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Docta Ignorantia XXXIV Blood Sweat and Tears The Catholic Churches (Roman, Greek, Anglican) are right about one very crucial matter, which is that the Christian religion is made by Christians (the church), not by Christ. The Christian religion comprises the three elements of Tradition, Scripture and the Hagiobiography. Tradition comprises three elements, the Liturgical Tradition, the Theological Tradition and the Exegetical Tradition. Scripture includes the writings of those Saints and Sages who stand in the spiritual lineage or procession1 of the Prophetic Imperative. The Hagiobiography is the lives of Saints and Sages. The lives of these people comprise history rightly understood. Where the Catholic Churches (Roman, Greek, Anglican) are wrong is in their estimate that the classical period of the religion is in the past. On the contrary, the classical period of the religion is in the present and the future. This assertion that the classical period of the religion is in the past is what allows the Catholic Churches to adopt the modus operandi of tyranny. They (the hierarchies) control the past. They tell you what it was .... The Church still makes the religion when the religion's classical period is considered the present and the future. But when this is seen as the case, then, we're all in it together. And the organization (church) is taken as a thing of conditional usefulness. And the religion is taken as how its Inspiration lived, namely, interiorly. What in the organization does not have immediate and obvious (to a Sage) spiritual pointing and utility is not Christian. On the other hand. whatever in the organization deals with, concentrates on or drives toward the interior life which Jesus lived is Christian.2 The standard of the religion is the life of its Inspiration. Since the classical period of the religion is in the present and the future, it is incompetent for any leadership of the organization to claim to speak for God or dispense His Grace. We are all in it together.3 Faith is not subscription to a set of beliefs or doctrines. Faith is a condition of life in which every aspect of one's being (body, mind, spirit) is gladly subordinate to reliance on God for everything. Faith in this sense of an actual condition of living is and is only what allows us to draw near to God ... or, in the imagery of the Church, what allows us to regain the innocence of Eden, naked in the Divine Presence. Nothing in this world, at all, enables one to draw near to God -- not the sacraments, not the church, not the government, not anything -- unless this condition of Faith is present. On the other hand, for one with Faith, everything brings one into the Divine Presence because everything is the Divine Presence. The Faith (Santa Fe) is not a set of beliefs or doctrines. The Faith is a condition of life. Absolute reliance on God for every thing, in every aspect of life, bar none. To be in the Presence of God, one has to be very very clean indeed. And the Church has always and rightly said that only this condition of Faith and nothing else makes one that clean. Faith is the prius of Divine Life. This is why Jesus constantly reminded people that their Faith, or lack of it, was the engine of whatever happened to them. Faith, or the lack of it, drives life. The teaching that there are sacraments, and indeed the church at all, is an instruction regarding something conditional, something useful and appropriate for spiritual beginners and some middle-schoolers but not for adepts and certainly not for Saints and Sages. Francis on Alverno and Jesus at Gethsemane were not imbibing anything so prosaic as consecrated grain and liquid. When the Divine wishes to be Present, He does not need the props that the church uses to shore up the unstable, the unconfirmed. This is the reason that the classical period of the Church is in the present and the future, not the past: God can and does come in form and to purposes which are unknown in the church and which the ordinary leadership, therefore, simply cannot anticipate. He is fresh. Always fresh. And He is spontaneous. The church, at least the ordinary leadership, the hierarchy, the clergy, the laity, could not possibly anticipate the fresh things God can and does do in the present and will do in the future. Who would have predicted what Francis saw on Alverno? What Rabbi predicted Jesus? Only the greatest Sages, the most purified intellects and those of absolute, rock-solid Faith can see into the future. However, even to these few and mostly hidden, the actuality of the Divine Presence is a complete surprise. No words can describe the enchantment the Divine Presence is. Its capacity to enthrall cannot be fathomed or understood by anyone at all. Description of the Divine Power to Captivate is beyond the capacity of the greatest poet or musician or dancer or sculptor. Only that Charm Itself can communicate Itself. It communicates interiorly. The classical period of the Christian religion is in the present and the future, not in the past. This is where the Catholic Churches (Roman, Greek, Anglican), which are otherwise correct in their attitudes, go wrong. It is a serious and a destructive error. It caused even the great Innocent III to dare to overrule the wish of his superior, Clare of Assisi. The Christian religion is being remade constantly, fresh. Reformation and refreshment are on-going, continuing, un-ending processes. The Church does not live in the past, it lives in the present and in the future. What hallows a house of worship are the prayers of the generations of aspirants, not the stone and wood and paper and glass and grain and liquid which are employed to conduct those prayers. The prayers, not the elements, are the significant thing, the ontic reality. God is paying attention, listening to the cravings of the hearts, the fulness of the eyes. These things impress Him and command His attention. The wood and stone and paper and wheat and glass and liquids are conditional, temporary aids for the aspirants. They are neither essential for salvation nor important to God.
1 Not succession. The concept of succession implies that the classical period of a thing, which successes, is in the past. Compare the dogma of Apostolic Succession. But we are going to declare that the classical period of the Christian religion is not in the past but in the present and the future, so we are going to take a thing such as spiritual lineage, which the term Apostolic Succession is meant to indicate, and understand it as a procession, a going upward and forward of what is fresh and spontaneous. A succession, such as Apostolic Succession, is always spoken of as a going downward and backward, as a descent, after the manner of the real monkey, Charles Darwin. The difference is in the way the classical period of a thing is viewed. Christianity has to be viewed as having its classical period in the present and the future. So, we speak of the procession rather than the succession of spiritual lineage.
Adwaitha Hermitage
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