Thursday, June 10, 2021

10 June 2021 - seeing past the surface


To this day, whenever Moses is read,
a veil lies over the hearts of the children of Israel

The "god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they may not see the light of the Gospel". When they look, they only see the veil. They see the superficial and external, not the transformative inner logic. 

“You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.

Those blinded to the light of the Gospel do not typically abandon morality entirely. Rather they cling to the external, to the things that are the hardest to ignore, those things which do not require much internal transformation to live out, and are a bare minimum that seems to be able, thus far, to prevent society from self destructing. When the Gospel is veiled any problem is almost always exterior to oneself, perhaps to people in general, often in structures and systems, anything to prevent the fundamental blameworthiness of the individual from being revealed.

but whenever a person turns to the Lord the veil is removed.
Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, 
there is freedom.

That the Gospel is veiled to someone now does not mean it must continue to be veiled. When a person decides to cooperate with grace already at work within her heart and turns to face the Lord she sees the glory that the veil had obscured. It is a glory that is by its very nature transformative, that reveals the inner logic of behind the apparent cold negation of the commandments, and by this revelation changes hard, impenetrable hearts into hearts of flesh.

All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
as from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Looking at the glory of the Lord melts the protective barriers we have put up against the necessity of change and conversion. This is why many people prefer not to look. This is why, after having looked for some time, we ourselves often choose to look away. But it is in this transformative vision that we find freedom.

But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother
will be liable to judgment,
and whoever says to his brother,
Raqa, will be answerable to the Sanhedrin,
and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ will be liable to fiery Gehenna.

Jesus demanded that our righteousness surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees. It was true that what he was asking was something much greater than a merely formal and superficial compliance with external rules. It was indeed the case that he was asking for an exhaustive obedience from the inside out. But that very fact meant that the Law itself could now become something which was not simply imposed from without, but which could be understood, and therefore desired, from within. In a more colloquial mode, he gave us "a new want to".

When the rules start feeling hard, when the Christian walk starts feeling more like obligation than joy, we need to turn to the Lord and gaze upon him. The fundamental fact is that transformation does not begin with ourselves or our efforts. It is, as Saint Paul tells us, simply in gazing on him that we are to be transformed.

For God who said, Let light shine out of darkness,
has shone in our hearts to bring to light
the knowledge of the glory of God
on the face of Jesus Christ.

When we let the glory of God on the face of Christ become a priority of our attention and awareness we will see past the externals of rules to the blueprints for renewed hearts and minds.  We will in fact experience having our hearts and minds renewed. With these hearts and minds we will finally be able to have a peace among ourselves that mere social obligation cannot impose.

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,
and there recall that your brother
has anything against you,
leave your gift there at the altar,
go first and be reconciled with your brother,
and then come and offer your gift.

It is better to receive this transformation now, by gazing on Jesus, than to pay the last penny in the prison of a forced transformation (e.g., purgatory). This is meant to motivate us to choose the freedom of the Spirit here and now, for ourselves, those we love, and the world.

Otherwise your opponent will hand you over to the judge,
and the judge will hand you over to the guard,
and you will be thrown into prison.
Amen, I say to you,
you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.




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