Tag Archives: EASTER

THE ANNUAL SACRIFICE OF CHRIST

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Have you ever stood by the bedside of a friend or relative who was about to pass out of this world and into the beyond? Most of us have, for where is the house that has not been entered by Father Time? Neither is the following phase of the occurrence, to which we would particularly direct attention, uncommon. The person about to pass out very often falls into a stupor, then awakens and sees not only this world but the world into which he is about to enter; and it is very significant that then he sees people who were his friends or relatives during the earlier part of his life– sons, daughters, a wife, anyone in fact near and dear to him–standing around the bedside and awaiting his crossing over. The mother will fondly stretch out her arms: “Why, there is John, and how big he has grown! What a splendid big boy he is!” And so she will recognize one after another of her children who have passed into the beyond. They are assembled at her bedside, waiting for her to join them, actuated by the same feeling that possesses people were when a child is about to be born into this world, making them rejoice at the new arrival because they feel instinctively that it is a friend who is coming to them.

 So, also, the people who have gone before into the beyond gather when a friend is about to cross the border line and join them on the other side of the veil. Thus we see that the birth into one world is death from the viewpoint of another–the child that comes to us has died to the spiritual world, and the person who passes out of our ken into the beyond and dies here is born into a new world and joins his friends there.

 As above, so below; the law of analogy, which is the same for microcosm and macrocosm, tells us that what befalls human beings under given conditions must also apply to the superhuman under analogous circumstances. We are now approaching the winter solstice, the darkest days of the year, the time when the light of the sun has almost faded, when our Northern Hemisphere is cold and drear. But on the longest and darkest night the sun turns on its upward path, the Christ light is born on the earth again, and all the world rejoices. By the terms of our analogy, however, when the Christ is born on earth He dies to heaven. As the free spirit is at the time of birth finally and firmly encased in the veil of flesh which fetters it all through life, so also the Christ Spirit is fettered and hampered each time He is born into the earth. This great Annual Sacrifice begins when our Christmas bells are ringing, when our joyful sounds of praise and thanksgiving are ascending to heaven. Christ is imprisoned in the most literal sense of the word from Christmas to Easter.

 Men may scorn the idea that there is an influx of spiritual life and light at this time of the year, nevertheless the fact remains whether we believe it or not. Every one in the whole world at this time feels lighter, feels different, feels as if a load were lifted off his shoulders. The spirit of peace on earth and good will towards man prevails; the spirit that WE ALSO WOULD GIVE something expresses itself in Christmas gifts. This spirit is not to be denied, as is patent to anyone who is at all observant; and this is a reflex of the great divine wave of giving. God so loved the world that He gave His only or alone begotten Son. Christmas is the time of the giving, though it is not consummated until Easter; this is the crux, the turning point, the place where we feel that something has happened which ensures the prosperity and continuance of the world.

 How different is the feeling at Christmas from the one that is manifest at Easter! At the latter there is an outgoing desire, an energy which expresses itself in sex love with desire for perpetuation of self as the keynote; how different this is from the love which expresses itself in the spirit of giving that we find at Christmas time rather than that of receiving.

 And look now at the churches; never does the candle burn so brightly as upon this, the shortest and the darkest day of the year. Never do the bells sound so festive as when they ring out their message to the waiting world, “The Christ is born.”

 “God is Light,” says the inspired apostle, and no other description is capable of conveying so much of the nature of God as those three little words. The invisible light that is clothed in the flame upon the altar is an apt representation of God, the Father. In the bells we have an apt symbol of Christ, the Word, for their metal tongues proclaim the gospel message of peace and good will, while the incense brings an added spiritual fervor, representing the power of the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is thus symbolically part of the celebration which makes Christmas the most spiritually joyful time of the year from the standpoint of the human race which is now embodied and working in the physical world.

 But it must not be forgotten, as was said in an opening paragraph of this lesson, that the birth of Christ upon earth is the death of Christ to the glory of heaven; that at the time when we rejoice at His annual coming, He is invested again with the heavy physical load which we have crystallized about ourselves and which is now our dwelling place–the earth. In this heavy body He is then encrusted, and anxiously He waits for the day of final liberation. You understand, of course, there are days and nights for the greater spirits as for the human beings; that as we live in our body during the daytime, work out the destiny which we have created for ourselves in the physical world, and are then liberated at night into the higher world to recuperate, so also there is this ebb and flow of the Christ Spirit. It dwells within our earth a part of the year and then withdraws into the higher worlds. Thus Christmas is for Christ the commencement of a day of physical life, the beginning of a period of restriction.

 What then should be the aspiration of the devout and enlightened mystic who realizes the greatness of His sacrifice, the greatness of this gift which is being bestowed upon mankind by God at this time of the year; who realizes this sacrifice of the Christ for our sake, this giving Himself, subjecting Himself to a virtual death that we may live, this wonderful love that is being poured out upon the earth at this time–what should be his aspiration? What but to imitate in however small a measure the wonderful works of God! He should aspire to make himself more the servant of the Cross than ever before, more closely to follow the Christ in every thing by sacrificing himself for his brothers and sisters, by uplifting humanity within his immediate sphere of work so as to hasten the day of liberation for which the Christ Spirit is waiting, groaning and travailing. We mean the PERMANENT liberation, the day and the coming of Christ.

 To realize this aspiration in the fullest measure, let us go forth during the coming year with full self-reliance and faith. If we have heretofore despaired of our ability to work for Christ, then let this despair pass, for has He not said: “Greater works than these shall ye do”? Would He who was the Word of truth have said such things if it were not possible to realize them? All things are possible to them that love God. If we will really work in our own little sphere, not looking for the greater things until we have done the work close at hand, then we shall find that a wonderful soul growth may be attained, so that the people who are round about us shall see in us something which they may not be able to define but which will nevertheless be patent to them–they shall see that Christmas light, the light of the new-born Christ, shining within our sphere of action. It can be done; it only depends upon ourselves whether we will take Him at His word so as to realize this command: “Be ye therefore perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Perfection may seem a very long way off; we may realize more acutely as we look upon Him how far we are from living up to our ideals. Nevertheless, it is by striving daily, hourly, that we finally attain, and every day some little progress can be made, something can be done, in some way we can let our light shine so that men shall see it as a beacon light in the darkness of the world. May God help us during the coming year to attain a greater measure of Christ-likeness than we have ever before attained. May we live such lives that when another year has rolled around and we again see the candle lights of Christmas and hear the bells that call us to the Holy Night service, we shall then feel that we have not lived in vain.

 EACH TIME WE GIVE OURSELVES in service to others we add to the luster of our soul bodies, which are built of ether. It is the Christ ether that now floats this sphere of ours, and let us remember that if we ever want to work for His liberation, we must in sufficient numbers evolve our own soul bodies to the point where they may float the earth. Thus we may take up His burden and save Him the pain of physical existence.

Adoración de los pastores, ca. 1668

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THE COSMIC MEANING OF EASTER

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THE WHOLE LIFE OF CHRIST WAS A CROSS AND A MARTYRDOM, AND DOST THOU SEEK FOR THYSELF REST AND JOY? THE HIGHER A MAN HATH ADVANCED IN THE SPIRIT, THE HEAVIER CROSSES HE WILL OFTEN FIND, BECAUSE THE SORROW OF HIS BANISHMENT INCREASETH WITH THE STRENGTH OF HIS LOVE.
-Thomas a Kempis.

Holly Easter and the Resurrection

On the morning of Good Friday, 1857, Richard Wagner, the master artist of the nineteenth century, sat on the veranda of a Swiss villa by the Zurich Sea. The landscape about him was bathed in most glorious sunshine; peace and good will seemed to vibrate through nature. All creation was throbbing with life; the air was laden with the fragrant perfume of budding pine forests–a grateful balm to a troubled heart of a restless mind.

 Then suddenly, as a bolt from an azure sky, there came into Wagner’s deeply mystic soul a remembrance of the ominous significance of that day– the darkest and most sorrowful in the Christian year. It almost overwhelmed him with sadness, as he contemplated the contrast. There was such a marked incongruity between the smiling scene before him, the plainly observable activity of nature, struggling to renewed life after winter’s long sleep, and the death struggle of a tortured Savior upon a cross; between the full-throated chant of life and love issuing from the thousands of little feathered choristers in forest, moor, and meadow, and the ominous shouts of hate issuing from an infuriated mob as they jeered and mocked the noblest ideal the world has ever known; between the wonderful creative energy exerted by nature in spring, and the destructive element in man, which slew the most noblest character that ever graced our Earth.

 While Wagner meditated thus upon the incongruities of existence, the question presented itself: Is there any connection between the death of the Savior upon the cross at Easter, and the vital energy which expresses itself so prodigally in spring when nature begins the life of a new year?

 Though Wagner did not consciously perceive and realize the full significance of the connection between the death of the Savior and the rejuvenation of nature, he had, nevertheless, unwittingly stumbled upon the key to one of the most sublime mysteries encountered by the human spirit in its pilgrimage from clod to God.

 In the darkest night of the year, when Earth sleeps most soundly in Boreas’s cold embrace, when material activities are at the very lowest ebb, a wave of spiritual energy carries upon its crest the Divine creative “word from Heaven” to a MYSTIC BIRTH at Christmas; and as a luminous cloud the spiritual impulse broods over the world that “knew it not’ for it “shines in the darkness” of winter when nature is paralyzed and speechless.

 This Divine creative “Word” has a message and a mission. It was born to “save the world,” and “to give its life for the world.” It must of necessity sacrifice its life in order to accomplish the rejuvenation of nature. Gradually it BURIES ITSELF IN THE EARTH and commences to infuse its own vital energy into the millions of seeds which lie dormant in the ground. It whispers “the word of life” into the ears of beast and bird, until the gospel of good news has been preached to every creature. The sacrifice is fully consummated by the time the Sun crosses its Easter(n) node at the spring equinox. Then the divine creative Word expires. IT DIES UPON THE CROSS AT EASTER in a mystical sense, while uttering a last triumphant cry. “It has been accomplished” (CONSUMMATUM EST).

But as an echo returns to us many times repeated, so also the celestial song of life is re-echoed from the Earth. The whole creation takes up the anthem. A legion-tongued chorus repeats it over and over. The little seeds in the bosom of Mother Earth commence to germinate; they burst and sprout in all directions, and soon a wonderful mosaic of life, a velvety green carpet embroidered with multicolored flowers, replaces the shroud of immaculate wintry white. From the furred and feathered tribes “the word of life” re-echoes as a song of love, impelling them to mate. Generation and multiplication are the watchwords everywhere–THE SPIRIT HAS RISEN to more abundant life.

Thus, mystically, we may note the annual birth, death, and resurrection of the Savior as the ebb and flow of a spiritual impulse which culminates at the winter solstice, Christmas, and has egress from the Earth shortly after Easter when the WORD ASCENDS TO HEAVEN on Whitsunday. But it will not remain there forever. We are taught that “Thence it shall return,” “at the judgment.” Thus when the Sun descends below the equator through the sign of the scales in October, when the fruits of the year are harvested, weighed, and assorted according to their kind, the descent of the spirit of the new year has its inception. This descent culminates in birth at Christmas.

 Man is a miniature of nature. What happens on a large scale in the life of a planet like our Earth, takes place on a smaller scale in the course of human events. A planet is the body of wonderfully great and exalted Being, one of the Seven Spirits before the Throne (of the parent Sun). Man is also a spirit and “made in their likeness.” As a planet revolves in its cyclic path around the Sun whence it emanated, so also the human spirit moves in an orbit around its central source–God. Planetary orbits, being ellipses, have points of closest approach to and extreme deviation from their solar centers. Likewise the orbit of the human spirit is elliptical. We are closest to God when our cyclic journey carries us into the celestial sphere of activity–heaven, and were are farthest removed from Him during Earth life. These changes are necessary to our soul growth. As the festivals of the year mark the recurring events of importance in the life of a Great Spirit, so our births and deaths are events of periodical recurrence. It is as impossible for the human spirit to remain perpetually in heaven or upon Earth as it is for a planet to stand still in its orbit. The same immutable law of periodicity which determines the unbroken sequence of the seasons, the alternation of day and night, the tidal ebb and flow, governs also the progression of the human spirit, both in heaven an upon Earth.

 From realms of celestial light where we live in freedom, untrammeled by limitations of time and space, where we vibrate in tune with infinite harmony of the spheres, we descend to birth in the physical world where our spiritual sight is obscured by the mortal coil which binds us to this limited phase of our existence. We live here awhile, we die and ascend to heave, to be reborn and to die again. Each Earth life is a chapter in a serial life story, extremely humble in its beginnings, but increasing in interest and importance as we ascend to higher and higher stations of human responsibility. No limit is conceivable, for in essence we are divine, and must, therefore, have the infinite possibilities of God dormant within. When we have learned all that this world has to teach us, a wider orbit, a larger sphere of superhuman usefulness will give scope to our greater capabilities.

 “But what of Christ?” someone will ask. “Don’t you believe in Him? You are discoursing upon Easter, the feast which commemorates the cruel death and glorious, triumphant resurrection of the Savior, but you seem to be alluding to Him more from an allegorical point of view than as an actual fact.”

 Certainly we believe in the Christ; we love Him with our whole heart and soul, but we wish to emphasize the teaching that Christ is the first fruits of the race. He said that we shall do the things He did, “and greater.” Thus we are Christs-in-the-making.

 We are too much in the habit of looking to an outside Savior while harboring a devil within; but till Christ be formed in us, as Paul says, we shall seek in vain, for as it is impossible for us to perceive light and color, though they are all about us, unless our optic nerve registers their vibrations, and as we remain unconscious of sound when the tympanum of our ear is insensitive, so also must we remain blind to the presence of Christ and deaf to His voice until we arouse our dormant spiritual natures within. But once these natures have become awakened, they will reveal the Lord of Love as a prime reality; this on the principle that when a tuning fork is struck, another of identical pitch will also commence to sing, while tuning forks of different pitches will remain mute. Therefore, the Christ said that His sheep knew the SOUND of His voice and responded, but the voice of the stranger they heard not. (Jon 10:5) No matter what our creed, we are all brethren of Christ, so let us rejoice, the Lord has risen! Let us seek Him and forget our creeds and other lesser differences.

 

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