The Central Core of Catholic Mysticism
The gift of the stigmata, both visible and invisible, was bestowed on those who loved so deeply, that pain was pleasure as long as it was united with the Beloved.
No core or heart of the Church can exist without this depth of devotion, the mystical love of the martyrs.
How deep I would go to find my Beloved outside of all boundaries, plans and codes.
The true Catholic Church will remain only through the heart of the mystic.
In 1652 George Fox climbed atop Pendle Hill. As he looked out over the English landscape he saw within each man, woman and child, the flame of God.
That vision became the basic tenet of Quakerism.
The magnification of that individual flame is the goal of true religion.
That flame, coming from above or out from the center of the heart, from within each cell of every human being, or from within all space, is the flame which ignites the love of the Divine, and calls Divine Love to itself.
Never in the history of this planet have we been outside of Divine Love. It propels us forward to evolution that we can not resist or suppress.
The searching of the joints and marrow is the call of the hour for every man woman and child.
That searching alone will become the foundation of the new Church, the new heaven and the new earth.
Governed by Love alone, let us walk each step in the rebuilding of the temple of God on earth.
The Ascended Church
Catholicism on the Edge – Braiding the Old with the New
No dancer ever danced without bones,
No music was ever written without an underlying rhythm,
No painting was ever painted without first a knowledge of line.
The Catholic Church is a central core of religion on this planet. Through conversion and inculturation, old religions flowed into the Church. Through differentiation and distillation, new religions came out of it.
It is a nexus point, and that is a function, not a status.
Maintaining the structure of the Catholic Church supports more than just itself. If the structure disintegrates it will destabilize all that came before it and all that came out of it. A too extreme relaxing of it’s borders, without the maintenance of it’s structure, will cause it’s final collapse.
Our beloved Holy Father John Paul maintained the ancient structure, discerned it, imbued it with Love, and drew that wisdom and love out to it’s periphery as compassion, forgiveness, joy, and freedom, and that became fertile ground for healing and new creation. Without the central core the expression has no backbone and a collapse in imminent.
Pope Benedict did a good job of strengthening the core of the Church at the expense of it’s outreach and growth. Pope Francis is opening the boundaries at the expense of the structure.
Together these Popes make a whole. Individually they portend the razing of the entire Church.
The braiding of these opposites is critical, and it falls to the heart of the people of the Church, religious and laity, to think, to write, to discuss, and develop a new Church integrating it’s structure and it’s expression.
The heart of God created the Catholic Church to heal, protect ,and guide us. Let us return in kind our love for God by healing, protecting, and guiding our Church.
The Catholic Church as Divine Mother
On this planet, Divine Mother Church awaits the breath of God, the Father, and of Christ, in every moment She waits, and receives.
The receptive heart of our Church, at her center in Rome and out to the far reaches of the world, in the receptive hearts of every Catholic, accepts the breath of God and Christ as our full inspiration and source of instruction.
The Sacred Heart of Jesus is our heart. We pray, “make our hearts like your Heart”. He has offered us this, He wants us to take it, not just as an expression of His love for us, but as our very own heart, each one of us.
In that Heart, as our own heart, we find our true liberation.
“Think through my mind, see through my eyes, speak through my lips, feel through my heart, heal through me, act through me”, is the best that we can pray to Our Lord. Becoming one with the Son, hid with Christ in God, is the best we can have.
The Inner Church
Finding the Rules and Regs Within The Church That Never Changes
People believe that the Catholic Church is a huge structure centered in Rome, with a trained and chosen hierarchy, complex theology, and centuries old rules and regulations.
The reality is that the real Catholic Church dwells within each individual Catholic, with many variations on the external theme.
There are Catholic converts, cradle Catholics, dogmatic Catholics, mystical Catholics, liberal Catholics, fallen away Catholics, and Catholics who only go to Church to sit alone with God in candlelit solitude, communing silently with the Companies of Heaven, the Saints and the Angels who live vibrantly in every Church, most palpably when the congregation has left for the day.
Within the deep heart of a Catholic soul, no one else knows, no one really witnesses, that person’s communion with God.
“That’s what all this is really about, you know”, said the saintly Capuchin Friar, Fr. Barnabas Keck, with a casual wave of his hand and raised glance, indicating the building he was sitting in, and implying the whole structure of the Church, the feasts, the festivals, the community Sacraments, the archives, the laws, the great works of art….”It’s all about Almighty God”.
He was distilling for me , a few months before his death, exactly what he had concluded in almost 70 years of humble service, and exactly what he wanted to leave with me, just… simply…. God.
Taking that message to each individual Catholic, all of the millions of Catholics, “it is all about Almighty God, and you”.
You can live a lifetime of loyally attending all the required activities, and never know that ecstatic, cruel piercing of the heart, that is God’s true love for you.
That piercing reveals the true rule, the true regulation, the truth behind the Mass, the truth behind all of the buildings, the artwork and music, that true broken heart of Love. “Break my heart again and again,” says the mystic, “just, please, don’t ever leave me, I am so alone without you, don’t ever leave”.
The Inner Church, the sanctuary of broken hearted Love, opened over and over again with each new wound, is the Church that never changes.
The Mystic Heart in Every Catholic
Behold the man, Ecce Homo….the tortured, grieving face of Christ crowned with thorns, blood streaming down, the pain of Christ and all who suffer for love of Him.
That determines the mystic heart of Catholicism through out all the centuries that this Church has held the Light of Truth, of God, for all humanity.
Into this Church, through conversion and inculturation, all religions came, and through differentiation and distillation, interpretation and growth, all new religions grew out of it. She, our Church, holds the important role of Mother, holding all, containing all, loving all without exception.
This is what Christ did, this is what Christ taught us to do, and this is the time for our Holy Church to do the same in all details.
It is the call of the hour when the hearts of all Catholics become the mystic heart. Broken by the brokenness of our Church, a painful revolution, a revolt of each heart will bring us to our knees, maybe for the first time, in Truth.
Dancing with God is the work of every soul.
As I reach for the suffering face of Christ, in my hands I behold, the face of Christ ascended.
He wants me to love Him in this way now.
The mystic heart is made anew, as I behold my one true love, He is in Joy.
He is in Light, He beholds us all in that Light of God, ascended, He does not behold His pain anymore.
Very quickly now, without hesitation let us run to Him, and behold Him ascended, let us run to Him and recognize Him as He truly is.
Let us serve Him in Truth and in Love, with Love for all, including ourselves.
As Christ has loved me, let me love myself.
In Joy and in compassion let me love myself and others, just as He does love us.
Help me let go of the suffering, the agony, and release Him from it as well.
As I behold Him in Joy, He feels Joy. As I behold Him in Light, He is the Light. As I behold Him in Peace, He feels that Peace which He gave to me so long ago, and I have not accepted that gift.
How foolish I have been.
Sara Street
7/24/17