Mystical Oasis
Vera A. Krokonko, M.D., Ph.D.
(under construction)
Welcome to Our Spiritual Oasis – Our Church
“.
. . God’s holy church is a symbol of man; its soul is the sanctuary; the
sacred altar, the mind; and its body is the nave. A church is thus the image and
likeness of man, who was made in the image and likeness of God. The nave is used
as the body should be used, for exemplifying moral philosophy; from the
sanctuary the church leads the way to natural contemplation spiritually as man
does with his soul; and she embarks in mystical theology through the sacred
altar, as man does through his mind.”
Thus, when we leave the church building, we are the living Church, the Body of Christ, alive in the world. We are to carry on God’s work in the world through Jesus Christ, being witnesses to His salvation of humankind, and are to continue growing in the knowledge of Truth and Grace as we actually live the new life of God within us. We are to bring the “Life of the Divine Liturgy” alive in the world around us.
Our Body – God’s Traveling House of Prayer
“THE CHURCH” – CALLED TO RESPECT LIFE
Who
is the Church? The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. Yes, WE
ARE the BODY OF CHRIST! Every single one of us that has been baptized unto
Christ is a living member of His Body. Every time we receive Him in the
Eucharist we are reborn into His life and He into ours. We become one with God!
And this is why it is so important to treat ourselves and others with RESPECT,
with the dignity that a human being is entitled to receive. There is much talk
these days about entitlement programs and how the government gets involved in
our life. Well, as far as God is concerned, there is no talk. GOD
IS INVOLVED! After all, He did make us in His image and likeness to begin
with. And then, because we sinned and separated ourselves from Him, He sent His
Son to become one like us in order to rejoin Himself with us again, and again,
and again, and…Get the picture? When we separate ourselves from God with our
sins, we have to be rejoined through a sincere Sacrament of Confession and then
to partake of His Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist. In other words,
OUR Sincere Confession + GOD’S
Forgiveness = OUR
And
this reunion takes place when we partake of the Sacrifice prepared for us on the
Altar when we, the Bride, become intimately united with our Bridegroom, Jesus
Christ, as we ingest His Body and Blood. At this moment we are completely
assimilated into the life of each other. God is in us, and we are in God. Thus,
it is mportant for us to truly realize that we are not alone in this world. We
are one with God. And this is more the reason why we need to respect ourselves
and others. In doing so, we are not respecting our humanity per se, but we are
paying reverence to God within us of Whose likeness we are to become while
living in this world. His presence within us makes our humanity more divine.
This is why
And this is why it is of utmost importance for us to always dress properly in a respectful manner but especially when attending a Church service. We are to honor the presence of God within and among us. The “Old Timers” always dressed up for church in their Sunday Meetin’ Clothes. And, if we haven’t noticed lately, the members of the Protestant churches, including their children, still do. We come to church to pray and join together in one voice to glorify our God. We cannot allow ourselves to sin by being the cause of distraction to others by wearing suggestive or other rather inappropriate clothing. Furthermore, we older members of our Parish Family are to set the example for the younger ones. It would be wise for all of us to remember that moral values, that is, virtues, are caught not taught. Our God came down to earth to show us how to live. Jesus didn’t tell us one thing and then did something different because it made Him feel good, as we are getting used to doing in our “feel good” society. We will never hear from our God, “Do as I say and not as I do!” Perhaps it is time we really thought about what happened at the wedding banquet Jesus told us about:
“When the King came in to meet the
guests, however, he caught sight of a man not properly dressed for a wedding
feast. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘how is it you came in here not properly
dressed?’ The man had nothing to say. The King then said to the attendants,
‘Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the night to wail and grind his
teeth.’ The invited are many, the elect are few.” (Matthew 22:11-14)
There
is a Catholic Church in the
NO
SHIRT – NO SHOES – NO SERVICE.
If
a restaurant that serves ordinary food has guidelines for being served, how much
more should we consider how we dress our body to receive our extraordinary meal,
the Body and Blood of Christ our God?
“Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.”
Did that Latin phrase catch your eye? During the early days of the Church, the world was ruled by the combined Greco-Roman Empire. Thus, this phrase was taken up by the Eastern Church and became a fundamental principle of worship. It means, “The Law of Prayer is the Law of Faith.” In other words, the worshipper in the Eastern Church both praises God and learns the Divine Truths at the same time as passed down to us by the holy Spirit. Our faith is expressed in prayers. And Byzantine spirituality, greatly influenced by the devout monastic life of the East, stresses life itself as a life of prayer.
Paying
Reverent
Attention to our
Yearning for our
Eternal
Reward.
Recall the famous motto of the
Christophers: “The Family that Prayers Together, Stays Together.” We are
members of the Family of God. We are members of our own family on earth. Putting
the two together, we become the “
OUR GPS – Gods Plan of Salvation
Two simple words of instruction: FOLLOW and LOVE. And to do so we have a complete book of instructions called the Holy Scriptures, and a most perfectly divine Human Life of Love, known as Jesus Christ both God and Man, Whose Life we are called to imitate in order to keep on the right way as guided by our own GPS.
For us who do not know it, the
Sunflower is the national flower of
“I
am the WAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE. No one comes to the Father except through
Me. If you know Me then you will also know My Father. From now on you do know
Him and have seen Him. . . .Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father” (John
14:6-7)
And recall what He also told them and us, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48) Also, we must keep in mind what God told Moses to tell the Israelites, “Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy.” (Lev. 19:2) Therefore, as the sunflower, we face God daily and follow His lead through life. Are we really trying to follow His face all day long? Are we truly using our personal GPS as we should?
Life: A Fatal Dis-ease
From 1957 to 1981 the popular
Jacob Javitz served as senator from the state of
It is through our GPS that we
are able to counteract the “dis-ease”
of our mortal human condition. And so how do we use our “GPS”? We use it
by fully participating in the life of God within us. And the part that we have
to understand is that we must “fully
participate in this life”. Through the sacraments of the Church, we
have become members of the Body of Christ,
We are called to “FULLY PARTICIPATE” in the life of God while we are on this earth. And the place to start is during the Divine Liturgy. Do we fully realize that the drama unfolding before our very eyes during this public service of ours to God is the whole life of Christ from His birth to His promise to come for us at the end of time? Thus, to “fully participate” in the Divine Liturgy, we are participating in the life of Christ. And, not only that, but, when we partake of His Body and Blood, we become one with Him in a communion of life both human and divine. Are we fully living this life as we should?
“This Is Your Life”
Let us now fast forward into our unknown future to the day when we will
be waiting to see whether or not we enter the gates of the New Jerusalem at the
end of time. As, Ralph Edwards, God, our Producer, will also have a Book to
refer to. It is the Lamb’s Book of Life. The following is the vision
“I saw no temple in the city, for its
temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb. The city had no need of sun or
moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the
Lamb. . . . nothing unclean will enter it, nor any[one] who does abominable
things or tells lies. Only those will
enter whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.” (Rev.
21:22-23, 27)
Lillian Roth began her recovery when she gave her life over to God, the
Higher Power who has control over life according to the 12 Step Program of
Alcoholics Anonymous. Her life was initially controlled by success as a child in
vaudeville, later on Broadway and the big screen, still later by alcohol and
substance abuse, and finally where it belonged in the hands of God.
God is the author of our life. And as our Creator, He has power over us and thus can justify us as being acceptable to Him as righteous or worthy of salvation. Through the sacramental life of the Church, He has established a spiritual covenant with us, His visible image on earth through which we are to become His likeness. As members of the Body of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, we are living sacramentals of the Church as Sacrament, which we considered last time. With the presence of God’s New Life within us, we are sacred objects of God’s love, that is, if we truly live according to the way our Heavenly Father desires. The AA builds up character through 12 steps and the support of the fellowship of love that permeates the group. We have within us the Word of God and His Spirit of Truth and Love and are to live in the fellowship of His command to love as He has loved us. Recall what we pray before saying the “Our Father” during Divine Liturgy: “Having asked for unity of the faith and for the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, let us commit ourselves and one another, and our whole life, to Christ our God.” By following His Word, including the commandments, we are to strive to live in the obedience of faith in His unfailing love for us. In doing so, we will be living a sacramental life of obedience, a life in which we attentively listen to God’s Word to us and closely follow His directives, guided by His Holy Spirit within us, on how to live the holy life with which we have been blessed. In doing so, we are to show respect for life and worship Him with deep reverence. And how do we do this?
We respect God’s life within us and others by the way we dress, through our actions and with what we say in our relationships with those whom we encounter on our way through life. However, God is to be shown a special token of our respect. Before we enter our pew in church, we are to venerate Him with a bow, acknowledging His Real Presence on the Altar of Sacrifice. We are to do the same as we exit from our pew. How can we possibly ignore the actual presence of the Giver of our Life when we are in His own house and He is feeding us with His own Body and Blood so that we will become one with Him? As Lillian Roth, can we ever say that our life is our own?
“Sinners Anonymous” – Who Are They?
Would we believe that each one of us is a member in good standing of this
down to earth group? We have Acoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous,
Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, and any other kind of anonymous we can
think of where we can get some support to fight off the urges of our vices and
passions that want to control our lives. All of these are specific groups of
people specializing in one certain type of abuse that is detrimental to our
physical, emotional, and social well-being. However, we can lump them all
together and place them into the Sinners Anonymous Group, for they are all sins
according to the Law of God’s Love and are detrimental to our spiritual
well-being. We let them take over our lives when we do not have enough love for
God and ourselves. Believe it or not, SIN
IS AN ADDICTION! God and Satan both know that it is. Satan keeps tempting us
in our weakness of our human nature, and God keeps forgiving us because of the
weakness of our human nature when we finally come to realize our weaknesses and
sincerely repent.
Just as all of these Anonymous groups meet once a week and encourage
their members to attend each meeting because they need the support of each other
in order not to relapse into their old habits, we
Sinners Anonymous meet each Sunday for our meeting of mutual support. We are
on this earth to support each other, to help each other get back to our heavenly
home. Although we know each other’s name, we are anonymous in the fact that
our sins are not public knowledge. Only we and God know how we have offended
Him. And it is through His living presence in each one of us that we help each
other to overcome the hold sin has on us. The main goal in living our lives as
Christians is to do our part in bringing about the edification of the
The one thing we seem to easily forget is that Christianity
is a way of life for us. It is the gift
of a new life in, with and through Christ, and this “new life” is the
Church. After all, Jesus did tell us that He is the WAY and the LIFE. As members
of His Body, we the Church, who “have
now received mercy” (1 Peter 2:10), are established as a new spiritual
nation under God, which offers to God spiritual sacrifices and thanksgiving,
carries on His work in the world, witnesses to His salvation and grows in the
knowledge of His Truth and Grace. Each Sunday we gather together as God’s
Mystical Body, coming together as a gathering of His faithful to support each
other in the union of the one Body of which we, “though many, are one Body.”
(1 Cor. 12:12)
At our Baptism, we were born into a “new life”; at our Confirmation
the Holy Chrism consecrated us to serve our God together with all other members
of the Church; in receiving the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist we continually
renew the gift of unity with God and others, through the offering of one
sacrifice and the communion of one Bread and one Cup. We support each other in
and through the healing presence of our living God within us. It is wise for us
to keep in mind what we pray in the penitential prayer before we receive our God
in Communion:
“May partaking of Your holy Mysteries,
O Lord, not cause my judgment or condemnation but rather the healing of soul and
body.
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. God,
cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me. I have sinned countless times;
forgive me, O Lord.”
Will we see each other at our weekly meeting of “Sinners Anonymous”
next Sunday? Sure, we can pray at home and any place else we happen to be, but
we then miss out on the spiritual strength we all need to support each other as
the sinful living members of the one Body of Christ.
“One for All and All for One!”
Alexander Dumas had the perfect motto for his Three
Musketeers. Together they lived and were willing to die for each other. We
Christians are to have a similar outlook on life on this earth, for we are
caught up in the dance of love of the Holy Trinity, known as the perichoresis
by our Church Fathers. Were we not created by God our Father in His image
and are to become His likenesses? Are we not the Temples of God the Holy Spirit?
Are we not all united in the Body of God the Son? And, are we not to live in
love with God and each other just as God loves us through this Mystical Union we
form with others?
Thus, we do not come to church to just take up our
time and space. We come to actively join in the mystical union with others to
worship our God. Everything in the Divine Liturgy concerns each one of us as the
SUNDAY – The Eighth Day of Creation
The days of the week were named from
the names of the planets as derived from Egyptian astrology. The seven planets
at that time are known to us as Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury
and the Moon. Each had an hour of the day assigned to it and the one which
reigned during the first hour of a particular day gave its name to that day. So,
Sunday, being dies Solis for the
Romans, became the Day of the Sun, that is, the Day of the Sun of Righteousness
for us. Recall the Tropar for Christmas when we sing: “For
those who adored the stars were taught by a star to worship You, the Sun of
Righteousness.” The Son of God is our Sun of Righteousness Who brought the
Divine Light back into the world.
Since the Jewish Sabbath was the seventh day of the week, the day they
devoted to the worship of God, Sunday became the first day of the week. And so,
according to practice and tradition, Sunday became the day for the public
worship of God for the Christians. Therefore, St. Ignatius speaks of Christians
as “no longer observing the Sabbath, but
living in the observance of the Lord’s Day, on which also Our Life rose
again.” It is the day on which our Lord and Savior arose from the dead,
giving us a New Life in God thus becoming the eighth day of the week but the
First Day of the New Creation.
Let’s look at it this way. God created the world in six days. On the
seventh day He saw that everything was very good and He rested from all the work
He had done. Where did He rest? He rested in His creation, in us human beings
whom He created in His image and likeness. And it was His likeness that we were
to bring out into the world in order to finish His work of creation as He wanted
us to do in order to bring it all back to Him in love. However, we turned
against Him and in doing so brought sin into the world. Thank God that we have
such a loving God Who loves us so much that he gave the ultimate sacrifice so
that we might get back into his good graces. He sent His Son, the Son (Sun) of
Righteousness, to make things right again between us.
Thus, on Friday, the sixth day of the week, God’s Son paid our ransom
with the ultimate sacrifice of His life for us sinners. On Saturday, the seventh
day of the week, His Body lay in the earth from which human flesh had originally
been formed, but, since He hadn’t become corrupt with sin, it didn’t decay.
Therefore, on Sunday, the eighth day of the week and the first day of New Life,
He arose from the dead in His glorified Body. To us this is the First Day of the
New Creation, the return of our glorified human nature to its original pristine
beauty, the purity of soul we had in
During our life all week, we will continue to sin because of the weakness
of our human nature. As we approach Sunday, we need to prepare ourselves for the
worship we will be giving our God in thanksgiving on the Lord’s Day for all He
has done, is doing and will continue to do for us. Since the Church has removed
mandatory penance for our sins of not eating meat on Fridays, the day of our
Savior’s sacrifice, we are asked to do voluntary acts of penance to show how
much we truly love God for He loves us even while we are still sinning. He
freely gives His love to us and we are invited to freely give Him our love in
return. Remember, love cannot be forced. So, on Friday, we should make a sincere
effort to examine our consciences and do something to atone for our own sins.
Perhaps we can get back to doing some repentance such as voluntarily not eating
meat all day, or doing some special service for somebody in need like
volunteering for Meals on Wheels, sitting with a shut-in while the caregiver
takes a needed break, etc. The possibilities are endless. On Saturday is the
time for us to obtain the supernatural grace of the Sacrament of Confession that
will give us the strength to combat the sinfulness of our human nature. Since it
is the day in which our Savior rested in the grave uncorrupted, we, in making a
sincere Confession in repentance for our sins, will allow our souls to be
refreshed and again become cleansed and uncorrupt. Through the gift of God’s
loving grace, we undergo a “little resurrection” from the dead to which our
sins had led us. Remember, as
Sunday – Our Day of Resurrection
We are “Alleluia People” called to joyfully praise God because He has
given us the promise of eternal life and saved us from final damnation.
Therefore, we sing to Him “Alleluia,
Alleluia, Alleluia!” This word comes from the Jewish word Hallelujah, meaning a joyful word of praise to God. When we come to
church to participate in the Divine Liturgy, we are coming to actually
participate in the foretaste of the Mystical Wedding banquet to which we are all
invited by Jesus Christ. Before He began His Passion that would lead to His
death and resurrection, He said, “I
tell you, from now on I shall not drink this fruit of the vine until I drink it
with you new in the
Tobit, whose name means YAHWAH is
good, mentions the word Alleluia for
the first time in the Old Testament during his hymn of praise for the goodness
of God to him: “The gates of
As Tobit, we will be raised up by God but into a joyous everlasting life.
Sunday is a reminder for us that, through the resurrection of our Lord, each
Divine Liturgy on the Lord’s Day is a Mystical entrance into the
St. John describes this day of the coming of the New Jerusalem, the
Second coming of Christ, as follows: “A
voice coming from the throne said: ‘Praise our God, all you His servants,
[and] you who revere Him small and great.’ Then I heard something like the
sound of a great multitude or the sound of rushing water or mighty peals of
thunder, as they said: ‘Alleluia! The Lord has established His reign, [our] God, the
almighty. Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him glory. For the
wedding day of the Lamb has come, His bride has made herself ready. She was
allowed to wear a bright, clean linen garment.’” (Rev.
19:5-8) Thus, we the Church, as the Bride
of Christ, are invited to join Him in the Wedding Banquet in the Kingdom of God
at the time of our own glorious resurrection when He comes for us the second
time.
However, in the meantime we participate in the first resurrection each
time we fully participate in the Divine Liturgy and receive His Body and Blood,
for He has already risen for us and conquered Death. So between the resurrection
of Christ and the end of the world, we share in the glorious reign of God
through our baptismal victory over Death and sin in our lives. We continue to
fully participate in this first resurrection as we sincerely repent for our
sins, are forgiven them by the merciful love of our God, and then worthily
partake of the life-giving Body and Blood of Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
As
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Created on January 1, 2001
Updated 09/29/2002