Friday, March 31, 2023

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.

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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.



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[Bold print represents what Seb is sensing God whispering in the depths of his heart during his prayer time. Bold italic print represents what Seb is sensing a Saint whispering to his heart in prayer. NONE of this is to be taken as authoritative instruction for us all. Click here to learn more about what this type of two way prayer is and is not.]



Sunday, March 26, 2023

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



Wednesday, March 22, 2023

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.

Posted below are some of the images I found for Seb which he shared at the meetings to support the above: