glory

How can we reach peace?

Thoughts about the power of faith when we feel that the light has run out…

Submitted by Csermely Péter on

 

1. Our age: the age of unrest. It is not the uncontrolled temper but the extravagance of the soul that represents unrest in today’s ‘developed’ countries. We are unable to calm down. We are unable to appreciate what we have. We are unable to get satisfied. We are unable to get on well together. The spaciousness of a love community’s inner space is endless. Let’s make an attempt to let our isolation and unrest free in these immeasurably spacious inner dimensions! (If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

2. Why is uncertainty good and how can it be tolerated? “There is worse than isolation in the weeks of corona virus epidemic.” Many would say. “And this is uncertainty.” Let me remind ourselves that we haven’t known anything until now either but we convinced ourselves to forget about this in the ecstasy of rush. Tolerating uncertainty is a key virtue. Only tolerating uncertainty leads us to real, creative and new solutions. All changes of existing situations generate uncertainty. Uncertainty is a necessary corollary of the reorganization of complexity by a creative change. We imprison ourselves if we do not tolerate uncertainty. If we can establish uncertainty-tolerance in ourselves now, we can prepare for future changes successfully. For we can tolerate uncertainty, we have to believe in something. (If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

3. How can we reach peace? The power of faith – when we feel that the light has run out… For we can find peace after unrest, we have to believe in something. For me the essence of faith is the certainty of belonging: to not less than Totality. The certainty that Totality, God accepts and embraces me, not because of my own virtues but due to the sacrifice of Jesus. Years ago I was sure that light and love show the way on the path of faith. Recently, I understood that nothing has been lost even if we cannot see the light and cannot feel the love-avalanche covering us either. Because faith, the certainty of belonging, does remain. Faith gives birth to hope again. Hope creates love. And love creates light. Not from us, not for us, but as the gift of God, of mercy. There is stability in the middle of uncertainty. This stability does not hide from us but offers a helping hand to us. Let us accept it! (If you would like to know more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

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In how many ways can we be happy about the totality of life?

Thoughts about the thousand faces of joy

Submitted by Csermely Péter on

 

 

1. Our "own" pleasures. In everyone’s life the moment comes at different times and in different ways when he starts to feel something about that he lives in the middle of a huge ocean of love – that he has not noticed so far. Realizing this is an unutterably big source of joy. It is a beautiful feeling when already here, in our Earthly lives sometimes we can feel or experience something about the Holy Trinity’s loving relationship. The joy of the archetypal woman is an immanent joy that discovers the infinity of God in the heart’s innermost totality. The joy of the archetypal man is a transcendent joy that is poured out and discovers the infinity of God in the beauty of the whole world. Both of them start from the same place and arrive at the same place. Just in different ways. This is one of the miracles of the creation. We can also experience the joy of God’s persistence during our Earthly lives. Mutual commitment, the joy of faithfulness; serenity: the joy of safety and understanding; hope: the joy of Providence and working of the Holy Spirit all are such silent joys that are much deeper and much more complete than the joys of individual events flaring up. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay published here.)

 

2. The joys of Totality’s foretastes. Among the joys of encounters with God’s love the joy of God’s Word stands first. The Word of God is not a dead letter. The Word of God speaks in the depth of our souls by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Word of God always fulfils what it has declared. (It is worth thinking about this sentence for a while. The most important events of our lives depend on whether we understand this sentence or not.) When our encounters with the Holy Trinity’s love get more regular, we become more and more capable of seeing ourselves and everybody around with the gracious eyes of God. When these meetings will get even more regular, we will see the Face of Jesus in front of us. The Face of Jesus is not a precisely seen image but a radiation. It is the beam of the Glory of God projected on us in Christ. We delight in it, and we bathe in it. Peace, love and serenity fulfills us that we all radiate in our surroundings. This is the joy of being blessed. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay published here)

 

 

 

3. The joys of Totality. In the Kingdom of God the boundaries of the individual disappear. All that we have been guessing "by the mirror obscurely" so far (1Corinthians 13:12), we will see and know. God, the persistence of the world’s essence, is not noise but Silence. He is not a range of galloping events but timelessness. He is not a set of bonds but undistorted purity. God’s timeless, pure Silence is not empty. This Silence is full of love and the energy radiating His love around. God’s Silence is filled with the Glory of God. The highest level of joy is bathing in the Glory of God and spreading It all around. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my essay published here.)

 

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Cross and glory

Good Friday/Easter thoughts about the totality of salvation

Submitted by Csermely Péter on

 

1. Good Friday: The Path of the Cross – understandings and misunderstandings. Christ’s Cross stands in the center of Christian faith, in the middle of our hearts. Still: we are unable to understand the scandal of the Cross. Human thought is very much limited and simplifying. We think: If something is that majestic like Jesus, it cannot be humiliated. When we feel that "something is wrong" with the serial scandals of Jesus we actually feel that there is something wrong with ourselves because we are still not able to stand in front of Jesus and look at the beautiful Totality of His Face, Cross and judgment. With everything. With anything. With Him. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my Good Friday essay published here.)

 

2. Holy Saturday: The beauty of the Silence of mourning. It is silence on Holy Saturday. Is this silence frightful? Is it the silence of the absence of Jesus? No, it is not! It is the silence of hope, expectation and our internal communion with Jesus. The Silence of the Holy Saturday is the Silence of God’s Totality and Purity reflected in Jesus. Good Friday is the occasion to face ourselves, while Holy Saturday is the time for immerse in ourselves. Let’s feel as we approach the core of our existence: the power of the resurrection’s Gospel that rewrites everything. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my Good Friday essay published here.)

 

3. Easter: The Glory of resurrection. According to the Greek Orthodox thinking Christ suffers for us on the Cross in every moment. Let us experience this as the inconceivable pain of the Father above the Cross, the suffering of Christ on the Cross and the heartbreaking pain of Holy Mary under the Cross are becoming unified. Let us experience the dignity of that the Father does not stamp the Creation but opens the direct Path to Himself as the tapestry of the Sanctuary of the Jerusalem Church is ripped apart (Matthew 27:51a). The covenant is made once and for all: the Father has become the Father of us all to whom we all can turn to – by Jesus and for Jesus – in a first name basis. Let us experience the beauty of resurrection! Let our hearts also resurrect from their dead and let them revive, live a new life that is Eternal! Let us ask for it together with the psalmist: "One thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. That I may see the delight of the Lord, and may visit his temple." (Psalms 26:4). Our prayer in the Psalms has been fulfilled: the fact of resurrection is unchangeable, irrevocable and eternal. Hallelujah! Amen. (If you would like to read about this more, please, read my Good Friday essay published here.)

 

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About the nature of Glory

Contemplation about the Trinity – concluding part

Submitted by Csermely Péter on

 

1. Our human concept of glory. For us glory is the measure of our own value. A recognition given by others giving us integrity, stability, happiness and harmony. In its earthy meaning, glory is such a power for which you do not have to fight again and again. Our longing desire for glory may accompany us as an insatiable and burning feeling through a whole unsatisfied, and (according to our measures) inglorious life.  (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

2. The real nature of Glory. The Glory of God is the exact opposite of glory considered in its earthy meaning: it is the light and love flowing out of Him to those who become part of the community of God. With His Glory, God does not receive but gives. However, God does not overspread us with His Glory according to our merits but because it is the very nature of His existence. By pouring out His Glory on us, God gives US integrity, stability, happiness and harmony if we are open to a connection with Him. The human soul, accepting the Glory of God does not only absorb it (as the devil does) but becomes alive and begins to reflect the Glory of God through its entire life. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

3. The Glory of the Trinity. Glory radiates from God. However, the flow of Glory and its power (that changes those human souls, which are open to become connected with God and Christ) are very important characteristics of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit may be the part of the Trinity that is the least possible to be characterized using human words. On one hand, the drift of the Holy Spirit may be so obvious and overwhelming that man getting quite far away of his previous self may take plenty of actions one after the other he could never ever imagine before. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit works in us in the silence of every day, too. Thus the Holy Spirit is the "direct representation" of the Glory of God for the souls that have not become united with Totality yet, whom it resurrects in Christ and enables to live a life reflecting the Glory of God. (If you would like to read more about this, please read my essay here.)

 

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