A beginning of the year reflection

The Eucharist is the same as it was almost two thousand years ago, and for that reason I believe that it is in our interest, now more than ever, to take it as seriously as they did in the first millennia of the Church.

The Eucharist does something tangible and immaterial: God is truly present, and it is truly His Body and Blood that abides within us just as we abide in Him which creates a participatory responsibility on our parts to really do war against the passions and sins that reside in hearts, bodies, and minds.

If we are to become icons of the living God that means we our entire being must be alive in Him which is a part of the salvific nature of God’s grace making us sanctified, perfect, and united to Him. With so greater a process that we call theosis, it calls us to a greater responsibility to allow God’s awareness and consuming fire to become our awareness and the flame of our heart, rising like the dawn sun breaking through the darkest night.

 This is our responsibility which requires patience and zeal, because the reflecting pool begins muddy and by continual renewal in and through Christ, by our ever-deepening repentance that which is obscured in the waters of our soul and that which comes up in His reproving flame might drive us to despair over bearing witness to who we are.

Yet, it is not who we are that is tried and purified, burned away as dross, but that which we think we are: these self-concepts and complexes and unconscious behaviors that mask the truth that lies in wait to be brought to the surface through His refining fire.

It is extremely frightening and daunting to confront the self by partaking and abiding in our self-revealing God. It is just as rewarding, though, because what awaits us on the other side is the glory of the Son and eternal life, where Truth abides in Truth and the deepening of our self-knowledge and God’s revelation to us continues.

So, when I say take the Eucharist home with you what I mean is, what comes up for us in and through this Mystery should not be avoided by the many distractions of our current age. The type of distractions that the early Christians could not even conceive of during their time.

This world, centuries and millennia ago, was closer to the world of spirit than the world we occupy today. That is not to say that the world of spirit is further from us, just that we are further from it. We push the world of spirit, of which we are an integral part of, further away from us by tuning out of the awareness of God and tuning into aimless noise.

We inoculate ourselves with our slow-drip of dopamine with bells, whistles, and endless scrolling that serves to numb us to the pain of our yearning for healing and life in God. Instead of gazing into the reflective pool of our soul and giving what comes up to God’s purifying fire we dive deep into a cacophony of static.

It is interesting that the devil is referred to as the “prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2), and we are able to essentially plug in to the airwaves via the philosopher’s stone in our pockets. This is the black screen that we can use to conjure anything and everything under the sun, if it can be imagined than it can be brought to life through the transmutation of thought to type of reality. The difference being that this type of reality is a shadow of what is real. You are real and it is a form of self-abandonment and blasphemous kenosis to empty ourselves into the parasitic reality conjured through our phones.

I am, in my heart, a Luddite, so I do not mean to be old-man-yells-at-the-moon about this issue, because there are a lot of benefits from technology. However, when the tool becomes the master that is when we dip into Gollum territory, needing to be near our device, not for any reason but other than that the stillness and silence of life are too overwhelming for us to handle.

That is precisely where must go, though, to facilitate healing and to pursue man’s only real purpose in this life: the knowledge of God and self; the union of the two.

Theosis.

The means through which we kindle the flame of our God and take steps toward healing via repentance is in the harmony of stillness and silence. That is where God speaks, and His presence is known.

We have to journey into the land of silence, carrying God in us by the power of His Mysteries and there till the soil of our hearts, allowing the good Sower to plant His Word within us, that it may produce good fruits that are of Him and our union with Him. Today we take up our cross and follow Him to Golgotha like they have for two thousand years, but our death looks different, because our crucifixion comes in silent stillness.

The reflective pool’s mud clears and settles in that silence and stillness, revealing us to ourselves as God reveals Himself to us by His Presence.

We will never know who we truly are if we do not take the time, patience, and courage to look into that reflective pool of our souls by God’s Light and allow that which belongs to the world to return to it so that we might, no longer weighed down with who we think we are, can ascend to Him to the heights of heaven as we are truly. In Him. Selah.

May we enter this new year alight with God’s flame kindled in our hearts, allowing His grace to penetrate our souls in the silence that we cultivate in the days following and leading up to partaking of that most hallowed Chalice. May we enter into His Mystery with patience and zeal, ready to confront what comes up for us in His refining fires, being transformed by an ever-deepening repentance in Christ and through Christ.

Amen.

Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ