Merry Easter 2014

I kept a running journal of my Lenten 2014 experience. Let me tell you, it had its ups and downs. There was a low like a valley, sunk in the shadow. 

And there was a point in that valley where I had to actively deny feelings of creeping despair an entrance into my soul. For I was a despair-er once in my life, my beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus.

My soul drank of the foul bilge water of that sunken kind of unbelief; that secret sense of doubt, in the glorious Redeeming power of Almighty God truly - present and active and alive - in all living souls.

But like the Apostle Paul and Silas in prison, the Spirit of God made a way out for me. 

In no uncertain terms can I be that way again. Yea, a sinner I shall always be but some sins whose taint the Father through the Son have deigned to remove from me, I can not somehow bear to allow my Jesus to bear again for me. They are my Quo Vadis, Domine! (At the forefront of these is my Recovery - which will not only profit me but many others like me).

Truly, our God is a mighty and amazing God! A God of Mercy and Justice and Love is He - the LORD, our Peace. In the pits and in the heights, the song I shall sing for Him is - Alleluia to God in the highest, Thou art mine, and I am Yours! 

So you see, I had to slog through some slow, uncertain days. Some days, I had to tell my impassioned spirit - be calm, and to sit still. Everything led me up - led us all up - to this Easter mountain high.

The Lord is Risen! He is truly Risen! 

If I am to summarize my experience of Lent 2014, I would encapsulate it in this way -

Good Friday - I am sorry, my Lord Jesus;
Holy Saturday - I love You, my Lord Jesus;
and Easter Sunday - Thank You, my Lord Jesus.

The 3 days correspond also to the 3 stages of the spiritual life - the Purgative, Illuminative, and Unitive.

One is redeemed by the Blood on the Cross of Christ, then justified by grace through faith in the Love of the Father in the Son, then through the Spirit of Truth united in Joy to the Joy of Christ and our Father. This Joy unites us to Jesus. So Christians must profess in Faith, witness in Love and justify it all - in Joy. No Lent can ever be without an Easter!

The Wounds our Savior retained in His Glorified Body - calls, leads, and then completes the Way of the Church. How awesome a God is our God!

sweet

Our Easter Vigil Mass at our Parish and Shrine was utterly magnificent. I hope yours was too.

God love our priests! God bless His faithful priests. God bless His faithful priests in our Parish. O what a blessing it is to be in the presence of His good and humble priests!

His good and humble deacons, priests, and bishops from all the Earth who along with Laity from every Nation - keep us truly Catholic.


Merry Easter greetings of Peace and the Goodwill of God to all Mankind!
---<--@

Palm Sunday 2014

Good evening, my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus the Lord:

I hope everybody had a blessed Palm Sunday! I know I certainly did.

I and my family have decided to make the most of Holy Week 2014. Indeed, I pray we all will.

As a matter of fact, my family and I have already worked out a daily schedule of activities. This is apart from my official schedule with my brother EMHCs at our Shrine.

It is a joy to discover what one can do with Jesus. Let me witness to each of you that in spite of my sins and despite of my weaknesses, our blessed Savior has never once failed me nor my family. Nada. Not a one.

Trouble with me always begins 100% - when I fail in my duties - communal or personal - to our God.

The health of my spiritual life is always a good indicator of the well being of my whole soul - this means my prayer life is always where I draw the line. And as regards my prayer life, my Queen is our Lady.

If prayer to a Catholic is battle, our Lady is warrior-in-chief. And Mary always leads to The Victory so we have to be sharp.

So there - most of our Holy Week activities are designed to sharpen our attitudes toward prayer. We have to be in love with the act of praying. Because prayer is an attitude of the heart. This is #1.

Because we seek God in prayer - if we are to know how to deepen our prayer life, we should learn to relate with God on a more intimate basis. We have to know the Father and there is no better way of knowing the Father than through the Son.

And so this is the reason for the season - everything that leads up to Easter, Jesus the Lord, designed for us, even here - in our own times, so we could maximize on knowing Who it is we have come to see, and Whose voice it is that constantly calls out to us, "Come and see".

That we may together discover that as Christians, our Lent is truly never without an Easter. And that this Longest Night shall not be without a Morning.
---<--@

We, of the Laity, have a duty to initiate in ourselves the Spirit of the New Evangelization.

We, of the Laity, who Jesus Christ sent forth into deep water have a duty to honor and to make His peace more and more known in our present time, that His Kingdom may be in us and His good will among the Nations prevail for all Mankind.

We have something to give to our world. It is Love - the perfecting Covenant.

We are the children because we are the most vulnerable.
We are the children because we are also the most precious.

Palm Sunday 2014 in Pakistan. You are such a beautiful people, don't you know? May Peace be in Pakistan, India, and throughout South Asia. God bless us all.

We awaken to a calling

Change, they say, is the only constant in this life. This is true for me. Life is a constant change. As in the beautiful song by Jose Marie Chan.

But within all that change, I have found, lies a common thread hidden in the everyday lives of all people. It pulls us invisibly towards something. And it pulls at us at different times of our life.

We do not end up all the same in life.

But all the same, the experience of life in this world leaves us all changed. The seasons themselves say it by their cycles. The Liturgy of Mother Church also, as the seasons of Earth and Sky, speak of change in their great and mysterious rounds. Life is a constant change.

And it pulls us all towards a spiritual transformation.

The ends by which we live our lives as a means is this change.

The presence of death in this world not only prepares us for the crossing of a Greater Sea but is the Angel that is to also guide us through and comfort us when the time comes for us to "pass over" from temporality into immortality.

For death is but a passage by which we are come to another experience of change. Yea, in this life - before the hour of our passing away - we die a little each moment, each day.

It pulls at us to remind us to be watchful of the living moment. Not to be afraid of it. But to learn from it. And to learn from the living of this life. And to start thinking about the deeper questions of life. Not to fear the changing. But to live as we must. To gather up those changes into a bouquet that we may offer up to our Lord and Lady each day. To love.

And to realize in the end that it is but our Lord Jesus pulling at the thread of our lives, that it is but He Who is with us and Who loves us so much Who is tugging at our weary, wandering hearts - "come to Me, and I will give you rest".

And that that is the answer we've been looking for - the Change to master change!

When we come awake to our calling, we soon realize the Voice Who calls us to our greatest freedoms - and to the Christian, as it is for me - Jesus Christ is the Change to master change...

Only Him can set me free.
---<--@

 

Today we had our EMHC Lenten Recollection.

I am proud to be with my brother lay ministers from our Shrine. Apart from preparing my soul for the last stretch of our Easter journey this year, I also learned so much today.

We tackled core concepts from  the Exhortation of Pope Francis, "Evangelii Gaudium", about the New Evangelization. It is a very relevant theme in today's world indeed. And many are the things the Laity may expound from it.

But the central spirit, in my own opinion, is that the Church needs to transform - not with the world - but against it. That we may as Nations be helped to persevere, overcome and together prevail against the challenges of this new age. And the joy of knowing we have...

Finally, let me share here what a brother EMHC today shared: To be a Christian without "Christ" is to be just an "ian"; an "i am nothing".

True indeed, Christ is the Vine and we are from among all the Nations, the branches - intended by God the Father to bear for each other, human fruit - edible and good everlasting.

Let us know that this world is diverse and that our Catholicity understands implicitly that the world is such a place - that we may not all be Catholics or Christians in our own places in time - but the most important thing these days is not that we are all the same - but that we flourish in our distinctions!

So let the past be the past.

Mabuhay, I love you all.

A Season for Faith and a Time for Reason

All things happen for a reason. And verily, Man is made to understand them. But all things under sun come each in their due season. So that Man is made to trust in his faith as well as to his reason.

Faith is a season to trust. Reason is a time to understand. And they come in cycles, great and small. T'is the First Sufficiency, and true for all. T'was with the Peace that never did fail nor fall.

The Lord Jesus many at time left trails in His Incarnation. Proclaimed in the Good News - He often left things He did to faith, and then gave faith in each person their own due season, so that each Man through his reason may in time hear - and understand His Word - and see the Truth they came to see.

That nothing in this world was built on random purpose, and that this is true! And so to those who feel their freedoms constricted because "everything" happens for a reason, the Lord Jesus says, "come and see", thy faith will you set free.

Faith and reason is like two freedoms reaching out to each other. Where they meet they kiss, and when they embrace the embrace of peace - as heaven and earth must always do, in the soul, and in time too - Truth is, for God is with us and Man hears, and faith remembers, and reason too, understands - all is well, all is well...

Therefore, Starshine, you must lead with your mind, but always think with your heart.


To understand the Trinity is to know more and more that God is one - and to proclaim Amen to the Truth: Amen to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - the LORD indeed is one God alone!

And in Peace to proceed in God - with the Goodwill of God - for all Mankind.
---<--@


Mabuhay! May you always be in love, Beloved of the Love.

O How Long the Wait

How long shall I wait in weakness, my God?
How long shall the brokenness of sin
haunt my shadow, my LORD?

I live in wait and suffer to offend
Thou Whom I love
by my sins.

O forsake me not, my God,
and have mercy on my poor soul!

O my Savior, save me -
O my Jesus, deliver me.

And so I weep with scornful tears
at my failures before thee,
O Mother of my God!

For numerous are my offenses
and before me my sins persist
like dark tomorrows.

O Mary Ever Virgin,
and Ever Chaste Queen,
though doubts rise and hopes fall,
I will cling to you!

O my Savior, save me -
O my Jesus, deliver me.

---<--@

Salutation #183

"One sees only with the heart. 
What is essential is invisible to the eye."

- from "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery



(Philosophical Realism)

Common Reality is
a reflection of the totality of things unseen -
an unfolding vision of the entirety of the truth of things
we see (without seeing) as an image in the eye of the heart -
and that also which is inaccessible yet necessary to our wellness.
It is a one whole spiritual continuum - completed and perfected.
The invisible canvass of a great and eternal work upon which is added
each our own life as colors are added unto the awakening dream
of God for all creation - in our behalf.

How deeply each of us understands
the visible universe of which we are all a part
AND how completely we perceive this spiritual reality
- through the eye of each our heart -
IS how exactly we "see" with each our mind
- by the wholeness of our knowing -
what is received through our external senses
and THIS determines our Relative or individualistic view
of what is made particular to each of our individual perception
of Common Reality, interacting with it freely and accordingly
under the Eternal Vigilance of God and the All of heaven
ever as individual threads are carefully and together interwoven
in a grand pattern that is beyond our ability to seize or comprehend.

Each our lives are called in this way to seek, love and know Truth
in order to create the ever living patterns of our most beautiful forever.

Each of us alone
can not create reality -
Neither Common reality
nor the myriad particular ones
that each soul must continually receive
at the twinkling of every eye - seamlessly -
and from moment to moment - constantly -
from the intermingling in time of what is individual
and what is collective in All that is living in all souls
as that particular truth that inexorably embrace each of us
to be perceived as realities Relative to each ourselves as ourselves.

For these are aspects
of an unimaginably greater fullness
much, much larger than our freedoms
and much, much nobler than our minds together
immense beyond our scope to contain with our understanding
all too wonderful and all too unimaginably loving and joyful
all too brightly lit for our hearts, shining with a million shining suns,
being filled with the wonder of limitless golden horizons
overflowing with the realizations every human hope and longing
unto which we may only hope for, dare against, and strive with,
so that we may each, God-helping, through a little bit of our own giving
add a little but of ourselves freely... unto what is truly and absolutely real.

Certainly,
even the all of us together
may not complete it.

For Truth is forever in a state of limitless perfection.
It is the heart of Man that reality must bring unto completion.

- selah (pause and think) -

We can neither choose to willfully take away (or distort)
the freedom of our own experience of all that is in reality
nor deny the freedom of its existence (the Call of Truth)
from the being of other living souls not unlike ourselves,
whether seen or unseen.

We - as we are now -
are not possessed of strength
to effectively govern any kind of truth
much less govern those necessary realities
that are benign and receptive to the life in our souls
and nurturing to the life of visible creation on our own -
as individuals, as nations, even as nations together.

We are the Children because we are vulnerable in this way.
We are the Children because we are also precious in this way.

- selah -

Truly,
we must rely on God
and on each other for safety
- safety of body, soul, and spirit -
in the most complete sense of the word.

For the Mind of God
mitigates most of the things in our minds
that we do not have the capacity to comprehend.

He walks in the calm of our souls - gently -
to instruct us of things that must come to pass
through the Scriptures, even here - in the Now,
that we may come to believe in His Truth
when the present unfolds - as it is -
(Amen to the LORD, and bless His Name!)
so that each our hearts may safely apprehend
through the slow awakening sunrise of every faith
the safety and certainty of his unseen Presence
nourishing our souls with the grace to withstand
(and therefore, to eventually understand)
what we, in our nakedness, can not hope
to directly withstand in the reality of the Divine;
that we may in time always dwell in His Memory
and live in the Eternal Remembrance of our God.

Truly,
our God will not allow matters to burden our spirit
with burdens that we can not carry - together with Him.

Hence, there are likewise
things in the Eternal Memory
that are completely kept away
from Our Remembrance
for our own good.

- selah -

We all know each our particular realities must differ,

such is the completeness of our awareness of individuality!

But these Relative realities
are all relative to one Common Reality -
and we experience this in the mystery of the spirit
of all those inward things that must inescapably connect us

in our common need of community and individual meaningfulness

present in varying degrees in the expressions of our civilizations

and in the many individual reflections of a perfect conception 

we human beings are capable of knowing and dreaming 

of ourselves together - in the light of we, as we are

born of a timelessness that belongs to none of us 

yet at the same time belongs to all of us.

Sacred is the Silence that knows 

of the one Music in all things!

For all things in time are in motion 

because God is - in all things, stillness.

- selah -

Truth is what is essential in our being human.

We, as human beings can not create any kind of truth in the Truth,
like we can not call into being the soul that breathes life into the body
nor can we hope to re-create any reality whether Relative or Common.
like it is to hope to contain the sheer immensity of the deep of things
that give rise to the ocean of every present time in every present thing.

We can not be the designers of our destiny
who did not know the perfection of it's makings
from the very beginning.

We can not be the masters of our times
who have known not the whereabouts of time
from its very roots.

Yea, there is an aspect of Common Reality that must be apart from each of us
Light that shines apart from our individual thinking - and being - and becoming
- Light that enlightens and Light that ennobles and Light that shines through -
and Truth that is absolutely independent of our conception of any reality.

But we, even as human beings in the here and now,
can become privy to the truth and by so knowing the Truth
obtain wisdom enough to live in harmony with it,
at-one with God and heaven, at peace with our selves on earth,
and at peace with the good will of all human and angelic community.

In so doing this,
we let go, and in so letting go,
add by the freedom of our giving
to the fullness of our one, Common Forever.

- selah -

Each our souls
might be individually and uniquely redeemed
by the one Redeemer of all Mankind in Jesus Christ -
but the fullness of our Salvation comes
by the strength of our common communities!

And so we continue to co-create - with every present time -
in intimate cooperation with the Providence of God and each other -
the reality of the things that ultimately shall belong to each of us
and because God is good, it is a brilliant destination for all of us.

In this we must,
for in this we know
to trust in the LORD -

All shall be well.

By the light of our freedom - 

from the many labors of each faith;
love and hope into one work of living life,
peace and good will are our manifestations.

God created everything first, then Man.
So Nations are a people first,
then everything.

- selah -

People - especially the captains of our humanity -
who in the past believed reality is created by their needs
musts obscure Remembrance in order to silence the voice of the past,
that they may in so doing weaken the life of the present and,
forgetting all things, unwittingly cut themselves off
from each their own appointed lineages of eternal victory
who by their own evil eventually destroy even their own makings
for theirs and theirs alone are the legacies of those defeated dreams
- inhumane, unfeeling, incapable of truth, incapable of peace -
that sink with the sinking of the darkness of exile time
into the oblivion of the void of all things that never were...

We can not blindly adopt
this kind of un-thinking... ever again!



Human Dignity and Human Promise
and its preservation is paramount
in the life of every Nationhood.

Tread carefully... 
recognizing the space 
between thy souls
as sacred.



This is realism.
---<--@

Agelessness

Fairy tales are more than true;
not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

- Neil Gaiman

Time does not hold the secret to thy youth,

though time appears to steal thy years away...

time can not contain the essence of being ageless.

For in this world, beloved of God, in this world

apart from the Garden of the things that once were 

that you remember now so well in thy heart of hearts

everywhere - all things are constantly falling away...

all things are set in their motion in heaven and on earth

and come each to their own season, season under the sun.

So make a promise to yourself, my darling Starshine,

as early as your years will allow you to do so in thy soul -

that thou will always in thy spirit remain in thy youth;

that thou will in thy heart never lose thy love of wonder 

and in thy mind never lose room enough for better beliefs.

Make a promise to remain and to learn, and to love...

and to never grow tired of remaining, and of loving to remain

at the foot of the Master...

Work hard. Pray hard. Smile Easy.

Child-like not child-ish.

Salutation #182

None of the Seraphs have joined with Satan in his War
and the LORD has, prior to the time of the Children
(which are these latter-day times, beloved of God),
utterly destroyed all evil and fallen Principalities
in the Great Deluge for our good behalf.

So we are
in our every belonging preserved
by Love and Remembrance...

(Love and Remembrance)

Love and Remembrance
when each their truths are realized -
breaks upon thy heart, darlingest Starshine,
clear as the dawn and draw thy spirit decisively
in great ascending motions - leading thee steadfastly
forth and away from the midnight darkness...

For
Love and Remembrance
once realized by thy seeking soul - as truth in the heart
have no parallel midnight - the advent of each of their realities
once it has risen in the horizon of thy mind - separate themselves cleanly
as light is from darkness and leave no trace of shadow nor confusion
to the being and thought of any Man as to which Twilight path
leads to the Morning.

Glory to God therefore, all ye Nations,
sing to the LORD a song of love and thanksgiving;
a hymn of adoration from thy hearts, O Children of Mankind
for the wonder our God has done for us!
---<--@

Lucifer with all his wit,
was not able to convince and commit,
a single Seraph to his fight
for who could make love itself choose
to burn for anything else
but the one Beloved.

Thus, save for his lies,
none can love the Devil true...

But
when God utters
a Word of the Truth,
all hearts upon all the earth
and across all of heaven above
come aflame with Love.
---<--@


To not be afraid, love. 
To not be ashamed, remember.

Turn the Other Cheek

When the Lord said to "turn the other cheek", it doesn't mean to invite more disaster. We Christians should understand we do not want to suffer more than what we have to, for suffering is evil.

But to suffer well we must. For our Lord did suffer well, indeed well enough to overcome the world and all it's evil for all humanity for all time.

And so we are taught by our Jesus to "turn the other cheek" as a form of non-retaliation and forgiveness to those who are unjust and seek violent means for violent ends and to keep our Christian dignity even in the face of our oppressors.

When we turn the other cheek, we forgive, we learn, and we let go.

When we turn the other cheek, we desire to break down cycles of violence, teach justice and Christian love over adversarial hate and contempt for human life, and return all souls to God.

When we turn the other cheek, we do not seek to invite more evil to come upon us but seek to invite more peace to come among us - and make what once was wounded and divided, healthy and whole once again.

Let us together meditate on this and pray about it.
---<--@

On Original Sin

Pride is the first sin of the angels and led to disobedience. Disobedience is the first sin of Man and led to pride. Man is not inherently evil but inherently weak and this is the foundation of Original Justice.



Original sin is the inherent weakness against the Truth that was in spirit acquired by the family of Man through the disobedience of our First Parents.

It is not primarily an inclination to evil but a fatal lack of supernatural strength in the human soul that prevents it from applying itself freely and completely, according to its labors, in total submission to the Spirit of God.

It is a weakness; a frailty that in all humanity is transmitted across the generations of Mankind directly through Man's spiritual lineage which is, as an unbroken lineage of light that is ever begun from the Light of Creation, perpetuated like a terrible shadow that stalks with fear and death, the life of our common humanity.

(It's transmission across our generations can be illustrated with a flashlight whose beam when obstructed with any opaque object will project as shadow, the image of that particular object.)

It is not the effect of something that is present in the soul, as in personal sin, but of something that is absent in the soul which is the Presence of the Spirit of God brought about by the loss of our Original Peace with the LORD, our Creator.

To restore us to this Original Peace requires a Savior that can become the new Source of Light for all of the one family of Mankind; a Savior that can not be man alone lest we delude ourselves; this Savior has to be of God being God Himself and so God the Son came Incarnate to us, clothed in our humanity, as willed by the Father through Jesus Christ, the Lord, our Emmanuel.

Our baptism makes us into new creations because we acquire through the salvific nature of our faith in God through Jesus Christ - quite literally, a new Way, a new Truth, and a new Life: Christ is our new Adam.

For through Jesus Christ, Justice is perfected in Love and in this Love, the strength to overcome sin - original and personal, social or individual - becomes a grace that is available to all our humanity through baptism and the instrumentality of the Church with and unto all people of good will.
---<--@

Salutation #174

(Holy Week 2013)

Dearest Starshine,
of the Christian communities
scattered like the stars - among all the stars -
spread across the nations of the children of Mankind
with peace and love, I salute you -



In His Sacred Humanity
Jesus Christ the Incarnate Word
deigned to show unto all mankind
the Face of the Father of all living souls,
the one God of all heaven and earth,
despite the nakedness of our humanity
that we may in our own suffering
utterly and completely identify
with the LORD's longing for our love.



In the terrible suffering of Jesus
in His Passion and death by Crucifixion
and in the desolation of the Crucified Christ
the LORD has chosen, for all our good,
even before our exile was begun,
to bear with all of our common humanity
the depths of our pain and tribulations in this life
shouldering with each of us, the cross of our sufferings
- even unto death, even an ignominious death on a lonely Cross -
that through the same Passion and Blood of Christ
God may bridge for each of us the dark and infinite chasm
of the original sin that stole all our generations away
from the True and Eternal Light of His Presence
and the glorious Eden of our perfect Peace
with God and with each other.



And in the glory of His Risen Person
Jesus Christ kept for each of us - His Holy Wounds -
to remind us, always to always - over and over and over -
   through every faithful commemoration of Holy Mass
   the infinite grace of His seven Sacraments,
   and the presence of His Church here on earth,
of the wondrous power and unimaginable greatness
of God's fufilling love for all His creatures.



- selah -

The faith of our common baptism
gives us a share in the hope of this Victory,
the innermost life of our Christianity
being a constant celebration of Christ's love
- this mighty and mysterious Love -
that came at the heights of our unknowing
that even in the midst of all our un-loving
God may by His overcoming Love
save us all.



Alleluia, alleluia!
Truly, truly, how great is our God -
How majestic His mysteries,
how glorious His truths!



May the Holy Spirit bless each of us
with a renewed vigor of our Christian faith
that we may again live its glories
here on our earthly sojourn
for Christ and the peace of His Kingdom
at the approach of this
Holy Week 2013.



May the Blessed Virgin Mary,

Queen of all our hearts, pray for us.

And may our Lady ever accompany us
unto the completion of God's work
in each our lives, as she did Her Son.



Amen.
---<--@



O my Jesus,
zealous for souls,
thirsting for the love of mankind.

Come my Jesus
be Thou the God of my heart
and accomplish in me Thy will of peace.

Salutation #170

Every gift of life... is wrought in love
and every love of life... is wrought in light
for the one light of life is... Jesus Christ the Lord.



(Christmas 2012)

MAY every Christmas bring us peace;
the beginnings of peace which is peace,
the workings of peace which is peace,
and the fruits of peace which is peace.

Because Christmas means -

I love you.

- selah -

So may all be in this love sheltered
and be brought forth anew each and every year
that all may through this love know in the truth
the spirit of every Christmas season
which is peace.

May all be at peace.
May all know the peace.

And may this peace be the peace
that was wrought in our world
by the Prince of Peace
which is Jesus Christ the Lord
that it may continue to serve
to bring our humanity forth
from darkness into the
one Light of God
everlasting.

May our journeys in this life
through Christmas be fulfilled
in the LORD, our God -
the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit,
alleluia, alleluia,
AMEN.
---<--@

Happy Christmas to us all! 

Peace be among the nations - and -
good will to all men and women of peace.

May we never be bereft of the light of God's peace.



Christ chose to be born in a place of love
surrounded with nothing else but love,
did He not, darling Starshine?

For the giving is the gift.

Is not our Lord and Savior an awesome God?

Salutation #4

Of the common human needs that make us responsible to each other as citizens, one to another, there are nine: Hunger, Thirst, Clothing, Shelter, Personal Security (i.e. Security of Person and Property), Basic (or Functional) Literacy, Just Society, Authentic Human Freedom, and Meaningful Existence.

(Light)

PEACE, I salute you.

Evil which is poison, when once by mischief,

allowed entrance into that Kingdom within

becomes the malice that corrupt the purity

of the human will's intention for good -

dividing the one House of that Man within

against the Sanctuary of the LORD in the heart

making the soul vulnerable against itself

inclining fallen Man to sinful things.

For malice is the corruption that is sown

upon the ground of the human heart

to become those manifold and diverse tares

which are the vicious habits of sin

that overgrow with choking weeds

that evergreen garden of the human soul

where we take our walks with our God

in the stillness of our wakeful prayers;

that same timeless garden

that one must through God's good graces

cultivate with much virtue and light.

And sin is a lie that creeps

upon the threshold of the heart

seeking to assault and overthrow

the reign of our sovereign LORD within

that it may slowly overcome with its darkness

the golden blue of our native skies.

Now, our LORD being the one God Who is

revealed unto all of our shared humanity

in complete and utter finality

through the Sacred Humanity

of the Incarnate Word,

Who is the Second Person

of the one triune Perfection -

our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,

our one Truelight, our highest Exemplar,

and First of our First Magnitudes,

is the self-same God Whose Presence is

for all creatures, seen and unseen,

that one, holy and sustaining Light,

when once in exile time completely denied

by the arrival in the soul of Man

of an absolute and irrevocable choice

to embrace and to obey the will of evil,

which is the will of sin and the ambition of war,

become in absolute reality manifest

as a smoldering and inescapable wrath

for when the Daystar Sun is completely eclipsed

by rise of Wormwood, that false star of Satan,

this darkness shall by its terrible descent,

completely consume into dust and ashes

all that remains in that Man,

both body and soul,

suffering the first death

which is permanent

as well as the second death

which is everlasting.

What motivates Man in the heart

is either one - good or evil -

and so therefore, that tree of exile

that from our faded Eden cast

the singular lineage of Man

is that self-same malice that

in the garden of our hearts with God

must first be uprooted

and its poisonous darkness

overthrown from within our souls

that evil and its corrupting lie

may from our eternal good be cut off.

This is how we shall acquire

one standard of Liberty for all.

Therefore, let us be good,

beloved friends and constant companions,

let good things motivate us,

let us be a people of the good,

let us seek to dwell on true things,

knowing by heart unto where

and from Whom all good things come,

persevering always in prayer,

both in private but above all together,

with the seen as well as the unseen,

thus, becoming intimate with the Intimate,

and seek no more to profit from evil things

nor make provision in time for evil things

in the timeless abode of our hearts

dwelling with God, alone with the Alone.

For it is human weakness that is forgivable

but malice once by the Spirit of God challenged

when yet willfully and unrelentingly embraced

become that final, festering, poisonous rot

that shall turn into ashes

the timeless life of the spirit from within

that it may forever join Satan

and all that condemn itself to the hell

that shall soon claim all evil things.

Sin that is embraced with such utter finality

is indeed, truly unforgivable

not that our LORD is not merciful,

for our God is a merciful LORD

and kind to all creatures,

large and small, seen and unseen.

It is evil that is without virtue

and once made into a god

in place of our most beneficent LORD,

shall then execute its lethal reign

upon that unhappy soul.

Verily, none of us

should like to question motives

yet when motives are questionable,

indeed, one can not help but question them.

This is a root cause of division.

And so let us ever be mindful

of that constant counsel

that any division within our one peace

is the beginning of all evil.

What we should always question,

my beloved friends and constant companions,

are our methods together,

that we may never cease from seeking

to refine the many ways in which

the abundant grace of our God

that we though unworthy of such a good

have so abundantly merited through our Lord,

Jesus Christ, the one Redeemer of Mankind,

that we by our willing hands and loving hearts,

may become increasingly useful instruments

that diffuse as light into the darkness

this unmerited grace of God

shining for all souls without distinction

that God's loving Presence in time

may be a paternal comfort and a constant help

to our suffering humanity here in our poor world

so needful of heaven's timeless embrace

that hearts may be one in God,

and peace may be all in All.

We are human beings

and therefore,

we are a becoming in time.

We share in our humanity,

a lack that can only be filled by the timeless.

A lack that is felt in our souls

as a reaching out to God

and manifest in our bodies

as common human needs.

And so, lacking, needful, bereft,

we are come to a knowledge of God

and of each other in God.

Verily, as our faith sets us apart,

our hopes join us together,

indeed, this is what makes us truly human -

our need for God and for each other -

and so in our belonging together in God

we must come together to build

through these, the generations of life,

those truly human communities

where all roads constantly lead to the dawn

towards the morning that return Mankind

to the one Love that has forever kept

all of our nations close to Its own bosom.

A society of need is a human society.

It is a society that goes hand in hand

with a government of gratitude.

Therefore, we must profess

a politics of thankfulness,

being a people of hope,

and work to enable a culture of peace

of which truth must be begun

in the darkness of exile time

by the first of the generations of life,

which is this, our generation

as well as those members of the elder generations

who are similarly called by our one LORD

and whose wise and steadfast companionship

our good God has so generously blessed us with,

ennobling us by the substance of their experiences

and the strength of their years.

War is a tension that is insufferable in this new age.

But hope is also a tension,

my beloved friends and constant companions,

and one that is more apt to liberate our nations

from the mire of poverty and despair.

It is an expression of God's own peace

which is the Peace of Jesus Christ

and an extension of the one paradigm of the peace

which contain in the one whole truth of itself

the reality of a promise of old to all our nations

made by the one God of our Father Abraham

that the numberless stars that we are each called to be,

shall bless the communities of Mankind -

when we shall in the darkness of exile time

by each of our own life's width and breadth

through our LORD's unfaltering Light be made to shine

for each other in, with, through and for God and Country -

here upon this, our poor world,

upon this inhabited earth in the grip of the midnight of war,

as a labor of hope upon this last wintering,

upon a time of falling tears.

Finally, as regards to our one peace,

we can not, as a whole, abide by lukewarm halves -

we must each enable each other through God's grace

to profess this as a one whole paradigm,

one whole truth in the universes within our souls,

one whole truth in our families,

one whole truth in our local communities,

one whole truth in our national communities,

one whole truth in our regions,

one whole truth in our continents,

and one whole truth in our one planetary whole -

in reality, wholes upon wholes aligned towards life,

built on winged truth, an ascendant motion in time,

advancing the cause of life which is lasting happiness

through civilizations that with our nameless and honest labors

rise like incense to give glory to the God of all life

as the one family of the nations of (the children of) Mankind.

If we shall give war an inch,

my beloved friends and constant companions,

if we shall willingly allow

a segment of our shared humanity

to become vulnerable to evil things,

if we freely and recklessly abandon

our Lord's poor,

in the weak, the defenseless,

the displaced, the dispossessed,

the widow, the stranger, the orphan,

we shall indeed soon find

that war and the ambition of war

has again overtaken us all

with the final defeat which is its curse.

For what war does to one, war does to all.

So let our one peace forever remain, one whole one.

---<--@

(produced 20090128)

Salutation #137

so that they may all be one,
as You, Father, are in Me and I in You,
that they also may be in Us,
that the world may believe
that You sent me.

- John 17: 21

---<--@

(Never Again!)

Jesus Christ 
belongs to all peoples,
His Peace unto all nations.

Unto Christians
and non-Christians alike
Jesus Christ is made known
for all human hearts desire Him;
the Savior of all Mankind.

Neither religious prejudice
nor hatred nor War's ambition
will undo the truth of the Gospel;
the Peace of Christ is for all!

Never again War.
Never again division!

- selah -

Strengthening the Nation
means strengthening the peace
and strengthening the peace
means strengthening the Church.

We are not the Church of the past age.
Nor are we the Church of the new age.
We are the Church of every age!

And in this present age,
at the turning of the Celestial Season -
we must as the stars, and with the stars,
shine with the Light of Christ
bearing His Peace unto all nations
and good will unto the ends of the earth.

Lest we forget.
Lest we forget!
---<--@


Sunrise over the Sea of Galilee

Salutation #114

(Easter 2012)

LET the depths of the earth

and the heights of heaven proclaim!

LET all of God's creatures rejoice

and the souls of all living beings exclaim!

Today is the day!

Jesus Christ the Lord is Risen!

Our Faith became. His Love overcame.

And Hope received from God our Father
her wings and her crown.

Glory to God, Glory to God, Glory to God - 

Alleluia to the LORD on high!
---<--@