as Christ loved us. To do this, I must practice this while on earth so that the reward of my struggle and transformation from self to God is to be what I discovered about love while I lived. It is also so that I can fulfill the other paradigms and use them to progressively build my Kingdom of Heaven on earth with the help of the Holy Spirit. I get a chance to use my reason and freedom of choice to ratify my adoption as a son of the Father. Another way to say that is to do the will of God and approach each day, seeking God as I am and where I am.
I find myself within the constraints of knowing that I have a beginning and end (death). Within whatever time I have, I am given the tools to use my reason to seek the way, the truth, and the life. My two choices are: I can choose to discover the six questions of life and find answers from the World, or I can see the answers based on the Christ Principle and the will of God.
These six questions are:
– What is the purpose of all life?
– What is the purpose of my life?
– What does reality look like?
– How does reality all fit together?
– How to love fiercely?
– You know you are going to die; now what?
Of course, this is just my opinion about the purpose of life. It might be different from your purpose. My challenge is to seek God each day, and I have developed a way to do that takes what I know about what the Church Universal teaches plus my Lay Cistercian practices and charisms and makes sense out of my life.
II. DIVINE NATURE LIFTS HUMAN NATURE UP TO THE NEXT LEVEL OF MEANING IN EACH PARADIGM SO THAT WE CAN CLAIM OUR RIGHTFUL DESTINY IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. Take a look at the trends. In the first paradigm shift, God lifted up all of reality to the next level of existence, thus began all matter, time, energy, all living things to what they are now.
In the second paradigm shift, it was pure energy (God) that lifted up humanity. Adam was created from the earth, while Eve was taken from Adam. Unlike all other living things, humans could reason and choose what they decided to be true. Adam and Eve chose poorly, and what was once resonance fell into chaos and dissonance. No human would have the power to lift up all of humanity and pay the price to restore (redeem) everyone to make all things new, once again.
In the third paradigm shift, pure energy (God) lifted up humanity to restore our resonance and allow humans once again to make their own choice to fulfill their destiny as fully human and become adopted sons and daughters of this pure energy, pure knowledge, pure love, and pure service…Forever. God had mercy on Adam and Eve and sent The Christ Principle as the transforming energy to lift up humanity and restore resonance to the dissonance caused by Adam and Eve. This third paradigm is God becoming one human nature, like us in all things but sin. I don’t know if you realize the enormity of that statement in Philippians 2:5-12, but love changes time itself. We only live in the now, although everything in our lives is guided by the fact that there is a beginning and an end to reality. This reality is corrupt, not in the sinful notion of being evil as much as deteriorating. Part of this deterioration is that humans as individuals only live for “seventy or eighty years if they are strong.” The shift in this third paradigm is changing from being limited to human nature with its natural corruption (read Genesis 1-2) to opening up the possibility of living as the adopted sons and daughters of a Being whose center is pure love, pure energy, pure knowledge, and pure service. If God came down as He truly is in his nature, we would be so frightened that we would not think it possible to live with such pure energy without it harming us. So, God sent his Son to become Jesus to tell us not to worry about all this “God stuff” because we couldn’t comprehend it with our human intelligence, anyway. Jesus told stories, parables, similes (the kingdom of Heaven is like the mustard seed) so that we could have a frame of reference for how to love others as Jesus loved us.
The Church Universal collects these stories to help them love others, as Christ loves us. Christ is that one principle from which everything flows and into which everything converges. Christ is the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow. Hebrews Chapter 13 is one of my favorite passages outside of the Gospels because it highlights how we should live based on the Christ Principle within each of us. As a father protects his children from the evil influences and evils around them, St. Paul speaks to each of us individually and collectively. Here are some warnings and reminders for the Hebrews who wish to have in them the mind of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:5) Read this passage three times, each time slower and slower. The last time you read it, pray that you become what you read.
“^(*)1. Let mutual love continue.
2 Do not neglect hospitality, for, through it, some have unknowingly entertained angels.^(a)
3 Be mindful of prisoners as if sharing their imprisonment and of the ill- treated as of yourselves, for you also are in the body.^(b) 4 Let marriage be honored among all and the marriage bed be kept undefiled, for God will judge the immoral and adulterers.^(c)
5Let your life be free from love of money but be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never forsake you or abandon you.”^(d)
6 Thus, we may say with confidence:
“The Lord is my helper,
[and] I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?”^(e)
7 Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.^(f)
9 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teaching. It is good to have our hearts strengthened by grace and not by foods, which do not benefit those who live by them.^(g)
10 We have an altar^(*)from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.
11 The bodies of the animals whose blood the high priest brings into the sanctuary as a sin offering are burned outside the camp.^(h)
12 Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the gate to consecrate the people by his own blood.^(i)
13 Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach that he bore.
14 For here, we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come.^(j) 15 Through him [then], let us continually offer God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name. ^(k)
16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have; God is pleased by sacrifices of that kind.^(l)
17^(*) Obey your leaders and defer to them, for they keep watch over you and will have to give an account that they may fulfill their task with joy and not with sorrow, for that would be of no advantage to you.
18 Pray for us, for we are confident that we have a clear conscience, wishing to act rightly in every respect.
19 I especially ask for your prayers that I may be restored to you very soon.
20^(*)May the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the eternal covenant, Jesus our Lord,^(m)
21 I furnish you with all that is good, that you may do his will. May he carry out in you what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever [and ever]. Amen.
22 Brothers, I ask you to bear with this message of encouragement, for I have written to you rather briefly.
23 I must let you know that our brother Timothy has been set free. If he comes soon, I shall see you together with him. ^(n)
24 Greetings to all your leaders and to all the holy ones. Those from Italy send you greetings.
25 Grace be with all of you.”^(o) The Holy Spirit fills each of us, in each age, and through the collective gathering of gathering (Heaven) with on Christ Principle, One Faith, One Lord. St. Matthew gives us guidance on what should be our concern each day.
Dependence on God.^(*)
25^(n) “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
26Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?^(o)
27Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?^(*)
28Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wildflowers grow. They do not work or spin.
29But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.
30^(*) If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?
31So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’
32All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33But seek first the kingdom [of God], and his righteousness,^(*) and all these things will be given you besides.
34Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.
This leads us to the fourth paradigm shift, from the Christ Principle or the WHAT AND WHY of all reality (physical, mental, and now spiritual universes) to THE HOW, WHEN, AND WHERE. Once again, God (Holy Spirit) lifts up the Church (those who gather in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. –Cistercian doxology). This time, the shift occurs as help from the Christ and also members of the living body. After He returned to the Father to complete his mission to restore and make all things new once again, now what? Christ lives in individuals who are gathered together in His name. The community of believers is Christ present now, and in all the future now’s until the end of time.
The fifth paradigm shift is from the collective gathering of all those faithful now in heaven, those still on earth awaiting their justification, and all those still in purification for a second chance to get it right. The shift is to the individual. Each human is born and receives the gifts of human reasoning and the ability to choose what they reasoned. The “it” being the purpose of life is to love God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Humans say the Psalmist only live seventy years or eighty if they are strong. So, how is it that all of creation from the beginning paradigm to now seems to lead to me and allow me to make a choice? What choice? It is the same choice that Lucifer, the fallen Archangel had, the same choice that Adam and Eve had, and now each person has the freedom to choose God as their center or something else. The Christ Principle is there to guide us on the implications of making the correct choice. There is only one right choice. The Holy Spirit of Truth is our Advocate to help us select what will sustain us in moving from self to God as adopted sons and daughters of the Father. Pure energy is there for each person who asks for it and collectively for those gathered together, again and again, to proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again in glory. Contemplation is one way to approach the Father in, with, and through the Christ Principle. We approach The Word and try to be present to this energy that does not make sense to the World with few words. For those who have been accepted as sons and daughters of the Father and returned that love in belief, what remains of their life will be the struggle of their passion, death, and resurrection to be able to say, “Jesus is Lord.”
The sixth paradigm has to do with moving from my human existence to my destiny as an adopted son (or daughter) of the Father. The Christ Principle showed with the resurrection of the body that death had lost its sting, holding us hostage to our bodies while we live. God’s energy is the boost that it takes for individual humans to die and return to Christ at the Father’s right hand. I am the Alpha, and the Omega says Christ, and so it is. I am made to live forever with a God beyond any capability. I have to know God as God. It is only through, with and in Jesus the Christ that we can approach the Father in Heaven and not be incinerated by the pure energy of His Being. Philippians 2:5-12 is the crucial statement about the dynamic of pure energy.
In one sense, I am the only one that ever lived. All six paradigms are there so that I have the reason to know, love, and serve God with all my strength and love others as Christ loved us. Al six paradigms are there so that I can choose God’s way or continue on my only me as the center of the universe.
I am the center of the universe and have reason to love as Christ loved us. In that sense, I choose to make the center of my life the Christ Principle, from which everything takes its life and being. This is the daily shift that I try to make from self to God, which starts each morning anew when I get up. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad.”
A DEEP DIVE INTO THE IMPLICATIONS OF PARADIGM SHIFTS
Here are some reflections that I had about the significance of these paradigm shifts to explain how all of reality fits together. It is not a theory of everything as proposed by the late and brilliant Steven Hawking. It is only a description and not a definition of what cannot be adequately described by mere human reasoning. I received these, and all my ideas and thoughts, by venturing into the place humans are reluctant to enter, the place no one wants to look, the silence and solitude of the heart.
– The nothingness of God permitted the physical universe to begin. The nothingness of God is pure energy. It is divine nature consisting of three separate persons.
– The physical universe has God’s DNA. It contains the image and likeness of God, the consciousness of God.
– Everything in the physical and mental universes has a beginning and an end. The spiritual universe has a beginning (Baptism) but no end. – Reality contains one paradigm with three paradigm shifts: one reality with three separate universes, the physical, the mental, and the spiritual.
– When I freely choose to enter the spiritual universe, it is only because Christ had first chosen me before there was a time and matter (the first paradigm).
– The first paradigm is the same energy as the first paradigm, Alpha, and the Omega. Everything in the physical universe has a beginning and an end. In the physical universe, all energy is imbued with the DNA of God’s energy, not in the sense that we are God, but that we, so to speak, fill up with the power (grace) of God through being present to Christ and thus give praise to the Father through, with, and in Him, in the union with the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of the paradigm shift from these six paradigms, pure energy moves it from what is to the next step in its destiny.
– Someone once asked me to draw a picture of what reality would look like having physical, mental, and spiritual universes. In each paradigm, the only energy capable of lifting up the truth with a beginning and an end is pure energy that does not have a beginning or an end. This leads me to suspect that our human knowledge of what we consider the physical and mental universes is overshadowed from beginning to end with, in, and through the pure energy of God.
I told her that I could not draw a picture of it. Still, it would be similar (simili est regnum choelorum) to the window that is in the Monastery Church of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit (Trappist) in Conyers, Georgia.
This overshadowing is also vital for each of the six paradigm shifts. In each transition, pure energy overshadows that paradigm to move and find a better way to do things. This is moving forward. This is making all things new. With pure energy, it exists, not outside of time, space, matter, or physical power, but in it, through it, and with it, the force that compels time forward from Alpha to Omega.
[A close up of a window Description automatically generated]
A stained glass window in the Monastery Church, Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery (Trappist), Conyers, Georgia.
This picture is what an artist created to visualize Mary’s center, Jesus. In looking at this stained-glass window for some time, I see Mary as being the personification of all matter, energy, knowledge, and love with Christ, who has no beginning nor end is her center. Being like us in all things but sin, Jesus was born of his Jewish woman and became flesh through the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. Being both Divine and Human natures, he came to tell us what we could never know by human reasoning alone, and to show us how to prepare ourselves to live in a condition without space, time. Physical energy, or matter.
The pure energy of God is a person, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What amazes me is that God, through the love of Jesus, offers each human a chance to become an adopted son or daughter of the Father and heirs to the Kingdom of Heaven. While we wait on earth for our destiny, Christ is here with us to tell us (Scriptures Eucharist and through the Holy Spirit in the Church) and show us what to take with us for our reward. Death has no hold over us anymore. Read the following Scripture from St. Paul.
“The True Wisdom.^(*)6 Yet we do speak a wisdom to those who are mature, but not a wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away.7 Rather, we speak God’s wisdom,^(*)mysterious, hidden, which God predetermined before the ages for our glory, 8 and which none of the rulers of this age^(*) knew; for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written: “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love him,”^(e)10^(f) this God has revealed to us through the Spirit.
For the Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God. 11 Among human beings, who knows what pertains to a person except for the spirit of the person that is within? Similarly, no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God. 12 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.^(*)14 Now, the natural person does not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God, for to him it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it, because it is judged spiritually. 15 The spiritual person, however, can judge everything but is not subject to judgment^(*) by anyone. 16 For “who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/1corinthians/2
God’s simplicity and complexity are evident in the movement of time from its Alpha inception to a potential ending in Omega.
God is one yet reveals three separate persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). In terms of paradigms, God is pure energy, yet the complexity of this simplicity is that the Father is the Lord who creates LIFE (John 1:1) with a Word. Son is Lord of re-creation who makes THE WAY we humans fulfill our destiny as intended from the beginning of time. The Holy Spirit is the Lord of TRUTH, which gives the Body of Christ a way to share divine energy through Christ and others.
I offer this Scripture for your reflection on the majesty of God. When you read these references from Scripture, I don’t provide them to prove anything. Instead, I hope that you will read them at least three times and ask yourself the question, “What is the Holy Spirit trying to tell me?”
Last Supper Discourses. 1^(*)“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith^(*)in God; have faith also in me. 2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3^(*) And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be.^(a)4 Where [I] am going you know the way.”^(*)5 Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”6 J Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.^(b)7 If you know me, then you will also know my Father.^(*) From now on you do know him and have seen him.”^(c)8 Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father,^(*) and that will be enough for us.”^(d)9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?^(e)10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works.^(f)11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.^(g)12 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.^(h)13 And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.^(i)14 If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.
The Advocate.15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.^(j)16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate^(*) to be with you always,^(k)1 7 the Spirit of truth,^(*) which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it because it remains with you and will be in you.^(l)18 I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.^(*)19 In a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will see me because I live, and you will live.^(m)20 On that day, you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.^(n)21 Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” https://bible.usccb.org/bible/john/14
Take your time and don’t just read and forget these scripture readings. The inspired word of God is transformative just by allowing it to make you present to the heart of Christ.
How glorious is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsxOE9TuLZM
SIX CORE QUESTIONS THAT HELP ME SEEK GOD EACH DAY
The six paradigm shifts do not happen in a vacuum. It is interesting to note that all these shifts, be they cosmic, mystery, or individual, occur because of reason and free choice. Looking at reality, here are my six questions that precipitated and necessitated the paradigm shift and my rationale for selecting them. The paradigm shift is the answer to the question posed by the paradigm.
– QUESTION ONE: WHAT IS POWERFUL ENOUGH TO CREATE THE COMPLETE PHYSICAL UNIVERSE FROM NOTHINGNESS? This power can create something from nothing, the energy beyond time, space, physical energy, and human knowing. It is the Alpha and the Omega. Only this pure energy that has no beginning and no end is its own purpose. In creating that which has a beginning and an end, the physical universe, this energy unleashed a cosmic movement, i e, physical time. This energy is divine, pure energy, pure love, pure service, and pure knowledge. This energy stamps all that is with the DNA of the one who created it. This energy is 100% of its nature. This is not only the source of all that is but the destination of everything that has a beginning and an end. It is a Supreme Being, one that humans have difficulty comprehending, much like the mind-blowing distances between galaxies in space. Even that analogy is just a way for us to describe and not define this pure energy that has one nature and three distinct persons. What follows is a blog that I wrote on the nothingness of God. Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P., and his statement that the human mind is essentially incapable of knowing who God is from the perspective of God but can only grope around to get some ideas of how all reality fits together inspired me to think that God is nothingness.
In this first paradigm shift, don’t make the mistake of thinking that this nothingness of God somehow creates the physical universe, and then it ends. This pure energy overshadows everything that has a beginning and an end. It existed before there was matter and time, while there was matter and time, and as time slowly traveled to its end, beyond time itself.
– QUESTION TWO: WHY ARE HUMANS THE ONLY ONES WHO HAVE REASON AND THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE WHAT THEY REASON? MOVING FROM ANIMALITY TO RATIONALITY. Humans are the only species on the earth capable of reason and choose what they reason freely. Why is that? This is the mental universe where only humans can live. We have reason for a reason. When the divine nature creates something, such as all matter, all physical energy, and all living things, it leaves its mark on how those move through space and time. I like to think of it as God’s DNA, with the analogy to human DNA. Whatever God produces uses natural law as the foundation of evolution from having a beginning to an end. With God, there is always a movement from simplicity to complexity.
– QUESTION THREE: WHAT IS THE NEXT LEVEL OF EVOLUTION FOR HUMANS? IT IS SPIRITUAL APES, MOVING FROM RATIONALITY TO SPIRITUALITY. As part of the relentless movement of all physical matter, energy, time, and space, from beginning to end, what happens in between is an ever-increasing complexity of energy. When that which has no beginning and no end lifted up humanity from animality to rationality, humans caused a problem. They have the DNA of the Supreme Being, remember. This means humans now have what no other living species has, the ability to reason and the capability to choose something other than the natural law. This is indeed a significant paradigm shift from what went before, a cosmic shift. All the while, we continue to move down the human yardstick of time, but we also grow because of our collective and individual choices. They define what it means to be human and, within that unique species, what it means to be an individual. To get humans to the next level of their evolution, the universe of voluntary choice and reason that does seem reasonable to the World (physical and mental universes only), once again, Pure Energy, enables a Mystery paradigm shift from rationality to spirituality (my term for the spiritual universe or the Kingdom of Heaven). This is part of the plan for the physical, mental, and now spiritual universes. The reason humans have reason is to know and be aware of this grand plan of evolution. The reason humans have the freedom to choose the spiritual universe, God’s playground, where we must think the opposite of the World to enter. As a young boy of twelve, I learned that God re-opened the gates of heaven to humans as the Christ Principle by dying on the cross to redeem all humanity from its tendency to choose that which will lead to death and not life. With the Christ Principle, God not only became human but extended the Kingdom of Heaven to humans on earth, for those who choose this gift of Faith. Baptism is our ticket to enter this universe, where we continue to grow from self to God until we die (death of the body) and move to the final destiny for humans, life with pure energy forever.
– QUESTION FOUR: HOW TO SUSTAIN AND NURTURE THE GIFT OF FOREVER IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN? THE SCHOOL ON HOW TO LOVE OTHERS AS CHRIST LOVES US. Humans have a problem. With this next paradigm shift, we can see the wisdom of God, who gives us what we need to sustain this free choice to love as Christ loved us. God sent Jesus to provide those who choose the spiritual universe the help they need to maintain themselves as they live out their lives amid the conditions of Original Sin. The third new paradigm, the Christ Principle, is actualized from the Apostles’ time until the end. The School of Love is to learn how to love others as Christ loved us. That is the only rule we have to master, and it takes a lifetime of struggle to move from self to God daily.
– QUESTION FIVE: HOW TO SUSTAIN AND NURTURE THE INDIVIDUAL’S MIND AND HEART WITH LOVE? Are humans, as individuals, just here for seventy or eighty years, or is there a reason why Christ founded the school of love? One of the characteristics of humans is their tendency to belong to something, anything, to solve the loneliness of just being by yourself. Love is the medium of the spiritual universe. You don’t love with just yourself but need others for belonging to a cause or a reason to exist. Do you see a pattern in this plan to get humans to live in Heaven? If paradigm three is the WHAT and paradigm four answers the HOW, then the next logical progression is to answer WHY. This is the fifth paradigm, the person at the free choice of the next shift in reality. It is to support me from my beginning to my end. This paradigm is about my ability to reason that love is at the center of all reality love is a person, or more specifically, three persons in one nature. All of reality exists so that I can have the opportunity to say, “let it be ” as God thought in paradigm one, as the Father created in paradigm two, as the Son of God became human to allow us to reason and choose the way, the truth, and the life, in paradigm three, as the Holy Spirit sustained the collective gathering of all those in heaven, on earth, and awaiting purification in paradigm four, as I must make a choice to enter the Kingdom of Heaven using Faith informed by reason, in paradigm five, as I fulfill my destiny created for me from the beginning of time, in paradigm five. – QUESTION SIX: WHAT IS THE DESTINY OF ALL HUMANS? LIVING IN THE ALPHA AND OMEGA…FOREVER. If you ask the question, “What caused the physical, mental universes, then don’t forget that this question assumes you also ask, “What happens after there is an end to the physical mental and now the spiritual universe?” We are back to the beginning again with this exception. It is now the playground of the Supreme Being, where there is only one pure energy that overshadows all physical, mental, and spiritual universes, the pure energy of the nothingness of God. Because of all these paradigm shifts as growth and movement, we have a platform for human consciousness, the ability to reason and choose freely for humans, the option to choose a relationship with the Trinity of God, and a final destiny as humans to be adopted sons and daughters of the Father. However, we don’t quite know all there is to know about that. We have hope that the words of Jesus to us are true. The end of the physical universe, the mental universe, is the beginning as in paradigm one. Pure energy created reality, and pure energy has no beginning and no end. Because of the Christ Principle, I am an adopted son of the Father, and I will have no end.
Humans only live in the NOW, not the FUTURE nor the PAST. We learn from the past, and we hope that the words of Christ to us mean what they say. Living in the NOW means we use the PAST to learn from our successes and failure so that the choices we make NOW lead us to the purpose of life. We are not only defined by the choices we make but are judged by them. Matthew 25:
LEARNING POINTS ABOUT PARADIGM SHIFTS AND HOW THAT IMPACTS WHAT I DO AS A LAY CISTERCIAN
Everything that is has a beginning and an end, and so does this book. My ending is the beginning of a new life with Jesus, my family, friends, and those I am linked to in prayer and sacrifice. Once again, everything has a beginning and an end, including these reflections. I began this mental journey into how all of reality fits together. Initially, I just had just the physical universe in mind, which most “theory of everything” proponents have as their assumptions. I gradually came to realize that there were three distinct and separate universes in this one reality. In doing that, I moved to the six questions that I had to answer to justify the physical, mental, and spiritual universes as being independent. This, in turn, reminded me of the Trinity of three distinct persons yet one divine nature. This book further parses reality in my model with six paradigm shifts that occurred in the cosmos to set up the condition we live out daily. Humans only live in the now and make choices for what is good for them in the future based on what is past. Each individual, each paradigm is defined by these choices. In all the paradigm shifts, God is the power that lifts up the paradigm to the next level of natural maturity (evolution).
– Paradigm Shift 1: That which has no beginning nor end created that which has a beginning and an end. (The physical universe)
– Paradigm Shift 2: That which has no beginning nor end lifted up humans to include reason and the freedom to choose what is good for them. (The mental universe)
– Paradigm Shift 3: That which has no beginning nor end overshadowed Mary, who has only human nature, to be the mother of Jesus, who is the Christ, who has both human nature and divine nature. (Philippians 2:5-12) Jesus redeemed us from the Original Sin of Adam and Eve by Baptism of water and the Holy Spirit, which enabled us to, once again, become adopted sons and daughters of the Father and heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. (The spiritual universe).
– Paradigm Shift 4: That which has no beginning nor end entrusted subsequent gatherings of believers with the authority and power to live out their lives loving others as Christ loved us. (The living Church Universal)
– Paradigm Shift 5: That which has no beginning nor end allows individuals to choose to be adopted sons or daughters of the Father through Baptism, Confirmation of the Holy Spirit, Holy Eucharist, Penance and Forgiveness of sins, Matrimony, Holy Orders, and Anointing of the Sick (Viaticum). Individuals have the opportunity to ask and receive the answers to the six questions of life. The solutions we seek do not come from the secular world but from that which created all reality and left within us the imprint of his image and likeness. As an even greater sign of His love for us, He gave us his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem us from the corruption of Original Sin.
– Paradigm Shift 6: That which has no beginning nor end is with us as we prepare to inherit the kingdom created for us in Paradigm 1. All humans
As one who aspires to be a Lay Cistercian “having in me the mind of Christ Jesus” each day, I now just sit on a park bench in the dead of winter in silence and solitude and wait for my humanity to approach the heart of Christ.
I am waiting for Christ
HOW DO I ORGANIZE ALL OF THIS TO SEEK GOD PRESENCE WHEREVER I AM AND WHATEVER I DO?
HOW TO ORGANIZE AND FOCUS ON THE LIFE OF CHRIST: SEEKING GOD EACH DAY IN ALL THAT COMES MY WAY
All six of these paradigm shifts are for my benefit. Each one of us has reason and the ability to choose what we reason as the center of whatever time we have on earth. I like the saying: I am not you; you are not me; God is not you; and you, most certainly are not God. When I gather together with others who seek to have in them the mind of Christ Jesus, this is Church, the living Body of Christ with Jesus Himself the Head. If I have all these wonderful bits of help and energy from the Holy Spirit to help, and I believe (choose Jesus and not the World) I move from self to God, now what? What follows is how I integrated all of these six questions of life and the six paradigm shifts to help me be present to Christ in an unconditional way. I have made a behavioral shift from doing the contemplative exercises thinking this will make God happy, to now just seek God each day using these gifts in the same way a husband or wife longs to be in the presence of each other because being present in one of the excellent way they love each other.
The following pages are actually from a recent blog of mine on contemplative practices.
https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org
I have set forth some samples of the horarium (hourly agenda) and Internet sites that I use to organize my day as a Lay Cistercian. Everyone who practices the Cistercian practices and charisms will have a different challenge to seek God for those, not monks or nuns. This is how I do it, but it does not mean this is how you must do it. I must tell you that I am retired and have time to devote to the practice of how to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. My focus is not to do this or that Cistercian practice, and I will automatically have God in me, which seems presumptuous of me. But instead, in humility and obedience to the command to Christ to love each other as He loved us, to ask God to come into me so that I might worthily use these practices to move from self to God. He must increase, and I must decrease.
There are voices in my consciousness.
– that tells me all this dying to self is made up by people who did not want me to fulfill my life as a human being,
– that all this seeking God each day is a waste of time because I can’t see God or feel the immediate presence,
– that I am making up in contemplation, that there is no resurrection from the dead, only a dead end, and finally
– My prayers don’t do anything except feed my own need to punish myself for imaginary sins and failings.
I have a choice to take these temptations from Satan to the next level and make them the center of my life (the ninth and tenth Commandment calls it coveting), or I can say the one word that dispels the darkness and bring light from light back to my inner self. As I run the gauntlet of what remains of my life, I use these practices to place my heart next to the heart of Christ and learn of Him, for He is meek and humble of heart. Read Matthew 11 to get a sense of how much Christ loved us.
The Praise of the Father.25 At that time, Jesus said in reply,^(*) “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the childlike.26 Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him. ^(o)
The Gentle Mastery of Christ. 28^(*) “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves.30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
The Kingdom of Heaven is God’s playground; we must use His Rules if we want to play in his sandbox. Fortunately for us, there is only one rule: to love God with all our hearts, minds, and strength and our neighbor as ourselves. (Deuteronomy 6:5 and Matthew 22:36) Because the whole of humanity that was, is, and will, he did not have the energy or will to bring God’s kingdom to earth, God, Himself is the Second person of the Blessed Trinity, became one of us, like us in all things but sin. The purpose was to have the energy of God, that which has no beginning and no end, to lift up humans to have the opportunity to live in this Kingdom of Heaven with God…Forever. Now, the second Adam who knew no sin became sin for us so that we might inherit this Kingdom of Heaven created for us from before the existence of time, space, matter, and physical energy. But humans had a problem (explained by the Book of Genesis). We live in the World but must use our reason and free will and by being lifted up by Christ to make the jump to the Kingdom of Heaven. We Christians are somewhat schizophrenic in that we live in the physical world and use human reason in our daily lives but take our values and direction in obedience to the will of the Father from God, the opposite of what the World holds out as meaningful. Once again, in Baptism, Faith, which is the energy of God, reaches down to lift us up to make us adopted sons and daughters of the Father and inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven. Forever. It is only through Faith that this could happen. It is only because Christ accepted us first that we can approach the Father through, with, and in Christ, with the energy of the Holy Spirit. We depend on everything from Christ, our Christ Principle from whom flows all that is good.
Every day is a lifetime in the Kingdom of Heaven. We must accept Jesus as Lord every day of our life, having in us the mind of Christ Jesus to dispel the corrosive rust of Original Sin. This brings me to the Cistercian practices and charisms. Each day, they sustain me as I struggle against voices that try to corrupt me with pride and importance rather than seek humility and constant Faith. These are the Art of Contemplation tools, those bits of help that do not end in themselves but transform me from self to God with God’s energy. Life is all about discovering love. Love is all about finding energy, Energy of God is all about the Mystery of Faith; which St. Augustine said, “our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” That in all things, may God be glorified.–St. Benedict
My Center: Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus. –Philippians 2:5
Five or Six Practices to support my center: These are Cistercian practices I use as my centerpieces as a Lay Cistercian to measure if I am doing something for my benefit or giving praise and glory to the Father through, with and in Christ Jesus, in the unity with the Holy Spirit.
1. Silence—When I think of silence, I think of a lack of worldly noise. But it is more than just a lack of external noises, like television, children playing, going to work, and traveling in a car. I try to be conscious that all these sounds give glory to the Father through the Son, in union with the Holy Spirit. I try to make a space where I can reflect on my center with some degree of privacy. Silence of my heart helps me sustain the other Cistercian charisms and practices and grow in fierce love.
2. Solitude— Solitude, for me, means carving out space and quiet time to focus on how to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus. For the Cistercian monks and nuns, solitude means carving out time and space that permits them to focus on loving God with their whole heart, whole soul, and whole mind without external distractions. For the Lay Cistercian, we also concentrate on fashioning a little prayer nest, but we live in the secular world and therefore embrace all the distractions as part of our prayer to the Father. St. Benedict says, “That in all things, God is glorified.”
3. Prayer—Prayer is lifting the heart and mind to God. As a Lay Cistercian, I actively put myself in the presence of God using prayer, both communal and private. Even if I sometimes feel that worship is repetitious and rote, I have noticed that the more I try to grow deeper using prayer than fighting the externals, the more peace there is in my spirit. It is resting my heart in the heart of Christ that helps me love fiercely.
4. Work—Work as the world sees it is a means to make money. Work with a spiritual approach transforms the ordinary tasks of the day into those that give glory and praise to the Father. Work is prayer if offered up as praise and glory to the Father. As a retired senior, my work is almost exclusively devoted to writing and my blog. I want to offer my experiences and talents to help parishes implement a contemplative option to their everyday parish spirituality for whatever time I have remaining. 5. Community—Lay Cistercians gravitate towards communal gatherings to refresh the soul and to transform themselves more profoundly in the mind and heart of Christ Jesus. I commit to attending a monthly meeting of Lay Cistercians called a Gathering Day at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. Even though there is significant distance between us (250 miles one way), we link together as one in our commitment to each other because we are all linked through, with, and in the mind and heart of Christ Jesus. Prayer is where you find it. So, too, is Lay Cistercian spirituality. I have several communities of faith that help sustain me in my quest to love God with all my heart, my soul, and my strength. My parish faith community is where I do most of my Lay Cistercian practices.
My spiritual goals for the rest of my life:
1. Take up your cross daily and follow Christ. The cross, in this case, is consistent in spiritual practices. Although there is no penalty attached for not performing them, the more you want to have in you the mind of Christ Jesus, the more you will possess what you wish. Take what comes your way and transform it into Christ Jesus.
2. Solitude amid community. The community here means support and sustaining bu a faith group, such as Lay Cistercians of Holy Spirit Monastery, Conyers, Ga. and Good Shepherd faith community at daily Mass and Liturgy of the Hours, with its ministries to the poor, the sick, and those in need. Where two or three gather in my name, says the Master, there I am also.
3. Work to share my writings and adult learning about Cistercian spiritual practices. 4.Be open to the possibility of the manifestibility of all being! I want to be more conscious of my own capacity to love God with my whole heart, mind, and whole soul and neighbor as myself (capacitas dei). I want to be open to radical hospitality, seeing Christ as my neighbor, seeking to be available to God’s message in nature, hoping for a small place in the Kingdom of Heaven. I want to have in me the mind of Christ Jesus (Philippians 2:5), I don’t just want it, I will pay any price (using Cistercian charisma and practices to die to self so that I might rise with Christ to a new life each day)
Spiritual Practices I use to sustain my center:
As a Lay Cistercian, these are some of the practices, little nests of silence and solitude, I carve out of my routine, not because I need the discipline but because they place me in direct contact with the mind and heart of Christ. I meet Christ and through Him the Holy Spirit when I take time to make room for Him in my heart.
Eucharist: The Sacrament of unity with God through Christ Jesus with the Holy Spirit as Advocate. This is the bread of Heaven. This is the pure energy of God for my transformation. This is my destiny in one prayer of gratitude with the community of believers.
Lectio Divina: This ancient, monastic practice allows me to grow deeper in spiritual awareness; there are four steps. Read (lectio); Meditate (meditatio); Pray (oratio); Contemplate (contemplatio).
Meditation and Spiritual Reading: This practice gives me time to focus on Scriptures and Spiritual Readings about growing deeper in Christ Jesus. Nothing is more central than to read the inspired Word of God and to seek, in humility and truth, to become what I read. John 20:30-31. The Rosary: Meditations on the life and purpose of Christ Jesus. One of my favorite practices is a mantra-like prayer to help me meditate on the high points in the life of Jesus. You grow beyond saying Our Fathers or Hail Mary’s. It is trying to focus on how to move from self to God using the Life of Christ Jesus as motivation.
Liturgy of the Hours: This practice, refined by St. Benedict c. 540 AD in his Rule of St. Benedict, organizes the monks to pray the Psalms seven times a day. I try to pray the Psalms at least three times a day. The key is consistency and prayer in common, if possible. It is the prayer of the Catholic Church every hour of the day, every day of the week, giving praise, honor, and glory to the Father through the Son in union with the Holy Spirit.www.divineoffice.org
Eucharistic Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament: I believe that Jesus Christ is present, body and blood, soul and divinity, under the appearance of the bread. This is an ancient practice and one of the most revered of all practices. If this is indeed the living Christ, why would you not want to visit? This takes fierce love to practice.
Reading the Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 4: Each day, part of taking up my cross is reading Chapter 4 of St. Benedict, the Tools for Good Works. I offer this reading in reparation for my sins and the strength to be strong next time I am tempted.
https://christdesert.org/prayer/rule-of-st-benedict/chapter-4-the-tools- for-good-works/
Dedication of the Day: My offering each day for a different intention. Monday: I do penance, in reparation for my sins and those of the Church, those in my book of Life.
Tuesday For all family, friends, teachers, those in my book of Life.
Wednesday: In honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Heart of Mary, and St. Joseph, those in my book of Life.
Thursday: For all Lay Cistercians, Monks of Holy Spirit Monastery, Monks of St. Meinrad Archabbey, priests and religious Diocese of Evansville, Monks of Norcia, Italy, and those in my book of Life.
Friday: For an increase in God’s grace to love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and my neighbor as myself.
Saturday: For all deceased, an increase in my faith through the Holy Spirit and for those in my book of Life.
Sunday: To give praise, honor, and glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.
A PRAYER FOR PERSPECTIVE
Our Father, source of all goodness and fulfillment, we struggle so many times to see your will in what we attempt each day. We are most alive, most human when we look at you in the delicate way the sun greets each leaf in the morning by brushing it gently with the gold paint of dawn, the way the rose radiates subtle smells effortlessly to praise you far more than mere words, the way the seashore throttles the sands with clashing sounds, the way Coffee con Leche tastes with Cuban bread, the way you touch us with the unseen reality of your love. All creation gives you glory by their being. “That in all things, God be glorified.” Give us daily food for the journey, and you did your people in the desert. Give us good friends to help keep us honest about ourselves. Give us your Spirit to make the gifts accurate in treating others with unconditional love and faith. Allow us to forgive those who wrong us and pray for those who put us down for loving you. You are the gate through which we must pass on our journey to Forever. Show us the way to be gentle and humble of heart. Give us the wisdom to see what is unknown, know what is unseen, and love pure energy. With St. Paul, may we prefer nothing to understand you and serve you with gladness every day of our lives. When the Devil tempts us, may the angels that minister to you night and day also be our protectors from choosing our false self.
May you bless us with your spirit of mercy and penance so that we might resist evil and our failures to love you with all our hearts, as you were once tempted in the Garden of Gethsemane.
END NOTES:
To live the life of Christ as a Lay Cistercian is not without distinct challenges and responsibilities. It would be so easy just to say you want to be a Lay Cistercian and bask in the glow of what the monks and nuns do in their daily lives as if you wishing to be like them is actually like them. Like the book of James points out, faith without works is dead. So too is a Lay Cistercian Journey without the struggle of trying to have in you the mind of Christ Jesus every day. (Phil. 2:5). As the Fox in the book, The Little Prince, points out: it is time you take to be with someone that makes it meaningful.
As one who can only aspire to be a Lay Cistercian, it takes five years of practice (two years as a Novice and three years as a Junior) before one makes final promises, and that is just to begin to run the race. It is the race itself that is meaningful, the time it takes to live out the Life of Christ in daily events, to see and share the love of Christ in the community of believers that you may only see once a day or once a month, the daily habits formed by practicing prayers over and over, while all the time is making them fresh and new each day. All this to have in you the mind of Christ Jesus (Phil.2:5).
Is it worth the cost? For those for whom Christ has captured them, as St. Paul says in Philippians 3:7-16.
“…I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For Him, I have accepted the loss of everything, and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ Jesus and be given a place in Him.”
That passage has begun to transform me from self to God, ever so slowly and unobtrusively, so that what had become routine and stale is now new and fresh with the realization that I have only begun to grasp “…the breadth and the length, the height and the depth, until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, (I am) filled with the utter fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:18-20) Praise to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever, the God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen.
THE CHRIST IMPERATIVES
Listen to me, for I am meek and humble of heart. Matthew 11:28-30
– Thirsty? Drink of the living waters! John 7:37.
– Hungry? Eat the food that gives eternal life! John 6:33-38. – Bewildered? Believe in the Master! John 3:11-21.
– Without hope? Be not afraid! John 13:33-35.
– Lost? Find the way. John 14:6-7.
– Tired because of the pain? Be renewed! John 15:1-7.
– Afraid? Find peace! John 27-28.
– Afraid to believe? Believe! John 11:25-27.
– Without a family? Listen! John 10:7-18.
– In darkness? Walk in the light! John 8:12.
– Spiritually depressed? Be healed! John 5:24
“His master said to him, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’” Matthew 25 www.usccb.org
ACTIVITY
The first time you read these Imperatives, just read it as you usually do but make a deliberate effort to read it slowly and don’t rush just to finish it. The second time read it even slower but try to pick out one idea or theme that you want to explore. You may wish to write it down in the space that I have provided for your notes. I have heard it said that the third time is the charm. The third time reread it, but this time as prayer. What is the Holy Spirit trying to tell you? You don’t have to do anything now but wait.
– Being a faithful follower of the Master is the easiest thing to talk about but the most challenging thing to do. – As a Lay Cistercian, trying to convert my life daily to be more like Christ and less like me, I find these imperatives like beacons on the stormy waters of living in a world influenced by Original Sin.
– Spirituality is work and a struggle because we live in a foreign land, one whose default is not a conveyor belt to get to Heaven. Heaven is not automatic. If it was, why be spiritual at all? Just sit back and sin bravely.
– It is Christ who has shown us the way, given us love as the gold standard, taught us how to love because he has loved us first, by his passion, death, and resurrection.
– It is this faith that conquers the World. This faith is that of the Universal Church (those who have died and are in the peace of Christ, those who live on earth and struggle with the conversion of life, and those purifying themselves) that join us as One Baptism One Lord, One Faith. Christ wanted us to live out our moving from self to God amid the community of Faith. This community has the Mystery of Faith as its core.
– These imperatives help us as a community as we approach the Sacred.
– The core imperative of Christ is to love one another as I have loved you. I pray that I am what I hope to become in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Praise to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –Cistercian doxology
MY MEASURE OF SUCCESS
Measurement is an essential part of science and education. It tells us what works and what does not, and more importantly, why. Christ had a system for measuring success, too.
Be careful when use measurements just in the physical and mental universe. The assumptions will kill you. With that in mind, this is what you should know before you make this measurement of what cannot be seen nor comprehended. The good news is, there is only one yardstick against which we must be measured—have in you the mind of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:5). An excellent example of measurement is Chapter 4 of the Rule of St. Benedict.
– The measuring stick of the physical universe is the language of natural law.
– The measuring stick of the mental universe is also the languages of science and human-created languages of all kinds.
– The measuring stick of the spiritual universe comes from God and is a person. (Philippians 2:5-12)
– Only the mental universe can create language to demystify nature and ask questions to help humanity move to a deeper appreciation of physical reality.
– Only in the last hundred or so years have humans learned how to learn about the composition of the universe.
– The language of God is available to every human regardless of nationality, race, gender,
and political persuasion.
YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU ARE GOING TO MEET THE HOLY SPIRIT
Recently, I went to Starbucks, B.C. (before COVID-19), to get a cup of my favorite brew. By chance, I found myself standing in line with a friend of mine from Good Shepherd. We struck up a conversation about this and that when out of the blue, she asked me, “If God asked you to boil down all this religion stuff and simply make one statement that describes what you have been hoping to become, what would that one idea be?” After picking my jaw up from the floor where it had dropped, I got my coffee and sat down with her. For what seemed like a long time (actually about a minute), I sat in silence, just thinking of all that I had experienced over a lifetime of 80 years. What I realized was that I was not thinking of her statement as much as what prompted her to make such an out-of-character statement at all. As we talked, I told her how astonished I was that she had asked me that question because it was the very one I had been struggling with in my Lectio Divina that same morning. I had known the answer to the question she asked since 1962 when I began to realize the implications of accepting Christ as my center, the one principle of purpose for whatever life throws at me each day. It was and is Philippians 2:5-12. “Have in you the mind of Christ Jesus.” What gave me goosebumps was that there was a dimension to this I had never experienced before in quite the same way. I told her that I had recognized and experienced the Holy Spirit speaking her words just to me. I also told her that I had thought of how Christ and Peter had a similar exchange. (I told you this was a long minute.)
Read Matthew 16 slowly three time, each time slower than before. What is the Holy Spirit telling you? Slow down. Listen profoundly! Listen profoundly to that encounter between Our Master and a disciple, Peter. Peter’s Confession About Jesus.
13 When Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
16 Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
18 And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
19 I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
20 Then he strictly ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Messiah.”
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/matthew/16
When I got up from our coffee break, I thanked her for allowing me to see the Holy Spirit through her. I think we both became a little more humble that day and ended with the prayer: Praise be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen and Amen. –the Cistercian doxology
CISTERCIAN AND OTHER RESOURCES THAT HAVE HELPED ME ON MY LAY CISTERCIAN JOURNEY (SO FAR) YOUTUBE
G.K. Chesterton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0b4zteOoI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anBuPC6DpvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0b4zteOoI
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHaizmIj3ck https://youtube.com/watch?v=K8qqZup3Bg4www.youtube. com/watch?v=NnXlQWmubYw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGGSxxuBtMk
Scott Hahn and Catholic Apologetics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67WmIGLPvEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67WmIGLPvEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67WmIGLPvEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uL_IAJWvX0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn1tWuIoZsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faIB-sOBDKk Bishop Robert Barron
https://www.youtube.com/user/wordonfirevideo/videos
I feel blessed that the Holy Spirit led me to Bishop Barron’s website. I discovered it while browsing the Internet—a reminder that the Holy Spirit can guide even an aging, imperfect Lay Cistercian to resources he could not find alone. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for guiding and sustaining me.
Nota Bene
Several blog resources follow. You will notice some duplications. This is not due to my forgetfulness at age 80+ but rather my intention to give you these resources in their entirety.
FIVE CONTEMPLATIVE WEBSITES
When I look up something that puzzles me, which is almost 100% of the time, I use these five sites to think of contemplative spirituality. I thought you might like to see what they are and bookmark them. I offer these sites as an aspiring Lay Cistercian in search of wisdom and humility. You might notice some duplication of resources due to the multiple blogs I wrote.
NUMBER FIVE: CISTERCIAN WEBSITES OF
NOTE http://www.osb.org/cist/ You will find many hours of enjoyment clicking on and reading the various sites that pertain to Cistercians. There are two branches of the Cistercian observance, Regular Observance ( O. Cist.) and Strict Observance (O.C.S.O.). Of particular interest to me were the sites that pertain to Lay Cistercians and those highlighting the movement’s early history.
NUMBER FOUR: LAY CISTERCIAN WEBSITES OF NOTE TO MOVE FROM SELF TO GOD
http://www.citeaux.net/wri-av/laics_cisterciens-eng.htm http://www.trappist.net/about/lay-cistercians http://www.carlmccolman.net/category/laycistercians/ Read this website. Carl is a Lay Cistercian of Holy Spirit Monastery, Conyers, Georgia, where I aspire to be a Lay Cistercian. It is my favorite website of an individual practitioner of Cistercian piety.
NUMBER THREE: RESEARCH SITES TO GROW DEEPER INTO CHRIST JESUS http://newadvent.org If there is one source I use more than others, it is New Advent. It contains the Catholic Encyclopedia, Summa Theologica, Bible, Early primary sources or Fathers of the Church, plus other excellent links. Don’t miss this one. I recommend signing up for their newsletters. You can sign up for their daily posting of news.
NUMBER TWO: TEACHINGS OF THE MAGISTERIUM (Vatican)
http://w2.vatican.va/content/vatican/en.html This is a site on which I have spent many happy hours looking up the actual texts about what the Church teaches, as opposed to what people say we teach but don’t.
NUMBER ONE: MY WEBSITE
https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org
This is my own website. I put it as number one because I use it the most, not because I think it is the best. It is the result of my daily Lectio Divina and an attempt to share some practical ways to practice contemplative spirituality, emphasizing the Cistercian heritage as I know it. I had tried to give you a variety of websites that I use to grow from self to God. They have all helped me to look at who I am in my relationship with God (He must increase, I must decrease).
YOU MUST SEE THIS WEBSITE
Posted on October 24, 2020, by thecenterforcontemplativepractice
I share my joy with you about a website that I discovered by Father Luke Dysinger, O.S.B., with rich contemporary subjects and patristic and other primary sources. You can read the actual texts of the ecumenical councils, plus other great writers. Father Luke conducts an online course in bioethics. Here is his shortened bio as copied directly from his website.
FATHER LUKE’S BIO:
“Fr. Luke Dysinger has been a member of the Benedictine monastic community at Saint Andrew’s Abbey Valyermo, California, since May 1980. He has served as novicemaster, juniormaster, and prior; he is presently librarian and second cantor. He teaches patristics, the history of Christian spirituality, bioethics, and human sexuality at Saint John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California, where he is a full professor and chair of the department of moral theology. He teaches monastic formation and monastic spirituality at the School of Theology of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota.
Before joining the monastery, he trained as a physician, graduating from the University of Southern California School of Medicine in 1978 and completing his residency in family practice in 1981. He serves as chair of the bioethics committee at the Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center in Lancaster, California, where he is a member of the medical staff. He consults as a contract bioethicist at St. Francis Medical Center, Lynnwood. He studied theology in Oxford, completing his studies for ordination in 1985 and his D.Phil. in patristics in 2000. He has published a translation of the Rule of Benedict, as well as articles on Evagrius Ponticus, lectio divina, and other subjects in monastic spirituality and bioethics. His book, Prayer and Psalmody in the Writings of Evagrius Ponticus, is available from Oxford University Press.”
FATHER LUKE’S COURSE ON BIOETHICS
http://www.ldysinger.com/ThM_590_Intro- Bioeth/webcourse/00a_start.htm
READINGS AND AUDIO LECTURES FROM ST. JOHN’S SEMINARY
PRIMARY SOURCES
http://www.ldysinger.com/@texts/00a_start.htm
This site is the resource for which I have been anxiously awaiting. I discovered a treasure trove of courses and great primary texts from saints to heretics, from Christ to Mohammed, in the original texts (in English).
THE TOP WEBSITES I USE DAILY TO MOVE SELF TO GOD(Copied from a previous blog).
I use the Internet a lot these days. Granted, there is a lot of blather contained in it, like picking through the garbage, but there are some gems that I use almost every week as I seek God daily through silence and solitude. In no order of importance, here are the sites that have helped me to move a tiny bit from self to God. – WORD ON FIRE —www.wordonfire.org This is the site that features Bishop Robert Barron and his ministry. I love this site because you can sign up for his daily meditations on the Eucharist plus a Sunday commentary. If you are so inclined, you can sign up for his Word on Fire Institute. This has my highest recommendation, and I use it nearly every day. You can go to YouTube.com and type in Bishop Barron to see some of his videos. All of us are blessed because of Bishop Barron and his team of evangelists.
– DR. SCOTT HAHN — http://www.scotthahn.com Here is another magnificent site that just oozes with the Holy Spirit. When you access his website, you can click on some of his video sessions. Anything that comes from the St. Paul Center is worth your time and spiritual energy. You can also access YouTube to find more of Dr. Scott Hahn’s videos.
– NEW ADVENT — https://www.newadvent.org/ I use this site to look up resources, such as The Catholic Encyclopedia, Fathers of the Church, the Bible, Summa Theologica, and my personal favorite. This up-to-date newsletter is loaded with commentary and links to other significant events of the day. It is yours for free. Just take the time to sign up.
TRAPPIST BROTHERS AND SISTERS —
https://www.trappists.org/history-of-the-trappists/notable-monks-nuns/ This site is used for all things Trappist, one of two branches of the Cistercian Order, the other being Regular Cistercians. It has my highest recommendation because I use it to check out the latest news and developments with the Trappists.
– A LAY CISTERCIAN LOOKS AT REALITY https://thecenterforcontemplativepractice.org This site is one I created to reflect on the reality of each day using Cistercian, specifically Trappist practices and charisms.
– OUR LADY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT MONASTERY (Trappist) — www.trappist.net is my spiritual Cistercian home, one that accepted me as a professed Lay Cistercian (lifetime promises of stability and conversion of life).
– THE DIVINE OFFICE
http://www.divineoffice.org If you wish to join others in reciting the Liturgy of the Hours daily, this is the online site I use this site daily. It also has a link to my blog.
– USCCB- http://www.usccb.org is the website for the Bishops of the United States. I use this to look up scriptural quotes, the latest developments that affect our Faith in this country.
– AUGUSTINE INSTITUTE
https://www.augustineinstitute.org/ is a dedicated site for things about the Roman Catholic experience of Christ Jesus.
– THE VATICAN NEWS
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2020-05/church- recognizes-miracle-attributed-to-ven-michael-mcgivney.html This is a site to read about news from the Holy Father and Vatican. Highly recommended.
WHAT IS THE CENTER FOR CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE?
The Center for Contemplative Practice is a ministry of people devoted to providing spiritual resources for adults, such as publishing books, training, blogs, and online meditation.
DISCLAIMER The ideas and meditations in any books or blogs shared by The Center for Contemplative Practice do not represent the official, authoritative teaching of the Roman Catholic Church or any Cistercian Monastery or Lay Cistercian group. I am probably guilty of the “heresy of the average Catholic.” These ideas are the results of Lectio Divina’s spiritual meditations by the author and reflect only his interpretation of Catholic spiritual thoughts through contemplation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael F. Conrad, B.S., M.R.E., Ed.D., is retired from a full life of trying to make money, seek fame and recognition by the world, all without much success. Regarding what the World thinks is successful, he has been a failure. Coming to his senses, even after the age of 80, he now just struggles to have in him the mind of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 2:5) Still running the race and searching for the prize, he has had a lifetime of activities to help him in his quest: he is proud to have been a U.S. Army Chaplain, pastor of parish ministry, adjunct instructor of Adult Education at Indiana University (Bloomington) and University of South Florida (Tampa) and Barry University (Florida), high school instructor of religion, trainer of managers and supervisors, adjunct trainer for the Florida Certified Public Manager program, instructional designer for the State of Florida, former Florida Supreme Court Certified Family Mediator, and currently a publisher, blogger, and author, He is a Professed Lay Cistercian member of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery, Conyers, Georgia, proud father, and a humbled husband. My ending is always the same as my beginning. Praise be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and forever. The God who is, who was, and who is to come at the end of the ages. Amen. –Cistercian doxology
What follows is a poem about my life. It is, as yet, unfinished, as is my life, but the elements are all present.
The Poem of My Life
I sing the song of life and love…
…sometimes flat and out of tune
…sometimes eloquent and full of passion
…sometimes forgetting notes and melody
…sometimes quaint and intimate
…often forgetful and negligent
…often in tune with the very core of my being
…often with the breath of those who would pull me down, shouting right in my face
…often with the breath of life uplifting me to heights never before dreamed
…greatly grateful for the gift of humility and obedience to The One
…greatly thankful and humbled by the adoption as a son of the Father, the discovery of new life in pure energy
…greatly appreciative for sharing meaning with others of The Master
…greatly sensitive for not judging the motives of anyone but me …happy to be accepted as an aspiring Lay Cistercian …happy to spend time in Eucharistic Adoration
…happy and humbled to be an adopted son of the Father
…happy for communities of faith and love with wife,
daughter, friends
…mindful that the passage of time increases each year …mindful of the significant distractions of cancer and cardiac arrest
…mindful of my center and the perspective that I am loved moreover, I must love back with all the energy of my heart and strength, yet always falling a little short
…mindful of the energy I receive from The One in Whom I find purpose and meaning in the Mystery of Faith…Forever.
To The One who is, Who was, and Who is to come at the end of the ages, be glory, honor, power, and blessings through The Redeemer Son, in unity with the Advocate, the Spirit of Love.
From The One who is, Who was, and Who is to come at the end of the ages, I seek hope that His words about the purpose of life are true, that He is the Way that leads to life…Forever.
With The One who is, Who was, and Who is to come at the end of the ages, I seek the fierce love so I can have in me the mind of Christ Jesus, my purpose in life, and my center…Forever. “That in all things, may God be glorified.” – St. Benedict
SOME CATHOLIC INTERNET AND BLOG RESOURCES
Copyright © Michael F. Conrad, Ed.D. The Center for Contemplative Practice. All rights reserved. Produced with collaboration from Grok. No part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or used for commercial profit without the express written permission of Michael F. Conrad.
Eight Sites Every Catholic Should Use: www.wordonfire.org www.scotthahn.com usccb.org www.ashenden.org www.newadvent.org vatican.va www.divineoffice.org www.ebook2000.org