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| Ann Harrington, ARCWP pressiding at Liturgy Celebrating the Cosmic Christ Photos by Mark Harrington |
Opening song: O Magnum Mysterium
https://youtu.be/nn5ken3RJBo
Psalm: Everyday God
https://youtu.be/2_3MSBJIq5o
Communion Hymn: We Are the Body of
Christ https://youtu.be/9Vj_VYbbn_c Stop
at 2:48
Recessional: The rest of "We Are
the Body of Christ
What follows are some ideas from Richard Rohr and Ilia Delio, both
Franciscans, both I believe, are Prophets and Wisdom teachers. I will post the links I used on our fb page
if you are interested in furthering your understanding of the Cosmic Christ..
The Big Bang occurred over 13 billion years ago. As God revealed God self in the material
evolution of life, the Christ was present.
And this revelation has been ongoing since the beginning. On the first
day, God says, "Let there be light".
The Cosmic Christ is the light that fills all things since the beginning
of time and invites us into this realm of reality. God is love--the love that loves to
love. God created the world because God
longs to share that love with one who could respond to God in grace and
glory. I learned in Bev Bingle's homily
this week that glory means "manifestation of God's presence". A
favorite quote of mine is from the second century St. Irenaeus. He said, "The glory of God is a person
fully alive". Jesus is this man
fully alive. Ilia says he was like a Big
Bang, for in Jesus, God consciousness breaks forth. Jesus had an immediate awareness of God in
his life that breaks through the Jewish tradition. His mission was to take what is fragmented in
life make it whole whether it means challenging the Jewish Law or turning over
the tables in the Temple. Whatever is
opposed to more unity and love must be challenged. Jesus ushers in a New Integral
Wholeness. So, Jesus can be called a Whole
Maker, a healer. We his followers share
in this mission.
The early church recognized that Jesus was the "Christ". But this understanding was lost. Our
religion is carrying a lot of baggage.
Our God concept is for many, of medieval origin. A God out there somewhere. The legacy of the Greek philosophers is with
us still. Platonic spirituality gives us
the idea that God is up there and we are here and our whole path is to leave
here and go there. This thinking leads us to see earth as a mere way station on
the journey to some other heavenly realm and explains the current ecological
condition we find ourselves in. Our call is to embrace this wise home that has
been given to us, to become conscious that beauty is all round us and life
never stops bursting forth.
In the 14th century with the invention of telescopes people saw something
very different from what they had
believed. The earth was not the center
of the universe but just one planet that revolved around the sun. The church decided not to deal with this. For
what then does Scripture mean? What is
our purpose in creation if humans are not the be all and end of creation? How can we come to any certainty about God
amidst all these changes? Seventeenth
century French philosopher, Rene Descartes decides to take God out of the
cosmos and put God in a self thinking person.
This leads the church to respond with a heavy emphasis on doctrine and
law. God becomes judge, the one who is
"over us". Once you separate
God from the cosmos you don't have God, you have a thought.
Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit
paleontologist who spent many years beginning in the 1920's in China looking
for the story of how humans emerged and continue to emerge. He put evolution and the Christ story together. He said evolution is not a theory, it is the
way nature works, it is a process of unfolding life. There seems to be a fundamental law of
attraction going on. Things come
together and form a new entity. A new
complexity forms something else new. It
is because of what was there that something new comes, emerges. de Chardin calls this fundamental attraction,
love. Love is the physical structure of
the universe. This dynamic universe of
energy of love, unites, attracts and gives rise to more being, over and over
again. The whole structure of the
universe is oriented toward more life, more being, more consciousness. The story is still being written. Evolution continues through us. We are the arrows of evolution. Our choices and decisions are fundamental to
how this universe will continue to evolve.
Everything we think, say or do matters.
It may help to come to some
understanding of the immense process that we are part of. The first stars emerge 400 million years
after the Big Bang. If Evolution is a 30
volume encyclopedia, humans show up in the last volume, on the last page, the
last 2 words of the last line. We are
new to the universe, We have been given a crucial role in evolution. For if Christ is as, T. says, the organic
unfolding of divine life that has come to consciousness in the human person,
what does that make us but evolving Christ's?
In the life of Jesus we see what the Big Bang is about, love poured out
for the sake of more life. Evolution is
cruciform, suffering and death all along the way. Resurrection is a new energy field, this is
why the early Church was so dynamic.
They were experiencing something new, New Life, life that will never
end. Life that empowered them to give
their lives for the sake of the Gospel.
We often miss the Risen
Christ. We are so driven by
self-preservation. We are so distracted by noise and busyness and
clutter that we cannot find that "still center" within, the place of
Integral Wholeness where Jesus lived and moved and had his being. It is when we come to know the whole within,
when we meet the Christ within, when we get in touch with what Merton says is
"the pure glory of God in us", when we find ourselves embraced in
love, then we can move outward and
become whole makers, reconcilers, people of mercy and compassion.
Ilia defines a Christian as one who is connected through to the heart
and to the whole of life, attuned to the deeper intelligence of nature and
called forth irresistibly by the
Spirit to creatively express one's gifts in the evolution of self and
world. As we open to change, to grow, to
unite, so too will the world around us, because we are part and parcel of a
larger whole.
Questions for reflection: I think it important to claim our
goodness. All of us are involved in whole
making in some way. I invite you to
share what you do to bring wholeness to yourself and the larger world.
What gives you energy? What
gift/s is the Spirit calling you to creatively express? You might be having a niggle of awareness
that this thing is calling you.
If we stopped using the word Catholic and said "wholemakers",
Free Spirit Inclusive Whole maker's Community, how might that change how we
think about ourselves and what we are doing?
Readings for 4/24/16
First Reading: Hymn of
the Universe by Teilhard de Chardin
...far from light
emerging gradually out of the womb of our darkness, it is the Light, existing
before all else was made which, patiently, surely eliminates our darkness. As for us creatures, of ourselves we are but
emptiness and obscurity. But you, my
God, are the inmost depths, the stability of that eternal milieu, without
duration or space, in which our cosmos emerges gradually into being and grows
gradually to its final completeness, as it loses those boundaries which to our
eyes seem so immense. Everything is
being; everywhere there is being and
nothing but being.
Psalm: Everyday
God by Bernadette Farrell https://youtu.be/2_3MSBJIq5o
Second Reading: Colossians 1 15-16 Inclusive
New Testament
Christ is the image
of the unseen God
and the firstborn of all creation,
for in Christ were
created
all things in heaven and on earth:
everything visible
and invisible,
Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties,
Powers-
all things were created through Christ and
for Christ.
Gospel: John 1: 1-5
Inclusive New Testament
In the beginning
there was the Word,
the Word was in God's
presence
and the Word was God.
The Word was present
to God
from the beginning.
Through the Word
all things came into
being,
and apart from the
Word
nothing came into
being
that has come into
being.
In the Word was life,
and that life was
humanity's light-
a Light that shines
in the darkness,
a Light that the
darkness has never overtaken.
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