Being One with Jesus the Christ

Being one with Jesus the Christ

March 10, 2013

Rev. Fr. Michael

My friends, how truly blessed we are to have been called by Jesus the Christ to become one with Him and in turn one with Almighty God through Him. This of course does not mean that we will be God in any way but one as in being spiritually connected to Jesus and living eternally in the Light and energies of Almighty God.

But we must stop and reflect on how we are to achieve this oneness with Jesus Christ and in turn make this our life’s passion.  Many are already aware of how to achieve this but for one reason or another each of us continues to fall short. We can be so easily distracted by life itself in this world and forget who it is we represent at any given moment. Quite often we blame the world itself with its many pleasures and distractions but consider this; “A brother did wrong one time at Scetis and when a council was called about it, they sent for Abba Moses, but he refused to come. So the priest sent someone to him, saying, ‘Come, the community is waiting for you.’  He got up and went and, picking up a large basket with a hole in the bottom, filled it with sand and carried it with him. When he arrived at the meeting, those who came out to meet him said to him, ‘what’s this, father?’ The old man said, ‘My sins trickle out behind me and I do not see them and yet I have come today to judge someone else’s sins.’
When they heard this, they did not say anything to condemn the brother but forgave him.”

Abba Moses lived in the Egyptian desert, a monk in the fourth century, where were the worldly distractions and pleasures which would have made him sin? He had none of these things. Sadly we just simply sin whether it be in thought, word, or deed; we just simply sin. We know that sin separates us from the love of God; we know that we have a mediator between us and God and that is Jesus the Christ but what does this mean? Can we just simply sin, knowing that Jesus intercedes for us? Heaven forbid that this thought even enters into our mind. So if we sin what are we to do, how can we be one with Jesus the Christ when even daily we sin? We all know the answers to this question but yet we all neglect the very things that are necessary for us to do on a daily basis somehow at one time or another. We can sin in doing, speaking, or thinking wrong and/or we sin when we neglect to do something that we should do.

How is it that we become one with Jesus Christ? For one, what did Jesus say? If you love me, keep my commandments, how is it that we can keep the commandments when we sin daily? Being one with Jesus would mean that we are full of the love of God, having the fullness of God’s love in us is the ecstasy of life, in the Psalms we read; Thou annointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over; when we are anointed by God and begin to be filled with the Spirit, the love of God begins to fill us, we could be so filled with God’s love that it would be overflowing. It would not be possible for the flesh to take on the fullness of the love of God because the flesh as it stands currently could never contain it, we would be physically overwhelmed and yet we could contain more than we do now if we would only be complete in other things but again in the flesh we are restricted. In seeking the love of God we must become ever more humble; the greater thou art, the more humble thyself in all things, and thou shalt find grace before God. This is a great key to receiving grace and the love of God, humbleness and yet in being humble we find even more difficulty, humbleness has an enemy and that enemy is pride. This is what we must seek out and purge from our heart, pride is the most subtle of sin and it lurks deep in the heart of all of us. Pride is at the root of many sins; because of pride we become angry when someone insults us and we may well carry out some other sin because of our anger, we work to control our anger but never look beyond it to see the pride. We are proud of our knowledge whether it is secular or religious and will mock those who somehow lack our knowledge whether it is in person or private conversation with another; pride in our knowledge also hinders this knowledge from sinking into our heart.

 Pride in our accomplishments causes envy when we see others who have accomplished more which also leads to lust. We know to control envy and lust but we do not look beyond that to the pride. Pride runs to the very depths of our heart, pride prevents the love of God from filling us to the fullness because pride will not allow us to reach the depths of humbleness.

From  pride we find arrogance, strife, and gossip; even if they are only fleeting thoughts because we have learned to control them, their very existence prevents complete humbleness and the complete infilling of the Most Holy Spirit. It is on our knees in humble prayer before God that we can overcome. This can be explained in this way; Amen I say to you, there hath not risen among them that are born of women a greater than John the Baptist: yet he that is the lesser in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away. What spiritual meaning can we find in this scripture?

And he spoke also a parable to them, that we ought always to pray, and not to faint, saying: There was a judge in a certain city, who feared not God, nor regarded man.  And there was a certain widow in that city, and she came to him, saying: avenge me of my adversary. And he would not for a long time. But afterwards he said within himself: Although I fear not God, nor regard man, yet because this widow is troublesome to me, I will avenge her, lest continually coming she weary me.

And in another place; And when he heard the multitude passing by, he asked what this meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he cried out, saying: Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And they that went before, rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried out much more: Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus standing, commanded him to be brought unto him. And when he was come near, he asked him,

Saying: What wilt thou that I do to thee? But he said: Lord that I may see. And Jesus said to him: Receive thy sight: thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he saw, and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

So what have these to do with one another? We ought always to pray and not faint as the widow finally received her hearing before the judge, as the blind man who refused to cease calling on the Son of David who also received his answer. We are to never stop calling on Almighty God, ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened, this is to be done without ceasing, this is the violence spoken of that will bear heaven away, the unceasing cry unto Almighty God in complete humbleness in accordance with God’s will and yet there is another obstacle in the way of humbleness; confession and repentance.

Without confession and repentance we will never rid ourselves of the pride that stands in the way of humbleness which is necessary in order to be filled with the Most Holy Spirit, the love of Almighty God will never be able to infill us without confession and repentance which will lead us to the humbleness which in turn will allow us to be filled, there is no other way.

I pray in tears that in the days that we are facing ahead, these things will become the life of everyone who calls on the name of Jesus the Christ. May all who call on His Most Holy Name be blessed.

May Almighty God have mercy on us all.

In Christ,

Rev. Fr. Michael