Contemplations on the Via Christa, 2024

May 1, 2024

Dear Companions on the Way,

  Ascension Day on May 9th, commemorates Jesus Christ’s Ascension to our Father in Heaven and marks the close of this year’s Forty Days of Ascension. Since Easter, the Power has redoubled in new and higher ways and our heavenly Father has asked each of us “how much pressure and tension [we] can take during this period” (Integrity: Your Great Anchor, Edna Lister sermon transcript, April 22, 1962).
  The Ascension Questionnaire given on April 15th, 1971, reminds us to keep our fires of Love and devotion burning white hot. We are called upon to examine our Love for God, our obedience to the laws of praise, and the degree to which we have accepted our heavenly responsibility to lift all we encounter.

  Am I in love with God?
  Am I offering praise 1,000 times an hour to God, who holds earth?
  Am I ready to make a stand for the glory of God?
  Where does the line of responsibility end? (There is no end, but you cannot take it on then spew it out.)
  Do I love God more today than I did yesterday?
  Am I closer to God now than I was last month?

  Under this increased pressure and tension, we are tempted to descend into lukewarmness, thereby diminishing our offerings of love, praise, and service to God. The life of King Solomon serves as a cautionary tale (his life is primarily described in 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles). His doings were marked by success when he surrendered to God and hardship when he surrendered to the world.
  In a sermon delivered on April 27, 1947, titled From Wisdom to Folly, Edna Miriam tells us that “Solomon’s life as king illustrates three distinct phases—his preparation for service, the period of execution and accomplishment, and the period of decline into old age.” In his youth and middle age, Solomon’s love for God and devotion to his service burned bright. He surrendered to be the servant of all Power and was thus charged with great works, not least of which was building the Temple in Jerusalem. His decline in old age was not wrought of mere physical decay, but of spiritual lukewarmness and capitulation to the exigencies of the world. Thus did Solomon decline from wisdom to folly. We need not join him in a similar decline during this period of the year. We are called upon to stand, hold, know and ascend. At the end of this sermon, Edna Miriam directed her students:
  As you prepare before Ascension Day, go up, as Solomon did, to the high place and the altar there. Offer a thousand burnt offerings, day after day lifting your failings, small and great.
  As you build in the kingdom of the soul, build, as did Jesus did, to be a fitting and enduring temple to the living God. Keep all your vows, your desire ardent, your desire burning, lifting all false gods into the Light. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote:

The Chambered Nautilus

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year after year beheld the silent toil That spread his lustrous coil; Still, as the spiral grew, He left the past year's dwelling for the new, Stole with soft step its shining archway through, Built up its idle door, Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea! –Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  “Solomon’s 1,000 burnt offerings are 1,000 days of loving God enough to declare everything in your life good” (see A Thousand Burnt Offerings). Such a practice of daily sacrifice keeps our fires of love and devotion burning ever brighter and higher.
  A mere ten days after we celebrate Ascension Day, we look forward to celebrating Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, on Sunday, May 19th. If you are in search of a sermon to study in the interim between these two holidays, Edna Miriam delivered a sermon titled Mind Integrated with Power, which is available as both an outline and a transcript. It was given during the same interim period between Ascension Day and Pentecost in 1970.
In Jesus’ name,
Michelle

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May 1, 2024

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