"If I tell the truth, why then do you not believe me?"

"If I tell the truth, why then do you not believe me?" John 8:46

The Gospel of John is adamant about Jesus being the "truth." Among the numerous proclamations of this is one of the most famous lines found in verse 14:6, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life..."

On the occasion when Jesus asked, "If I tell the truth, why then do you not believe me?", he was in the temple teaching a group of people. Part of his lesson (verses 31 and 32) was that for those who believed in him, they shall know the truth, and the truth shall make them free.

Free? Free from what? All these verses on truth point to the same thing; the very things that encapsulate our souls preventing us from believing in him, are the very same things that we can be free of if we do believe in him. Perhaps this is another spiritual conundrum whose single key unlocks multiple doors.

The soul each of us has been given includes the image of God. It's like a shining light bulb inside of us that is supposed to represent God's unique reflection through us. But over time it gets coated with layers of dust and dirt as we travel through life. This dust and dirt comes in the form of illusions, false desires, prejudices, guilt, biases, arrogance, fear, shame, and hatred, to name a few; things we pick up from societal programming, peer pressure, false teachings. The coating over our light bulbs grows into a dysfunctional ego, taking on a life of its own, gradually dimming our true light, and is made up of the very things that keep us from believing the truth. A dysfunctional ego does not want to know the truth, because the truth would destroy it.

Saul's light bulb was cleaned off by Jesus on the road to Damascus (Acts 9). "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?" Jesus asked. Saul saw the true light, which allowed his own true light to shine forth once again. He was brought to an awareness of the truth, and as a result freed himself from the hatred and illusions he held.

When Jesus asks us, "Why then do you not believe me?", he is asking us to specifically name the things covering our own light bulbs. When we become truly aware of these things, we begin to see how silly and wrong they are, and they begin to fall off like the scales from Saul's eyes. Untruths, when held up to the true Light, fade away.

What impact does this Gospel reflective question have on your life? What things can you name that are covering your soul? Take some time with this and write down your responses in your journal. Share your thoughts with trusted advisors and counselors.

May God be with you on your journey!

Br. Daniel-Joseph, CTG

"Do you want to be healed?"

Gospel Reflection Question #3 "Do you want to be healed?" John 5:6

A man who had been ill for 38 years lay by the pool known as Bethesda. Jesus knew that the man had been there a long time, and asked him, "Do you want to be healed?" Once the man professed his desire to be healed Jesus told him to "stand up, take your mat and walk."

A discussion of "healing" can be laden with confusion and disappointment, since we see almost every day one person who is healed, and another who is not. There is a danger that lurks there creating the assumption that some people are closer to God and therefore get healed while others who are not in God's favor are bypassed. Those that aren't brought to health may be viewed as deserving of their troubles.

For the purposes of this reflective exercise, let's consider the possibility that there is a difference between "healing" and "curing." While being "cured" of an injury or disease may be a physical restoration of some sort, let's consider "healing" to be a spiritual restoration (which may or may not lead to a physical cure). Being healed is to be made whole in a spiritual sense. We come to terms with our affliction, accept it and keep it in life's perspective while we continue to seek a cure.

The physical part of ourselves is form, and all form is impermanent. It will not last. No one can be physically cured forever. The spiritual part of us, however, is essence, and essence is permanent. We can be spiritually healed forever.

To be spiritually healed, to be fully united with God, we have to want it. Jesus is looking for that willingness to follow him, to learn from him and to risk your life with him. He is the only true healer. Our Aspirant in France, Katherine, recently sent me this bit of wisdom which she collected on her spiritual journey:

”If looking back makes you suffer too much,
And if looking forwards makes you too afraid,
Look to your side and I will always be there with you."

So, before healing can take place, there has to be a willingness to heal. A person who does not want to be healed can negate even the best medicine, the most skilled hands of a surgeon, or the expert guidance of a therapist. If we wish to firmly identify with our past pains or future worries, the chances for healing are remote.

Therefore Jesus asks, "Do you want to be healed?" He's asking if there is a willingness to take that all important step of openness, acceptance, release and non-judgment. Are you ready to leave the past and the future where they belong, and look to him who walks beside you in the Present?

Do you want to be healed? What healing do you need right now? Take some time with this and write down your responses in your journal. Share your thoughts with trusted advisors and counselors.

As an additional reading for this reflective exercise, you may want to consider Psalm 51.

May God be with you on your journey!

Br. Daniel-Joseph, CTG

"What is your name?"

Luke (8:30) reports that when Jesus encountered a man in the country of Gerasenes who was possessed by multiple demons, he asked the man, "What is your name?" The man responded, "Legion," for he had many demons.

Jesus was already aware of, and knew, who the demons were inside the man. But Jesus' objective was to get the man to see the demons, too. The man had to see them as Jesus saw them - foreign objects covering the soul that had no place in the person. These "demons", like all demons, could only survive in the unconscious darkness of the possessed person's mind.

Once the person became fully aware of them by seeing them in the true Light, they would begin to fade. In the case of the man from Gerasenes, the demons sought shelter elsewhere knowing that they could not survive in this Light of Truth.

Jesus' piercing question, "What is your name?", began to bring definition to the situation. The question was designed to help the man see the true nature of these afflictions in new Light; to see them for what they really were: illusions; something foreign to us and to God that can no longer hide behind the veil of a dysfunctional ego.

Demons can take on various disguises. Sometimes they appear as biases or attachments, sometimes as prejudices. Some are time-travelers: they cling to us as guilt or shame of the past, and others come to us from the future bringing with them worry or fear. Several fed on power or on materialism or on false pride. They come in all sizes and shapes! But they all need you to feel separated from God, from the source of the True Light, because they draw their energy from this separation. If a person is not connected to the One Source of love, that person is powerless against possession.

When we fully recognize and begin to define our demons in the Light of Truth, they begin to fade under the power of God's love and compassion. Often, depending on the strength of our "demons" we may need to enlist the assistance of professional therapists and counselors as well as other members of our spiritual formation team to bring the issues to full Light. The man from Gerasenes needed Jesus' help to identify and expel his demons; so, too, must we often seek this same help from others who are professionally trained.

This reflective exercise begins with you and Jesus. During your contemplative time, imagine that he's alone with you, and asks you, "What is your name?" He's asking you to define your demons. What do they look like? What do they do? What false things are they telling you? Define them; shape them; expose them for what they really are. Take some time with this and write down your responses in your journal. Share your thoughts with trusted advisors and counselors.

May God be with you on your journey!

Prayer as Spiritual Breathing

Prayer is some of the most important work we do. So is breathing. Breathing helps keep our physical bodies alive. Prayer helps keep our spiritual souls alive. Both types of breathing involve a rhythm of inhaling and exhaling. If you're reading this I assume you are actively engaged in physical breathing and are somewhat familiar with it, so I'd like to focus on the idea of inhaling and exhaling in a spiritual sense through prayer.

When you look at our structured prayer time, such as the Daily Office, you'll see how part of it is inhalation, and part of it is exhalation. Inhalation, of course, comes first. We have to have something in our lungs before we can breathe it out. Physical inhalation takes in air - spiritual inhalation takes in the Presence of God.

The first half of our prayer time is receiving God's Presence through the Psalms, Lessons, Hymns, Canticles and Homily. It can also be done by experiencing the Presence of God in nature - taking a walk, rowing a boat, flying a kite, playing a game with a child. The inhalation of God's love and compassion is practiced in prayer, but can be experienced throughout the day. Inhalation is the contemplative side of our spiritual breathing. When we inhale, we take in the love and compassion of God for His creation. It is the stuff of which we are all made.

Our souls are fueled by this spiritual air, and once our lungs are filled with it, we must exhale. We were not meant to keep the air in our lungs; we were meant to circulate it. So, what is spiritual "exhalation"? We find this in the second half of the Daily Office under the title of 'The Prayers'. The cornerstone is the Lord's Prayer, recognizing our unity with God in purpose and essence. We also find daily Collects, prayers of Thanksgiving, and our intercessions and petitions for others.

Spiritual exhalation becomes the active side of our spiritual breathing. Being transformed by the fresh air taken in, we now put it to use. We have been given the power to change some things through prayer, so we need to use this opportunity through our intercessions and petitions. Of course, we are changed personally by prayer as well, and this prepares us better to respond during the course of the day to people and situations we encounter. We learn to use present moment resources to respond to present moment situations, and we do so keeping in mind the love and compassion taught to us by Christ and reinforced constantly by the Holy Spirit.

Breathe in - breathe out. This is our prayer life. This is why we pray. This rhythm of nature is a pattern of wisdom in both physical and spiritual realms. Make sure that both are a part of your life.

"What is it that you seek?"

This question, asked by Jesus of two of John the Baptist's disciples (John 1:38), was meant to be a question that found its way into the heart. Although the two disciples did not answer the question directly, they expressed their yearning by referring to Christ as "Teacher," and asked where he was staying.

Within each person God placed a yearning to be reunited with Him. This comes with the soul that He breathed into each one of us as we were being knitted together in our mother's womb. St. Augustine mentioned this 1,600 years ago when he wrote, God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him." Even St. Gregory of Nazianzen wrote, "In my earthly nature I am attached to life here below, while I also have in me a portion of the godhead; therefore my heart is tormented by the desire for the world to come."

Some people do not recognize what this yearning is, or how to respond to it. Without proper guidance they become distracted by the things of this world and attempt to fill this void with material acquisitions, addictions, false power, or other illusions. This is the broad road that leads to nowhere.

Other people recognize the yearning for what it is; the call of God's love, compassion and companionship. They seek to respond to this call of love in a spiritually-based way instead of one based on man's ways. As God says to us in Isaiah 55, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways."

So, we seek to shape our life around what we believe will bring us closer to God and be pleasing to Him. We turn to the time-honored traditions of our monastic brothers and sisters, and build a life based on His love.

We come to know that living these monastic principles gradually dissolves the false self that encapsulates our soul. The further we go, and the more we travel, the more we empty ourselves out so that we can let God work His will through us. This is the model that Saint Paul described in Philippians when he said, "Let the same mind be in you that was Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. But he emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant, being born in human likeness, and he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross." (Phili. 2:5-8)

At some point in our journey we begin to see Christ in others, we begin to appreciate nature as being sacred, we begin to see things we use every day as gifts from God, and we begin to understand that our actions are sacraments of God's steadfast love in the world. We truly become the hands, feet, eyes and lips of God - but most importantly we become His heart.

When we pass from this life to the next, we continue to carry with us our love and compassion that Jesus taught us and the Holy Spirit sustains within us. We gain a new and greater intimacy with Our Father, and join the eternal feast with His other servants, continuing to grow in His love and service.

To help guide us there, we can occasionally take some contemplative time and ask ourselves, "What is it that I seek?" This makes for an excellent reflective question and meditative exercise. Take some time with it and write down your response in your journal. Perhaps do it once a month to make sure that your spiritual compass continues to point toward His heart.

May God be with you on your journey!

Thoughts on the Transfiguration

The Transfiguration story is one of my favorite. It was nearing the end of Jesus' ministry, when he took three of his disciples, Peter, John and James, up to the mountain to pray. His journey up the mountain and the prayers he said remind us that there is a physical, concrete part of ministry. But his transfiguration may have been designed to remind us with great emphasis that there is also a powerful spiritual force at work as well.

These are two aspects of the Church (the physical and the spiritual) work together, each one contributing to the final goal of bringing every person back into a relationship with Our Father. There is the earthly part, the institution of the Church brought to us by Christ and embodied in him, that gradually developed into the beautiful and mystical rites, celebrations, canons, trappings and ornaments that guide us in worship and praise. This part, while greatly filled with the energy and Spirit of God, is more physical and concrete to us initially. We often see these things before we understand them. It is more of an outside-in type movement. Sometimes we never understand that these things are supposed to work closely with the other part, or we lose sight of this fact along the way.

The other part is sometimes referred to as the pneumanistic part, or the part that is driven by the Holy Spirit, the Breath, as she extends inspiration, hope and yearnings of the heart that gradually move people to Christ. This part usually happens from the inside out -- we often feel it long before we see its results as changed behavior or an outward act of service.

The two parts start from different places, but both head in the same direction, and are greatly intertwined. Together these two parts are supposed to work as a team, totally integrated with each other and quite inseparable.

The physical part of the church, the Rites, vestments, canons, hierarchy and constitutions, sometimes tend to be more attractive because we more easily identify with them since we also have a physical nature as they do. We sometimes lose ourselves in this physical nature which seeks identity in the physical world. Sometimes this gets strong enough that we use the physical aspects to protect what we think is the Church. What Christ designed to be inclusive, we begin to set boundaries that gradually build the walls of an exclusive club. We may insist that someone must be a member of the club before he or she can become a member. We forget that Christ came to serve the unchurched through the grace of the Holy Spirit, and didn't only come to serve the 'Righteous.' We refuse to use the tools we have to go into the streets to find and help the broken because that might be conforming to the world's standards. God forbid!

When Peter experienced the Transfiguration, he wanted to build three altars (physical aspects of the Church). Instead, Jesus took them down from the mountain and back into the crowds below to teach and heal (spiritual).

The transfiguration is a reminder for me to seek that powerful balance between the physical and the spiritual arms of the Church. These two were designed to work together to build the Church he meant to build -- a family that included every one of his children.

On The Last Judgment

Over the last year I have been writing a rather large computer program for a good friend. We're reaching the point where we are actually able to test it to see if it will do what we hoped it would. And, by golly, most of it works! But the key word here is 'most'. As we discover the 'bugs', we work to find them and correct the code - the process of 'debugging'.

While writing this code, I would often take breaks (so my head would not explode) by going out to my garden. At this time of year my walk to the world of vegetables and flowers would be mainly to pull weeds. It struck be yesterday that I may have stumbled on another pattern of life, a sign of the Creator surprising me in the most common places.

I realized that as I was pulling weeds, I did not harm the good parts of the garden. When I found a weed in one of my flower beds, I did not destroy the whole flower bed - I simply worked to pull the weed. I have an unending love for the vegetables and flowers, but not the weeds. While the weed grew in the same soil, and soaked up the same sunshine, and drank the same water, it was not part of the true garden that I wanted to preserve. At some point, the weed would have to be separated from the garden.

In thinking about my computer program, I realized that when I found a 'bug' in the code, I did not delete the entire program and start over, but I worked intensely to ferret out the errant line and remove it or change it. In effect, there was a 'weed' in my program garden.

Even the physician, when she or he encounters some malady within a patient, will work to remove the problem, not remove the whole patient. Certainly one way to end the problem is to destroy the entire person, but that would defeat the healing process, and not make much sense.

Perhaps within us, a part of the image of God, we inherently understand that there is bad with the good, and it is part of life's journey to sort out the two without harming the good. Perhaps this is the very nature of God, and when we believe in an inescapable hell, we are mistaken about what is ultimately going to happen to us; we are mistaken about the limitations of God's love and His intent to eventually bring everyone back home to Him.

Pulling weeds and cleaning up computer code is not always easy. But my love for a good end result is strong, so I do not give up on it. But it is painful to find bad code and get rid of it; it can be painful to uproot a nettle from the garden, and it can be painful to restore one's health, even at the hands of a physician.

I, for one, understand that at some point God will 'clean me up'. He will never give up on me. But the clean-up won't be easy, and it won't be without pain - pain from the realization of not always having followed His love and guidance. I have gradually grown to try to please Him out of love, not out of fear.

May God bless you on your road back to Him.

"The ultimate sin is to despair of God's mercy." - Oliviér Clément