Religious or Spiritual?

Good morning Papa!

Good morning son!

Grateful for Fr J’s words about spirituality and religion yesterday.

Yes son, he drew it out well. I made all of you hybrids of spirit and matter. Every living soul has both. So really everyone is spiritual whether they realize it or not. One can neglect their spiritual hunger and ignore and abuse it until it is nearly dying. Or one can pay attention to their hunger and mistakenly try to feed it by dousing their bodies with all manner of things. Or one can actually feed that spiritual hunger with inappropriate things that are toxic to it. Last and best of all one might feed that spiritual hunger with helpful actions and thoughts and a focus on the transcendentals… what is true, good and beautiful.

Religion is simply disciplined spirituality. It exercises one’s spiritual muscles daily until a deep sense of what it means to be a decent human being is developed. The best religions develop this by connecting with me, the true God of all. The very best religion actually connects with me not just in spirit but also in the flesh and blood in the Eucharist and are thereby transformed by my body, blood, soul and divinity from the inside out.

Also remember that Fr. J drew a distinction between the definitions of discipline. I am not actively punitive as most of you believe, you’re all pretty good at punishing and destroying yourselves so my function is more one of mercifully preventing your self annihilation.

Consider the Webster definitions:

1: to punish or penalize for the sake of enforcing obedience and perfecting moral character

2: to train or develop by instruction and exercise especially in self-control

3a: to bring (a group) under control - discipline troops

3b:: to impose order upon - serious writers discipline and refine their writing styles

You see son, while I may allow some of the consequences of your own self-destructive tendencies to take their full effect (trust me, if I allowed them all to get through to you, humans would have long since ceased to exist!), even then I only allow those consequences in love and hope that they may move you back toward me, the source of all goodness and life.

With that in mind, you can see that definition 2 above is more in line how you should view your approach to spiritual realities. Like the best coach imaginable (yes Ted Lasso came to mind) the best religion provides disciplined instruction for you in appropriate body-soul exercises toward living a fully integrated life as the beautiful marriage of matter and spirt that you are.

Yes Papa this is a right and nuanced approach that makes very good sense. Thanks Papa!

You’re welcome son, I love you!

Love you too Papa!

Amen

At Adoration

Good morning Papa, Jesus, Holy Spirit of Love!

Good morning son!

Lord it was a perplexing awakening when I realized that the vast majority of Christians down through the centuries trusted in your real presence in the Blessed Sacrament. Most recently as I read Tolkien’s letters to his son — Tolkien whom even the world proclaims a master story teller — when I see his words on the Blessed Sacrament to Christopher, well… it jars me.

And then reading those snippets from people who wrote down through the centuries, men and women, young and aged, common lay folk and brilliant educated Saints, all of them bearing witness in unison to your real presence in the Eucharist. (This I find in those beautiful little books “My Daily Eucharist”.) 

A then in “The Holy Hour” book [Word on Fire Press] pp. 202 and 206 Thomas Merton and Pope Francis’ beautiful poetry and poetic prose proclaiming that in the Eucharist is the marriage of heaven and earth — which makes much sense in that thereby you penetrate into the depths of our physical bodies as food and drink and through us permeate the world and the cosmos with your presence.

Lord, this is GLORIOUS!

Yes son, it is and it is something I want to do in, with and through you - interpenetrating each other — body and soul — like human lovers but on a higher plane — Yes, when Roberto Benigni ejaculated in his joy and love to the whole world that he wanted “to lay you all down and make love to you all” he was expressing a note of pure desire for intimate union with everyone — a unity which cannot be attained in the wildest of physical orgies — but is slowly and surely being attained in the communion of saints through partaking in the Holy Eucharist day by day, week by week, month by month and year by year. It is the longest nuptial love making ever! And remember, nuptial love making is just the beginning! We continue this marriage eternally and love making is part of marriage (and begetting children) — it is life giving intimacy for all eternity that can now be celebrated not just between two people in a brief “lifetime” but with all those who abide in me in the Eucharist — All who accept the invitation to the wedding supper of the lamb.

Son, what I’m giving you a glimpse of here is  so much more glorious and ecstatic and wonderful than merely marital love. Don’t mistake the symbol for the real thing… powerful though the symbol may be it is only a shadow of the reality of intimate, interpenetrating connectivity you will all experience in eternity in heaven with all the saints.

Ah, the beatific vision — no matter how dim my eyes and how inadequate my comprehension — is still overwhelming and wonderful. Thank you Lord for bending low and spoon feeding a tiny pre-chewed morsel into my tiny mouth. Thank you for being you and for being present and in, with and through myself and my innumerable brothers and sisters all at once. Thank you for this communion symbolized in Avatar as they are all tied together in the Mother tree. Thank you most Holy Trinity for opening the sharing of your love with us all.

You’re welcome son! We love you to infinity and beyond!

Love you too Lord.

Amen.

We Killed God (Unity of Trinity Part II)

(Leeloo here... the content below is from Seb's friend Fred who has friends and sponsees in prison that he regularly writes to. Fred shared one of his latest letters he wrote to a friend in jail and I thought it shows the degree with which Fred and Seb are tracking the Spirit of Jesus together on this issue. Hope it blesses you like it blessed me.)

Well we made it through Easter and boy was I blessed this year. I hope you were too.

I think I came to a deeper understanding about Jesus death and resurrection than I have before…. I don’t know, I’m still kind of processing it.

It is the whole HORRIBLE idea that God the Father was ticked off about sin and had to take his wrath out on someone and so to spare us he took it out on his own son!! Who would want to serve a horrible Father like that, seriously!?

But that is exactly what I was taught in many terrible sermons down through the years. Turns out this false notion has been popular and widespread since about 1200 AD…

I am so Happy that modern preachers and scholars are coming back to the BIBLICAL truth that shows that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are ONE - they are UNIFIED!!! The Father cannot take his wrath out on the son any more than he can take it out on himself! In fact this notion of God being so ticked off at us humans is just wrong… God’s wrath throughout scripture is actually quite a different notion…

In fact, the big thing that comes out is that God is HOLDING back the wrath of Mother Nature trying to self cleanse (in other words ‘wipe us out’ like a Momma dog eating a deformed pup)… God allows about one 10 billionth of the bad things to happen to us that should happen because of our own stupidity and stubbornness. His mercy is a trillion times bigger than the natural consequences of our own idiocy that he allows to squeak through once in a while to get our attention and draw us back into his arms.

There are MANY images in Churches that would fix this whole notion of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’s unity at the cross. They are unfortunately almost all in Europe and overseas in older Churches. The images show God the Father with a grieved and pained look standing behind the cross holding it up with his hands and God the Son on the cross and God the Holy Spirit hovering over God the Son by God the Father’s shoulder. They All THREE suffered together, they are ONE!

WHAT did they suffer? OUR Violence. OUR Hate. OUR selfishness. OUR need for a scapegoat.. OUR need for someone other than ourselves to blame it on.

In some sense, The Father and the Holy
Spirit suffered with Jesus on the Cross

WE KILLED GOD… OUR sin killed him…

And wait for it…

HE just absorbed it on the cross.

Then he came back alive and the first things out of his mouth were NOT I’m going to get even with you.

No, his first words every time he appeared were SHALOM. Peace be unto you.

Yeah, you killed me with your spitefulness and hate, I was your ultimate scapegoat, WE were your ultimate scapegoat, my Father, myself and the Holy Spirit ABSORBED ALL your violence and meanness and we are not mad at you.

In fact we used it as an opportunity to TEAR OPEN the abode of the dead and free the prisoners there and OPEN up paradise to whoever wishes to enter.

So with that to chew on, I’m going to turn again to my good friend Sebastian O’Donal’s journal and let you read some of his conversations with Papa (Father God) and some of his thoughts on this subject.


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Jesus Cancels Scapegoating

Good morning Papa!

Good morning son!

Papa, thanks again for Bishop Barron, he nailed it again today I thought.

You’re welcome son, yes, I’d say Jesus nailed it to the cross, scapegoating that is ;D

Exactly and thereby cancelling out the whole scapegoat mechanism on the cosmic level… granted, most of us never received the memo about this and still go right on scapegoating everyone and everything. But that old tired and violent way was nailed to the cross and a new way of resurrection and life rose from the ashes in a very real sense… it simply is taking its time sinking into the entirecosmos but it will take over. It is inevitable. Those who resist will feel it as fire, those who embrace the new way of love and forgiveness will feel it as warming rays of the life giving sun/son of God.

Exactly, you’re tendency to blame and scapegoat went all the way back to the beginning as you remember and is highly linked to pride. Both must be completely uprooted if true healing is to happen, but the cosmic groundwork has been completed. You are all invited to join in that triumph of the way of forgiveness, love and overcoming evil with good. But it wouldn’t work if I forced it on you would it… that would be using the same old method of violence to overcome your violence. This is an invitation to humanity to marry our divinity and it is not a shotgun wedding.

Indeed Papa, and I fully embrace it and pray that everyone will. Of course, I cannot do it except in, with and through you though you. Jesus I trust in you.

__________

Bishop Barron’s Gospel Homily for today:

JOHN 11:45–56

Friends, in today’s Gospel, the chief priests and Pharisees unite in a plot to kill Jesus because he raised Lazarus from the dead.

The Crucifixion of Jesus is a classic instance of Catholic philosopher René Girard’s scapegoating theory. He held that a society, large or small, that finds itself in conflict comes together through a common act of blaming an individual or group purportedly responsible for the conflict.

It is utterly consistent with the Girardian theory that Caiaphas, the leading religious figure of the time, said to his colleagues, “It is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.”

In any other religious context, this sort of rationalization would be validated. But in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, this stunning truth is revealed: God is not on the side of the scapegoaters, but rather on the side of the scapegoated victim.

The true God does not sanction a community created through violence; rather, he sanctions what Jesus called the kingdom of God, a society grounded in forgiveness, love, and identification with the victim.

__________

The Unity of the Trinity

Seb wrote this to introduce some articles they were going to read and discuss in one of his recovery groups:

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father… I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Jn. 14

“For it is love I desire, not sacrifice…” Hos. 6:6

Because of these words, when I’m able, I gaze at the Crucifix during the “Our Father”. I do this to remind myself that God the Father and Son are not independent contractors that go about their own business, touching base via a phone call occasionally. They are two persons that are deeply intertwined on every level by the Holy Spirit of Love. When the son decided it was high time to take on flesh and go rescue us lost sheep, the Father did not hold him back from that great mission and in fact supported him in every way, though it pained him to do so. They both knew what it would cost.

Gazing at the crucifix, I’m reminded that in a very real sense the Father actually experienced bodyliness vicariously through his son. In the movie “The Shack”, Papa (the Father character) reveals the nail prints in his wrists when questioned about why he ‘abandoned’ his son on the cross. In fact, as Cardinal Cantalamessa aptly points out, Western liturgical art is rich with images of the trinity showing the grieving Father intimately present at the crucifixion and holding his dead son (a fatherly pieta of sorts) afterwards always connected by the Spirit of Love in the form of a dove. I’ve included a sampling of Trinity images at the end of this document.

Cantalamessa uses deft and expert strokes in these two good Friday sermons (see his book: The Power of the Cross) to set the record straight. Far from being cruelly demanded by the Father, the rescue mission to save our souls was the Son’s idea and it was a perfect offering of love to the Father in the Spirit of Love to woo and to win humanity back… to bring home a bride to the heavenly court. This is a main theme in the Theology of the Body which is why we are reading these two sermons this lent. May it deepen our understanding of the loving intimacy between the members of the Holy Trinity.

______________

I hope this all makes sense to you and at least one thing in this blesses you brother,

God bless and feel free to write back with any questions and I’ll try to explain it better.

Your brother in Jesus,


Fred

The Wasp in the Room

Holy Thursday, April 6, 2023

Good morning Papa!

Good morning son!

Papa, I'm thinking of this quote from George Orwell, that droll and mirthless prophet you spoke through so clearly in spite of his demeanor towards you.

Yes son, he was often my unwilling mouthpiece but then again I can speak through an ass and even sometimes you! ;D  Write out the quote and allow me to unfold it for you.

Ok Papa, here it is.

I thought of a rather cruel trick I once played on a wasp. He was sucking jam on my plate, and I cut him in half. He paid no attention, merely went on with his meal, while a tiny stream of jam trickled out of his severed esophagus. Only when he tried to fly away did he grasp the dreadful thing that had happened to him. It is the same with modern man. The thing that has been cut away is his soul, and there was a period -- twenty years, perhaps -- when he did not notice it.
—Notes On The Way, George Orwell: The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters. Volume Two,

Papa it occurs to me that even though Madeleine L'Engle went an entirely different direction with this image in her novel A Severed Wasp, there is a much more joyous take on it. It seems to be tied directly to your death and resurrection and my mind reels at the cosmological implications, please unpack it for me Papa.

Gladly son. First of all let's straighten out the symbols.

The wasp in the room of every person's heart is death. When even one of these little buggers is in your bedroom, you fear going to sleep do you not?

Truth Papa, I'd turn the lights on and find it and kill it to protect my wife and I from a sting.

Right! So, what happened leading up to Calvary was the jam on the plate. Death and hell came in to suck the life blood right out of me, remember we are undivided, Father, Son and Spirit… the politicians of the day were closing in on me to do away with me and I was gladly feeding those wasps my jam.

Wait, you were baiting them?

In a sense, yes, the simple truth baits those who can not abide it. I AM the TRUTH and the source of all truth so I baited them just by being ME. So like in the cartoon where you trick your enemy into swallowing a bomb by wrapping it in a tasty treat, well, it was just too easy really.

The key of course to understanding what happened next son is the whole kairos vs. chronos thing. Chronos is the passage of time measured by various clocks, initially the sun and moon and stars, but now you have machines that display it more precisely. Kairos is that eternal moment that chronos cannot really touch. Because I am fully both God and Man, what I do in chronos time (my death, burial, harrowing of hell, resurrection, ascension, etc.) also occurs outside of time in that eternal kairos moment.

So because you the eternal took on flesh, everything you do now echoes in both chronos and kairos eternally forever, sending out ripples forward and backward in time, like we've discussed before.

Exactly son, who said you weren't bright? ;D So as you can imagine, when I cut the thorax off death and it sat there still sucking up the jam, this was my death, harrowing of hell and resurrection. Death, the devil and his many servants are still sucking the jam. They haven't realized the dreadful thing that has happened to them on a cosmic level yet. Nor has the vast majority of humanity.

When I tore the gates off the abode of death and hell and led the captives there to freedom it changed the entire nature of the broken universe. It began the great healing in the chronos realm. What is as plain as day in the kairos or eternal realm is slowly working its way into the material universe. It is a slow and covert operation. It is the Matrix in slow motion, Neo the antivirus neutralizing the Smith virus… ever so slowly over the last 2000 years.

The wasp is now stirring and realizing the dreadful thing that has happened, death is in its death throes, it is breathing its last gasp, it is desperate and will lash out but it no longer has a stinger to truly hurt anyone. Hell and death are a sham… there are no gates to keep anyone in any longer and all are invited to walk out of there. But it is a marriage proposal, not a shotgun wedding.

I'm inviting humanity to marry me, God in the flesh. The enemy has sown seeds of distrust and suspicion so as to make me look like the worst tyrant groom ever. So few trust in my goodness and so many believe the enemies lies.

Yet I hope and pray to my Father for little ones with trusting hearts to accept the proposal and walk out of hell with me into paradise. The hobbits, the overlooked, the outcasts, the addicts, the ones counted as fools by the world… such are the trusting and hungry hearts I seek to join me in the wedding feast. The banquet at the world's end.

What continues to baffle people is the slow way this is playing out in this era, that is in the chronos of humans. They forget that the darkest hour comes before the dawn…

Like the battle of the Hornburg where Gandalf and the warriors come over the hill with the sun at dawn and turn certain defeat into victory.

Yeah, they forget or have never learned the concept of the eucatastrophe:

"The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation."
--J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories

They forget or have never been told by my son T-bone Burnett that:

"This version of the world will not be here long
It is already gone, it is already gone."
--T-bone Burnett, Palestine Texas

So keep your mind set on the cosmic realities son, not on things seen but unseen realities which are slow in revealing themselves. That wasp has no sting. It can suck jam all it wants, but I have conquered death and hell long ago.

Look at this Visio Divina Card my son Fred has put together. It may help you remember when nothing else will that I have trampled down death by dying to gain entry into its abode, tearing it to shreds and leading the captives to freedom. I love you son.

Love you too Papa.

Amen.

(Leeloo here, Fred and Seb have become friends through recovery and TOB. 

Visit Farmer Fred's Harrowing of Hell page here.

Jesus Cancels Scapegoating

Good morning Papa!

Good morning son!

Papa, thanks again for Bishop Barron, he nailed it again today I thought.

You’re welcome son, yes, I’d say Jesus nailed it to the cross, scapegoating that is ;D

Exactly and thereby cancelling out the whole scapegoat mechanism on the cosmic level… granted, most of us never received the memo about this and still go right on scapegoating everyone and everything. But that old tired and violent way was nailed to the cross and a new way of resurrection and life rose from the ashes in a very real sense… it simply is taking its time sinking into the entirecosmos but it will take over. It is inevitable. Those who resist will feel it as fire, those who embrace the new way of love and forgiveness will feel it as warming rays of the life giving sun/son of God.

Exactly, you’re tendency to blame and scapegoat went all the way back to the beginning as you remember and is highly linked to pride. Both must be completely uprooted if true healing is to happen, but the cosmic groundwork has been completed. You are all invited to join in that triumph of the way of forgiveness, love and overcoming evil with good. But it wouldn’t work if I forced it on you would it… that would be using the same old method of violence to overcome your violence. This is an invitation to humanity to marry our divinity and it is not a shotgun wedding.

Indeed Papa, and I fully embrace it and pray that everyone will. Of course, I cannot do it except in, with and through you though you. Jesus I trust in you.

__________

Bishop Barron’s Gospel Homily for today:

JOHN 11:45–56

Friends, in today’s Gospel, the chief priests and Pharisees unite in a plot to kill Jesus because he raised Lazarus from the dead.

The Crucifixion of Jesus is a classic instance of Catholic philosopher René Girard’s scapegoating theory. He held that a society, large or small, that finds itself in conflict comes together through a common act of blaming an individual or group purportedly responsible for the conflict.

It is utterly consistent with the Girardian theory that Caiaphas, the leading religious figure of the time, said to his colleagues, “It is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.”

In any other religious context, this sort of rationalization would be validated. But in the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, this stunning truth is revealed: God is not on the side of the scapegoaters, but rather on the side of the scapegoated victim.

The true God does not sanction a community created through violence; rather, he sanctions what Jesus called the kingdom of God, a society grounded in forgiveness, love, and identification with the victim.

__________

Common recurring scapegoating themes from the left and right today in the US. Dare we look into our own hearts and see the murderous thoughts that lurk right there? 

Nope. 

Easier just to blame other groups, individuals or institutions.

What we fail to realize is that the battle lines between good and evil run straight through the middle of each human heart.

In the words of St. Macarius the Great “…[T]he heart itself is but a small vessel, yet there also are dragons and there are lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. And there are rough and uneven roads; there are precipices. But there also is God, also the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and Apostles, the treasures of grace — there are all things.” (The Fifty Spiritual Homilies, Homily 43.7)

Quantum Entanglement and Coinherence

Good morning Papa!

Good morning Son!

Papa, these are such beautiful words from Bishop Barron, they bring forth thoughts about quantum entanglement and the strange world of physics we are only just beginning to understand. It is interesting that Francis Bacon said this in "Of Atheism" (1601): "A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion" which was probably the seed for the quote put on the lips of (its not in any of his written works) Werner Heisenberg the father of quantum physics, “The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

An image from the Book of Kells

I’m loving it and this explains an even deeper reason why I’m drawn to the book of Kells… can’t believe I might actually get to see it in person soon!

Yes son, I love the music video your friend made of it. It captures its essence quite well.

Thanks Papa, love you.

Love you too son.

Amen.

_____________

Bishop Barron’s Homily for Today

JOHN 10:31–42

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus declares, “The Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Coinherence

Charles Williams stated that the master idea of Christianity is “coinherence,” mutual indwelling. If you want to see this idea concretely displayed, look to the pages of the Book of Kells, that masterpiece of early Christian illumination. Lines interwoven, designs turning in and around on each other, plays of plants, animals, planets, human beings, angels, and saints. The Germans call it Ineinander (one in the other).

How do we identify ourselves? Almost exclusively through the naming of relationships: we are sons, brothers, daughters, mothers, fathers, members of organizations, members of the Church, etc. We might want to be alone, but no one and nothing is finally an island. Coinherence is indeed the name of the game, at all levels of reality.

And God—the ultimate reality—is a family of coinherent relations, each marked by the capacity for self-emptying. Though Father and Son are really distinct, they are utterly implicated in each other by a mutual act of love.

The impossibly good news is that Jesus and the Father have invited us to enter fully into their divine coinherence. The love between the Father and the Son—which is called “the Holy Spirit”—can be participated in.

Christ Redifines Death and Razes Hell

(Leeloo here, I lifted this from Seb’s journal today. He’s reading a lot of Cardinal Cantalamessa this lent… from a collection of his Good Friday sermons down through the last four decades. He loves the icon posted below and has it in his prayer room.)

Jesus redefined death. When the enemy swallowed the bait and Christ razed hell, He metaphysically transformed death into a passageway, a birth canal to a new life untouchable by death. If we so choose, death can now be nothing more than a door into that cosmically shifted realm of the undying.

Jesus wept because so few would dare enter that cosmic passageway in, with and through him. All are invited yet few respond because of the distrust of God sewn by the enemy into the hearts of humanity. Christ forbids no one to follow him through the portal to life eternal. Most of us simply don’t dare trust him enough to do so… and that is why Jesus wept.

— Sebastian O’Donal - Lazarus Sunday, 2023