TOTUS TUUS, MARIA !
THE LEGACY OF THE LIGHT
Christmas meditation
God does send out signals, and in so doing He gives evidence of His Presence and His Works. The fact that, 'under normal circumstances', souls are not able to see or hear God is not due to the fact He would not exist, but to the fact that since the original sin was committed souls no longer possess the sanctity required to be able to perceive God’s Presence spontaneously. Nevertheless God does not want to hide Himself from His creatures’ view altogether, for this would not be compatible with His perfect Love. Therefore He will send out signals, countless times day after day, and in so doing He keeps trying to motivate souls on their way to sanctification, the way back to Him. This is exactly the reason why the Mistress of all souls mainly teaches through comparison, through metaphors, recognizable images with a depth containing signs and meanings, which directly refer to God’s Works and His goals for the benefit of His creation.
One such Divine sign was the star of Bethlehem. God let a light shine in the sky, a light of which the movements seemed to defy all laws of astronomy, for neither a star nor a meteorite will behave the way the witnesses of the events at Bethlehem ware able to see in this sign of light. God showed the world the star of Bethlehem as a silent herald of the New Covenant in the shape of His Son, the Redeemer of human souls. A celestial light as a herald to God’s major Work since creation... Indeed at Bethlehem, too, God availed Himself of a somewhat coded image to make something of His sublime goals become clear: The human souls needed to be guided out of the darkness, by the 'Light of the world', the Messiah and Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
God had provided for the human soul to be His masterpiece. This masterpiece had to be a recognizable Work of God, which would be built of bricks which in their turn consist of the three essential raw materials of sanctity: Love, Faith and Hope. Through the original sin and all subsequent sins Love has been exchanged for sinfulness, Faith (= inner Light) for the darkness of deception, and Hope (= inner Peace) for the loss of inner Peace, which the soul can possess only to the extent to which she can still live in the prospect of reaching the ultimate destination of a journey through life: Eternal Bliss.
We Christians all know that Christmas is the feast commemorating the birth of the Divine Redeemer. However, what some of us no longer quite understand is what is the deep meaning of Christmas. What difference has the birth of Jesus Christ in a human shape made for mankind and for the individual souls? This question can hardly be answered in human words, because it refers to a sublime Mystery which is beyond understanding. It is said so lightly: 'Jesus Christ has redeemed us'. However, does each and every Christian actually know the meaning of these words? Can each and every soul imagine what it would mean to be separated forever from God, Eternal Love, the Tree of Life, the Source of her very existence? One day this life on earth will be over, and then what is in store for the soul? The birth of Jesus Christ has made the difference:
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between a life in everlasting darkness as a heritage of an endless concatenation of deceptions killing every true Faith in God as the Source of all happiness in the never extinguishing light of the full understanding and awareness of Truth, and a life in the light of Eternal Bliss;
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between a life in eternal forlornness, fear and never ending torture due to an unbridgeable gap to the Source of all Love, and a life in perfect inner Peace of the soul who knows that God’s Kingdom can be born inside of her, and who therefore knows that every Hope is justified as long as the soul fully takes into account God’s contribution to the construction of her path through life;
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between a life in irremediable and never forgiven sinfulness with disastrous consequences which produce their effects for all eternity, and a life in the true Love of the soul who gets to experience for all eternity how unrestrainedly God pours Himself out into the soul who has given herself to Him and to all her fellow creatures in a disposition of ardent self-denial.
Light, Peace and Love: the legacy of the New Covenant summarized in three words. Every human soul is an heir to the New Covenant. In order to 'coin in on' this Divine legacy in eternal life – or to put it more accurately: in order to be able to 'coin in on' it in accordance with the Law of Divine Justice – the individual soul must be willing to incorporate the three components of this legacy into her own life persistently. Expressed in plain words this means that every one of us should be aspiring for an ever more perfect practice and experience of true Love, of true inner Peace and of true Light in their own daily lives and to spread the fruits of this all around them. The soul who keeps trying to improve the quality of these three categories of building bricks of the temple of her soul will gradually turn into a fortress of sanctity. Let us briefly reflect on the reason for this:
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Love is the pre-eminent force of God, the essence of Divine Life. It is the disposition through which the soul commits herself unselfishly to keep enhancing her fellow creatures’ feeling of well-being. She will pursue to do this towards God Himself as well, although God’s 'vital strength' and His well-being can not at all be enhanced, as in Him these are absolutely perfect. However, the soul in the disposition of true Love cannot but commit herself unselfishly for the benefit of all outside of her, in order that each and every being or entity (even including God) might be better off for it. This urge gets more irresistible as the soul’s sanctity increases.
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Faith is the disposition of the soul who builds her life and all her behaviour on the rock-solid conviction that God exists and that He is constantly and through the use of any conceivable ways and means – albeit within the boundaries set by His Justice and by the actions and aspirations of souls who will keep working in opposite directions – working on enhancing the (eternal) well-being of all creatures. Faith can therefore be regarded as the inner Light which is meant to prevent the soul from uncontrollably behaving in accordance with laws of her own making. Laws which the souls make for themselves for the purpose of achieving their own goals lead these souls away from the all-pervasive Light from God and lead them straight into the darkness.
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Hope is the disposition through which the soul is able to think, feel and act as if she had already defeated all and any trials which might keep her from reaching her eternal destination with God. True Hope enables true inner Peace to take root inside the soul, for the soul in a state of true Hope is convinced that God is carrying her in every oppressing situation of everyday life and that the darkness and all suffering never have the final say, but that, on the contrary, the soul can forge these into tools which may help her reap salvation.
Christmas is the Birth of Christ, Eternal Love, the Light of the world, the Prince of Peace. Jesus was born in a human body in order that, owing to the fruits of His perfectly holy life, every human soul might be able to regain the lost Divine Legacy. The actual beauty of the New Covenant lies exactly herein, that God emphatically wants to achieve all things together with the soul. How could He derive great joy from transforming the world and mankind all through His own strength? He does know He would be able to do so, He does not lack the power. However, God’s creative power only manifests itself were the human soul makes a fully voluntary step to join God’s intention to the fullest. In that case every transformation is not a mere Divine act, it becomes a fruit born of the marriage between God and the unrestrained Love shown by a creature to its God. It is this Love which opens up free human will and urges it to actually help implement the power of God. This is how God in His Wisdom has decreed it to be the basic force bringing about any change on earth.
Our world has become very dark. It has been like this ever since the original sin, to be sure, yet in a way we may say the current darkness is experienced by God as being even more painful than the darkness which prevailed in the era between the fall of the first human souls and the Birth of the Redeemer in a human body, because since that sacred Birth mankind has been in a position to orient itself towards the perfect Light of the example set by the Christ. The star of Bethlehem was God’s sign revealing the fact that the Light of God was to come into the world and was about to revive the germ of sanctity inside each human soul. With every one of us resides the holy obligation to follow Jesus Christ in the example of His life and His doctrine, which was passed on to us in the Gospel and which is explained in depth in the Science of Divine Life. Therefore Christmas is for every soul a Divine call urging her to dedicating herself to bringing the three types of building bricks in her temple to their full accomplishment: true unselfish Love, the Light of rock-solid Faith, and the inner Peace (= the Peace of Christ!) of unshakeable Hope.
The star of Bethlehem was more than a sign enabling the Magi from the Orient to find Christ: It was an invitation to the Christians of all the ages to focus so firmly on God that every one of them would turn into a light himself. There is no other way to put the darkness of our world to shame. Our world was never intended to be a place of darkness. Not God allowed the world to deteriorate into such a place, the human souls did, by reorienting the use of their free will so completely that Love, the Light of true Faith and the inner Peace of true Hope were abandoned in favour of the most various godless influences from the world. Christmas must therefore be understood to be an invitation to each and every soul to be born anew as a true follower of Christ and to finally really accept the legacy of the New Covenant, for this is where the first vocation of every soul’s life lies. In proportion as the soul aspires to actually act upon this vocation this legacy will really be put at her disposal in Eternal Life.
Myriam, autumn of 2013