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St. Gabriel and All Angels

by Fr. Thomas Miller

Advent is a preparation for Christmas, a time of preparation for birth of Christ within each of us. Through this season, God sends us great help in preparing for this birth.

For Christmas is not only a commemoration of the birth of Our Lord, but a time of special outpouring of spiritual force to powerfully aid us in our spiritual evolution. By God's will all of the kingdoms of Creation swell up in rejoicing – the Angels and all the other kingdoms of Nature – the carol says, "let Heaven and Nature sing".

As a part of our spiritual heritage we humans have total freedom of will. During Advent we have a special opportunity to use our will and make the choice to attune ourselves with the rest of Creation in receiving and benefiting from the special outpouring of Christmas.

If we prepare ourselves, we shall receive more. The preparation may need to begin with an attitude shift. The days of Advent and the Christmas season are rightly known as holidays – Holy Days – days especially dedicated to the holy. They are meant to help lift us out of the mundane and upward to our goals of spiritual development.

We actually have to do something about preparing a place in our personality for the expected guest, lest there be “no room at the inn” on Christmas. Remember the scripture: “Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the cares of this (material) life, and that Day come upon you unawares.”

We are encouraged by the Church to deliberately make these days of Advent and Christmas Holy Days. And the Church gives us help and guidance in doing so.

Our Advent Collect contains the key thought “Being ever mindful of our spiritual heritage”. This is they key to the practice of Advent – encourage thoughts and take actions which create mindfulness of our spiritual heritage in ourselves and others.

Just what is our Spiritual Heritage? Spirit itself! Spirit is our essential nature, we are made in the image and likeness of God, a Godspark, a little Trinity which is who we are, our essence.

Spirit as spirit has no needs. It is self-sufficient. But a spiritual life is a life – a continuity of experience and expression in time and space within a personality. A so-called non-spiritual life is a continuity of experience in time and space which ignores it's essence, it's spiritual heritage, like the Prodigal Son. A spiritual life is a life which has a place for the spirit – our essence, or spiritual heritage – in the midst of time and space, throughout experience and expression. A successful spiritual life – a life that manifests spirit in the world - requires both freedom from slavery to materialism AND enough natural, God-given material abundance to freely express spiritual values and to glorify God.

Discrimination, our first intent for Advent, is a tool to help create this balance which is necessary to build a spiritual life for ourselves. The following Advent Sundays will supply additional tools in this purpose.

If someone says that I have discrimination, it usually means that they believe that I agree with their opinions. But spiritual discrimination is more, much more.

The Latin root of the word is discriminatio: which is said to mean the contrasting of opposite thoughts.

Discrimination is a faculty of the subtle part of the mind we call the intellect. A master has said, “the mind considers, the intellect decides.” The intellect has the ability to receive knowledge about opposites and to register the differences.

It is common in our times for people to criticize the intellect. “You're living too much in your head.” But it is not the intellect itself which is at fault. Rather the culprit is our Western, scientific habit of trying to use the intellect to control everything. Our culture and our schooling program us to employ the intellect as the “one hammer for all nails”, but that is a cultural habit, not the Divine intention. As Albert Einstein said: "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."

The Collect says: “Being ever mindful of our spiritual heritage.” If our spiritual heritage is our very essence, our own existence, our participation in Being, then being mindful of it includes allowing the knowing aspect of our mind which can entertain opposite values, the intellect, to become established in the experience of God.

The intellect can achieve many things, but its best role is to behold the absolute, infinite nature of God and simultaneously experience the finite, personal, glorious and adorable divinity of God. In this knowing we both experience and participate in the unity of the Blessed Trinity, the Three in One, One in Three Persons of the Godhead.

“Be still and know that I am God.” This has been called the Beatific Vision. This process of sublime knowing is the inner Christmas, the birth of the Christ child within us. It is our spiritual heritage and the wellspring of our enlightenment.

The first step of our preparation for Christmas is to deliberately make the days of Advent holy by giving ourselves to spiritual discrimination which comes in the deepest experiences of silence, our simplest form of awareness. Meditate, pray, receive Holy Communion, be generous and spread joy! Let all of the celebrating, decorating, and giving be inspired from the inner birth. May God make it so.

I believe that the suppression of emotion is one of the main culprits is keeping our inherent spiritual nature root-bound. By now it is commonplace to know about the medical and health benefits of "a good cry", but other lingering social conventions (and even spiritual teachings!) denigrate the natural feeling of sadness and the shedding of tears. (see: Health Benefits of Tears)

Of course most of us would prefer to feel joy, but denying, suppressing, or avoiding sad feelings when they naturally arise is a sure way to prolong the lessons and healing that stand before us. Rather than assuming an attitude of feeling joyful when healing is needed first, wisdom suggests that we find a way to accept the cup that has come to us. But remember, while we must do our own healing, we need not do it alone. continue reading

Absolution, one of the Seven Sacraments of the church catholic, comes from the Latin root words ab solvo, which mean "to loosen". This Sacrament is intended to help the person to discontinue from erroneous behavior, but, as, or more important, to be relieved and disconnected from the downheartedness and guilt that perpetuate of such behavior. Absolution provides an important feature in the life of the spiritual aspirant.

Absolution has commonly become known in just one of it's forms - confession - the telling of one's sins to a priest. The Liberal Catholic Church offers two additional, traditional forms of the Sacrament of Absolution. continue reading

''Those who take their religion seriously commonly go through a period, sometimes a
long period, when they experience the apparent absence of God. The ideas, images,
concepts which they have previously used in thinking about God or addressing him
have suddenly become meaningless and unreal.

The person feels as if God is absent or does not exist. The reason for this disagreeable
phenomenon is ... continue reading

"The Spirit of God blows out from us so that we can love and perform good acts. Then he draws us into ourselves so that we can take rest and find enjoyment in him. This is eternal life: not unlike our breathing the air out of our lungs and breathing in fresh air. What I mean is: we move inwardly in a mystical enjoyment and move outwardly in good works, both in communion with God. Just as we open our eyes, look and then close them again, in such a smooth transition that we hardly notice what we are doing, so we die in God and live out of God, always remaining united to him."

"In the abyss of this darkness, in which the loving spirit has
died to itself, there begin the manifestation of God and eternal
life. For in this darkness there shines and is born an
incomprehensible Light, which is the Son of God, in Whom we behold
eternal life. And in this Light one becomes seeing; and this
Divine Light is given to the simple sight of the spirit, where the
spirit receives the brightness which is God Himself, above all
gifts and every creaturely activity, in the idle emptiness in
which the spirit has lost itself through love which attains an
external goal, and where it receives without means the
brightness of God, and is changed without interruption into
that brightness which it receives."

The fundamental energy of Christ’s church is compassionate love - His love for us, our love for Him, and our love for Him in our neighbors. So it is not surprising to find that prayers for the support of those in need play an important part in virtually all Christian services. But they play an especially significant role in the Eucharist of the apostolic churches. continue reading

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