{"id":3460,"date":"2013-05-04T11:08:39","date_gmt":"2013-05-04T10:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=3460"},"modified":"2013-05-04T11:17:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-04T10:17:12","slug":"3460","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/?p=3460","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Weekly Reflections from the Archdiocese on the theme of each Sunday of the year\u00a0http:\/\/www.liverpoolcatholic.org.uk\/<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

6th Sunday of Easter (05.05.13)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES
\n<\/b><\/span>
\nCan you recall having a spiritual experience? Were you aware at the time of it being a spiritual experience? It is not uncommon for people to encounter the spiritual. As Christians we believe that humans are spiritual as well as corporeal. Some people register their spiritual experience and it becomes a focus in their life.<\/p>\n

Think, for example, of the religiously zealous, powerful Pharisee, Saul. At his \u2018Damascus Road\u2019 spiritual experience Saul began his conversion. He was to his become St. Paul the Apostle of Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n

Other examples, more from our own times, might be those of Bernadette, the young French peasant girl whom many believe had the experience of conversations with Mary, the mother of Jesus. Lourdes, today, is a worldwide centre of pilgrimage and healing where the memory of St. Bernadette is cherished.<\/p>\n

Then there is, Maximilian Maria Kolbe a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar famous for volunteering to die in place of a stranger at the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camp. He added \u2018Maria\u2019 to his name to proclaim that he was an \u201cApostle of Consecration to Mary\u201d. The Catholic Church declared him Saint in 1982 and patron of drug addicts, political prisoners, families, journalists, prisoners and the pro-life movement.<\/p>\n

But there are also people who, for a multitude of different reasons, allow proffered Divine spiritual experiences to pass them by. Something of those \u2018moments\u2019 will be retained. Genuine spiritual experiences are forever imprinted on our conscience. People can recall them with clarity even decades after the event.<\/p>\n

Discerning spiritual experiences requires considerable caution as not all spirits come from God. St. John\u2019s alert for the early Christians is relevant, today, for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cDear friends, do not believe every spirit,
\nbut test the spirits to see whether they are from God,
\nbecause many false prophets have gone out into the world.\u201d (1John 4:1)<\/i><\/p>\n

On an outstandingly hot August day in the late 1940s I, as an 8 or 9 yr. old, visited a windmill cum museum that, I later learned, was also the meeting place for a powerful witches coven. I vividly recall being gripped, at the time, by an inexplicable, extreme coldness that was something more than mere physical coldness. The epicenter was the gallery displaying vestments and liturgical vessels used by witches for a \u2018black\u2019 Mass, the ultimate in willful desecration of a Consecrated Host. All designs and emblems held sacred by Christians are depicted upside down. Satanists have to obtain a Consecrated Host for a genuine \u2018black Mass\u2019. This is one reason why Tabernacles are stolen and why Communion-in-the-hand can be an all too easy a way for Eucharistic theft. Incidentally, Satanists are never duped by un-Consecrated breads which, to the eye, look just the same as those that are Consecrated.<\/p>\n

Some sixty years later as I type this, the discomfort of that interior coldness on a hot summer\u2019s day is as real as was the actual event. It remains one, personal, spiritual experience of the terrifying power of Evil in our world.<\/p>\n

The Book of Revelation provides this Sunday\u2019s second Reading (21:10-14, 22-23.). For the author, the insight he received bore the imprint of the Divine. He states it as he recalls it:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe angel took me in spirit to a great, high mountain
\nand showed me the holy city Jerusalem
\ncoming down out of heaven from God.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Nowadays multiple scientific methods exist for ascertaining authenticity in the material world. The spiritual world is assessed by different criteria. The human soul, fully alive with the breath of the Holy Spirit, is the preeminent authority of what constitutes a genuine spiritual experience of God\u2019s presence. For a person to register a truly Divine spiritual experience, there must be a decisive openness to God. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Polish-born American rabbi and a leading Jewish theologian of the 20th. century, said: \u201cTo sense the presence of God, one must learn to be present to God.\u201d (\u2018God in Search of Man\u2019 Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 1983)<\/p>\n

The process of becoming \u2018present to God\u2019, to quote the Rabbi, requires a dedicated, lifelong, continuous pilgrimage. It certainly does not result from any casual one-day-a-week or occasional encounter.<\/p>\n

Maybe the Bedouin people, for whom the desert is home, have something to teach us. From their earliest age they learn how their inner resources enable them to thrive in what others consider an extreme, hostile environment. The Bedouin teach each new generation how to detect drinkable water flowing, unseen, beneath the endless, ever-shifting sand dunes; how to find edible, nutritious food where we would see only emptiness. The Bedouin also respect water and potential food and would be aghast at what we Europeans daily consign to our rubbish bins and sacks.<\/p>\n

\u2018Desert tourists\u2019, on the other hand, want a desert experience but with all \u2018mod cons\u2019! Desert tourists take their customary environment with them into the desert. Their resulting experience is counterfeit. You cannot absorb or be absorbed by a way of life on a \u2018package holiday\u2019 or even a visit of a few months.<\/p>\n

Spiritually alive, believing, Baptised people, have God\u2019s Spirit, flowing deeply within them. The Spirit\u2019s presence enables them to appreciate how life in this world is akin to desert living. Technology and scientific advances notwithstanding, they see life on earth as finite, threatened and unsustainable in the long term. They place their trust and hope in the inner, hidden, but real Baptismal life flowing within them as a willed consequence of their daily communion with God in whom they believe through the Life, Death and Resurrection of his Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

A person who chooses not to believe in God (as opposed to a person who has yet to experience God) chooses to believe that life in this world is all that there is. They believe that, in time, humans will discover how to control life on earth, as we know it,<\/p>\n

Thriving Bedouin desert dwellers have no sense awareness of the life-giving water flowing deeply beneath their feet. They can neither see, nor hear, nor smell it. Nevertheless, they believe totally in its existence and its accessibility. Their belief is founded on trust in Bedouin history, community life, the authenticity of their way of life and the sacred nurturing of each successive generation.<\/p>\n

\u2018Desert tourists\u2019, on the other hand, believe only in what is to hand right now and instantly available. The limitedness of their vision makes for a compulsive selfishness which justifies their \u2018I\u2019 \/ \u2018me\u2019 view of life as opposed to the \u2018us\u2019 and \u2018our\u2019 of the Bedouin.<\/p>\n

Is this a divide never to be reconciled? St. Paul, in Romans 8:10-11, teaches otherwise:<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if Christ is in you,
\nthen even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.
\nAnd if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Christians believe we are all made by God in His image and likeness. This brings the assurance that, despite whatever detachment from our Creator we have allowed to occur, God does not cut us off. He keeps calling to us from great heights and great depths, from sunshine and suffering, from dawn through day, dusk, night and back to dawn \u2026 with His unconditional love.<\/p>\n

For God to take us \u2018in the Spirit\u2019 (Rev 21:10) the prerequisite is our proven loving, self-surrender to God\u2019s will. Glider pilots and balloonists have a sense of what it means to be one with the wind. The perfect harmony between the balloonist \/ glider pilot and the wind is such that there is no sense of the wind despite great movement. It\u2019s a very special experience. When our prayer of self-surrender to God is married to an unhesitating self-surrendering act of our will, then, too, there is a unique experience of harmony, union with the Divine. In those moments, and they are generally just moments nourishing but not permanent, we are granted to see, as it were, through the eyes of God.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weekly Reflections from the Archdiocese on the theme of each Sunday of the year\u00a0http:\/\/www.liverpoolcatholic.org.uk\/ 6th Sunday of Easter (05.05.13) UNDERSTANDING SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES Can you recall having a spiritual experience? Were you aware at the time of it being a spiritual … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ordinary-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3460"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3467,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3460\/revisions\/3467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stbedesclaytongreen.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}