Well, I thought what we could do this morning is, in a certain sense, do Lectio together in the way that I've been speaking about, particularly sort of doing the pondering part. Last night I tried to especially establish maybe what we could call a theological justification for this larger reading of the text that is there in the tradition but that we from our own time may not understand. You know, oh gosh, isn't that, is that okay to read the text that way? Is that okay to find in the text the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of divinization, the mystery of incarnation? You know, we see that the text itself ultimately requires this of it. So we have a framework. of this big framework of history and creation, a matrix within which Christ becomes incarnate.

[01:07]

And in that matrix of the Old Testament religion of history and creation, the whole of history comes to life and finds its center in Christ in his paschal mystery and the whole of creation there as well. Now that's kind of the framework that we're in. I'd like to maybe in a sense just sort of move through the scriptures in the hour that we have today, showing you how they sort of open up in this way, how they justify, the scriptural text itself justifies these ways of reading that I've been speaking about. We could start with 2nd Corinthians chapter 3, At verse 13, a very strong passage from St. Paul pointing to the need for reading the Old Testament text in the light of Christ. He says, we are not like Moses.

[02:11]

Very clear that. We are not like Moses. who used to hide his face with a veil so that the Israelites could not see the final fading of that glory, their minds, of course, were dulled. To this very day, when the Old Covenant is read, the veil remains unlifted. It is only in Christ that it is taken away. It is only in Christ that the veil of the Old Covenant is taken away. Even now, when Moses is read, a veil covers their understanding. But whenever he turns to the Lord, the veil will be removed. Look at the way that Paul there is reading an event from the Old Testament. When Moses turns toward the people, there's a veil over him. Because the people cannot, they're not ready to look on the glory. If he turns to the Lord, the veil can be removed. But then he takes and he just switches that utterly.

[03:13]

He says, The Lord is the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. All of us gazing on the Lord's glory with unveiled faces. So now it's not Moses anymore, but it's us who are turning to the Lord. As soon as you turn to the Lord, the veil comes off. So we turn to the Lord and the veil of the text comes off. And the veil of the text becomes really what's on our faces. Just like it's shown on the face of Moses, all of us gazing on the Lord's glory with unveiled faces are being transformed from glory to glory into His very image by the Lord who is Spirit. In some sense, as we just read this text and ponder it, how am I pondering it here? I'm pondering it against this whole matrix of the Old Testament, and it's just one text among many that makes the whole thing come to life.

[04:20]

And I say that I am being transformed by looking, by turning to the Lord, who is Spirit. Just like Moses, Moses' face took on the glory that he turned toward, now my face is taking on the very glory of Christ. and I'm transformed from glory to glory by the Lord, who is Spirit. Saint Paul here is echoing and establishing his thinking from many details of the Old Testament text. From the scene of Moses and his vision of the Lord on the mountain, but also he uses, you notice at the end, the word image. This is how we were created. We were created in the very image of God. But this image finally comes clear too. This image that the human beings have always been finally comes clear as an image also in Christ. Let's put on some Trinitarian eyeglasses and we'll read the very first verses of the Bible, seeing in it what we could not see without the rule of faith.

[05:34]

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty spirit, or wind, swept over the waters. Then God said, Let there be light. And there was light. A mighty spirit sweeps over the chaos. The chaos in Hebrew is a mighty spirit sweeps over the formlessness. But when the spirit comes into the formlessness it will become form and it begins with God saying. Did you get that? God said. God has a word. God has another. If God says anything, what He says is His Word, which is another.

[06:37]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. But we may also say the Word is other than the source. So here, the Trinity, we see the Trinity acting in the creation here. Not in some vague way, but the Spirit moves there over the water. The Source utters His Son. And the Source utters His Son. And that's a word. Anything that the Source says, we may say is Christ. So, let there be light. This is Christ. The creation is Christ. I'm not making this up. St. Paul says this. Let's go to another part of the scripture. In Christ and for Christ, all things were made. For Christ himself identifies himself as light of the world.

[07:40]

So if God said, let there be light, then he comes and says, I am the light of the world. Are you going to go out? Oh, wait, are you making it quiet? Yeah. Okay. So, there's so many places we can go here. Look what I'm doing, though. I'm hearing echoes. I'm hearing echoes all through the scripture. When I hear echoes all through the scripture, I said, this is a clue for me doing Lectio Divina. Wherever there's an echo like this, What do we hear echo? We heard both Testaments talking to each other and we heard at the very dawn of creation the shape of the Trinity. We're not like Moses so we can read this text with unveiled faces and the Trinity jumps up out at us and all things were created through Christ and in Christ. And I said, wherever there's an echo, that's a sign to bring the text to myself and let it open up what's happening to me.

[08:44]

And Paul does as much a little bit later in the passage that I read from 2 Corinthians, where he says, the God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shown in our hearts. There it is, the whole thing. The God who said, let there be light, in the creation of the cosmos and the God who said that, that's Father and His Word, the God who said that said it in our hearts as well. So in my heart there's this word that goes, let there be light and that's Christ in my heart. He carries it on. Why did God say let there be light in my heart? If you're writing these passages down, because I'm romping today. I'm going to romp in this hour and you can go back over these texts, okay? This is 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6. Why has he done this?

[09:47]

God who said that light shine in darkness has shown in our hearts that we in turn might make known the glory of God shining on the face of Christ. Ponder this. be amazed, pray for mercy that it be true that I might make known the glory of God shining in the face of Christ. This is my vocation. We talked about the meaning of existence. What is the meaning of my existence? The meaning of my existence is that I be transformed from glory to glory and make known the very glory of God that shines in the face of Christ. In the beginning was the Word. That's the beginning of John's Gospel or it's the beginning of the whole Bible. The Word was with God, the Word was God. All things were created through Him and without Him nothing that came to be was made.

[10:50]

And the Word became flesh and dwells among us. This first page of the Bible which we can read with the Trinitarian eyeglasses, because the Word became flesh and we know then that there is this mysterious connection between Jesus of Nazareth and the whole creation of the world. We see that same, what we see on the first page of the Bible, we see also on the last page of the Bible. Then I saw new heavens and a new earth. And we need to understand the Bible in that total framework. We begin with the creation of heavens and earth and we finish with the new heavens and the new earth. And in the same way as the first creation account culminates in the creation of a man and a woman in his image, then I saw the new Jerusalem beautiful as a bride coming down from heaven, from God, out of heaven, ready to meet her husband. So there's a new woman now and a new Adam coming together.

[11:57]

The whole Bible takes place inside that framework. This is the meaning of creation and this is the meaning of history. Let's watch with Trinitarian eyeglasses. The Word becomes flesh. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town in Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin. betrothed to a man named Joseph, and the Virgin's name was Mary. Watch now three salutations from the angel, which in an inchoate way reveal successively Father, Son, and Spirit. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you, the angel said to her. This Mary could have only heard the Lord is with you as as the Father, as the One God, not knowing the Trinitarian mystery yet, but it's precisely the Trinitarian mystery that is being announced to her.

[12:59]

The Lord is with you. Watch her response, because in every text, the response is meant to be my response as well. Every text is a story of my life as well. This is happening to me. When I do Lectio Divina on Luke's text of the Annunciation, I am there in that scene. That scene is this moment of my prayer. Again, as I said, not in virtue of the strength of my imagination, but in virtue of the strength of the Spirit who brings this entire hour which does not pass away, makes it the hour in which I pray. So the Lord is with you. And Mary was greatly troubled by this greeting. This is her first response, to be alarmed. And it is an appropriate response to the beginning of the manifestation of the Word of God, to be alarmed. Indeed, every one of us should be alarmed as we find ourselves in this immediate presence of God.

[14:02]

But it's in virtue of Mary's response that I like to think in a sense that she almost like flushes out the rest of the Trinity. Because the angel says to her, don't be alarmed. Don't be afraid. You have found favor with God and you will conceive and bear a son. Look there. This is the revelation of the son. in dialogue with Mary's response. Look there. The Sun. And she goes like, well, what do you mean, Sun? Whose Sun? The Sun of the Most High. And then Mary's response this time is more practical. Well, what should I do? Or how can this be since I know not God? And then In response to that, the angel has to flesh out the Holy Spirit.

[15:08]

The answer is, the Holy Spirit will come upon you. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Thus, the one to be born from you will be called Son of God. Not Son of Joseph or Son of somebody else, but Son of God. Look there, we have the whole mystery of the Trinity there. That the Father has a son and that he wants you to give birth to this son and that this will happen not by flesh and blood, not by man's willingness, but by the Spirit. We are at the scene of a whole new creation here. Now the creation that hovered over, the Spirit that hovered over the first waters hovers over the waters of her womb and is able to bring to birth there in her response which is Let it be done to me according to your word." And there you have what I think is an excellent prayer for all of us doing Lectio.

[16:11]

In the immediate context of Mary's word is, let what you're talking about be done to me. But in a certain sense, the whole Old Testament stands behind Mary in that moment. And she says, let it be done to me according to the word. to everything that's spoken of in the Old Testament on its deepest and most hidden level, let that be done to me. And when that is done to her, what does that look like? The sun conceived in her womb. That's the word. And she says fiat. And when you do Lectio, when I do Lectio, I'm supposed to be just there in that moment. I'm supposed to say, let it be done to me. according to Your Word. And then Christ is, Christ in that moment, the Eternal Son, assumes my very flesh, assumes my nature, and incorporates me into Him.

[17:12]

Who is the disciple that Jesus wants? The one who does His will and keeps it becomes a mother to Him. Right? These are his own words, becoming this kind of mother to him. And how does this happen? I mean, how can I say that you become a mother to Christ? How can this be since I know not manner? In our case we say, how can this be because I am a man? The Holy Spirit does this. The Holy Spirit comes upon us and causes us to conceive Christ in this way. What are we doing here? What are we understanding here by placing these different texts alongside each other? We're understanding that we have, we see the Trinitarian shape of the first creation and we see that that Trinitarian shape repeats itself in the new creation which begins in this moment with Mary.

[18:21]

But just for the sake of demonstrating different kinds of texts Let's leap over to the, really to the center of each of the Gospels. You know, I talk about this framework of the first page of Genesis and the last page of Revelation, creation, and the man and the woman are there. In between that framework is this great drama of salvation. a drama of salvation that we may call precisely drama because the man and the woman are created in the image of God. So deeply are they created in the image of God that they are free, entirely free to either like the Son and the Spirit return this, all that they have received from the Source, back to the Source or not.

[19:27]

And what we have, of course, in the Old Testament is the history of a lot of turning away from God as opposed to turning back toward God. But what the New Testament proclaims is a moment of perfect performance of the drama. The perfect performance of the drama of a human being who comes from the source and who freely returns it all to the source. First in the Virgin Mary. This is the drama's entire turning point. is when she freely ascends to everything that God would do in her. And then her son, who is entirely a human being and who represents us all. How so? How can we say that? Because he is a new Adam, in the same way that the first Adam represented us all, this new Adam also represents us all.

[20:32]

And his performance of the drama is perfect. The New Testament then becomes a kind of center of the scripture and within the New Testament the Gospels become a kind of center of the scripture and within the Gospels the death and resurrection is the center of each gospel. So there's a way in which that is the key to all the scriptures. We have Matthew, Mark, and Luke each telling us this story in his own way. I want to go to Mark's account of this story and again hear there the Trinitarian mystery against the backdrop of this whole matrix of the Old Testament. I begin with Mark because Mark's way of telling the story as you probably are aware, is the starkest of them all. It's just boom, boom, boom.

[21:32]

There it is. But there's just a few little words that he puts in there that, in terms of our pondering those words carefully, the Trinitarian mystery opens up on it. Just let me read some of it for you from chapter 15. It was about nine in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription proclaiming his offense read, The King of the Jews. With him they crucified two insurgents, one on his right and one on his left. People kept going by insulting him, tossing their heads saying, ha ha, so you are going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. Save yourself then by coming down from this cross. The chief priests and the scribes also joined in and jeered, he saved others but he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from that cross here and now so then we can see it and believe in him.

[22:37]

and the men who had been crucified with him kept taunting him as well. What's happening here? It's a dramatic moment. Jesus is being invited to come down from the cross. We have a time frame here from the ninth hour on until noon. It's three hours of this taunting. And it's a taunting that is based on things that Jesus said during the course of his ministry that we need. Both of them echo against the whole meaning of the Old Testament. We need the whole Old Testament there to understand the significance of what Jesus had said. When asked what gave him an authority to perform and say the things he was saying, he said, I will destroy this temple and in three days build it up again. They understood clearly what that meant. This was blasphemous in the extreme. The temple was the very presence of God in Israel's midst. It was the symbol of Israel's religion.

[23:40]

He said he would destroy this religion and put another one in its place. Now the taunt is, There you are pinned to the cross. Doesn't seem like you're going to destroy the temple. Ha ha ha. However, if you came down from the cross and destroyed the temple now, that would be impressive. Do it if you can. That's the taunt. Let's feel it, huh? Do it if you can. Destroy the temple if you can and he can't come down. Something similar is in the second taunt that we heard. During the course of his ministry and of his trial, Jesus was asked the direct question, are you the Messiah or not? He answered in the affirmative, speaking also about an enthronement that would follow, an enthronement with angels preceding him. So they say, aren't you the Messiah? You don't look like the Messiah now.

[24:40]

However, you would be an impressive Messiah if you could pull this off. Come down from the cross. then we would see it and believe. Now watch what happens when noon comes. When noon comes, darkness fell over the whole countryside and lasted until mid-afternoon. If we go slowly here and if we ponder carefully as our tradition teaches us, we realize that the first three hours have been full of this jeering and talk. If we read too quickly, we don't hear the silence of these three hours. Three hours of darkness and silence. Then Jesus cries out in a loud voice, Elohe Elohe Lama Sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? A few of the bystanders who heard it remarked, listen, he is calling on Elijah.

[25:44]

So someone ran off and soaking a sponge in sour wine stuck it on a reed and tried to make him drink. The man said, now let's see whether Elijah comes to take him down. It is much discussed what Jesus might have meant by this cry, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? But for our purposes in this first moment, What we need to understand is how Mark is saying the bystanders understood it. The bystanders understood him to be calling Elijah. Why? Because it was thought that before the Messiah manifested himself, Elijah would precede him, announcing him. And so the idea is that this drama is still pending. Will he come down from the cross? He's calling on Elijah desperately now. Come, Elijah, I don't have much time left. I'm dying. If you're going to manifest me as Messiah, you better come quickly.

[26:45]

That's how the bystanders understood it. And so they said, let's keep him alive a little longer and see whether Elijah comes down. Well, with all that drama pending, I continue. Then Jesus, uttering a loud cry, breathed his last, and immediately the curtain in the sanctuary was torn in two from top to bottom. The centurion, who stood guard over him on seeing the manner of his death, declared, clearly, this was the Son of God. There were also women looking on from a distance. Will Jesus come down from the cross? Can Jesus come down from the cross? Jesus does not come down. That is to say, by all appearances, he has lost the case.

[27:47]

He has lost his right to claim himself as Messiah, as the founder of a new religion. This is a moment of real failure. And yet, It goes by so quickly that if you don't go slowly and ponder it, you miss what the evangelist has put there. Two little episodes in two verses which begin to open up this mystery. He says, immediately, the veil, what are the words here? Immediately, the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn from top to bottom. What does that mean? We'll have to know this matrix of the Old Testament to understand this. The veil in the sanctuary divided the holy of holies from the outer court. The holy of holies was the central and most holy part of the sanctuary in which in Solomon's temple were kept all of the signs of the covenant.

[28:53]

And after the destruction of the temple, the holy of holies was empty. And whether we read that as a more eloquent expression of the mystery of God or in the way of God's presence or in a sense hiding from the people the absence of God from Israel, you can read it either way. But what Mark is saying is, in any case, in the exact instant of Jesus' death What is there in this, what was mysterious and unknown at the center of Israel religion is now revealed. Revealed as being absent of the presence of God and that the presence of God is somewhere else or open that sanctuary and what do you see in the midst of it? Christ dead, still on the cross. This is the Holy of Holies. What no one could have suspected

[29:55]

is that he would destroy the temple, that he would profane the temple by himself dying. Not by literally tearing it down, but his death there. And so Mark is leaving us just with a suggestion, as is appropriate for a mystery as great as this, and the suggestion is that there is a mysterious connection between the body of Jesus and the destruction of the temple. And if he had said something about destroying the temple and if there's a kind of bouncing off of each other between the destruction of the temple and his body, he also said he would raise a new temple in three days. And we wonder, is there some connection then between his body being raised and the raising of a new temple? What is only suggested in that verse is made explicit in the next verse by the centurion. First of all, let's notice who's speaking.

[30:57]

A centurion, a Roman soldier, a Gentile, who speaks for all Gentiles in this moment. And seeing the manner of his death, he is able to proclaim, truly, this is the Son of God. It was the Gentile who saw what the Jews were not prepared to said, if he comes down from there, then he's Messiah. And what the centurion saw was the way he stayed there showed him to be son of God. This This is a kind of insight into the mystery that can only be given by the Spirit. The other thing that we read is that there were women present looking on from afar, gazing on from afar. It's interesting, all four of the evangelists finish in this way. The synoptics with the women gazing on, John speaking about him, they shall gaze upon him whom they have pierced.

[32:03]

And to me this is a very strong image for us again of what I'm doing in Lectio. I am gazing on this scene. I have to keep gazing on this scene. And the Fathers noticed very early on that the Greek word for this looking on is theoria upon which our word contemplation is based. And theoria literally means seeing through something. So they said that basically what these women are doing and what we're all meant to do is see through this death to the mystery. And the centurion saw through it and saw by the way he died he showed himself to be son of God. I think we can deepen our understanding of what is just being proclaimed. It's so dense there and you just say, God, how could the centurion say that? By seeing that thus he died, he declared him to be son of God.

[33:07]

I think in what I said last night about the Philippians text would kind of unfold that a little bit more. How do we know him to be son of God? Precisely because he gave everything away, he emptied himself utterly and that's who God is. If he had come down from the cross and done tricks, that would not have been total emptying. Somehow the centurion was able to see that. If we put this scene right now, as we're doing Lectio, because then a few things will jump out at us. If we put this the way Mark tells this story, right alongside the way Luke tells the story, a few differences in detail jump out at us. And again here, it's not a question of taking the differences in the evangelist and trying to figure out which one's lying and which one is telling the truth here.

[34:11]

The church early realized that we need these stories together, talking about different details in different ways, as ways of bringing out different insights into the mystery. But the thing that I would... I won't read Luke's account, but you can look at it on your own and you'll notice this. about it, especially at the end. Luke only mentions the time frame once, whereas in Mark we have time mentioned a couple times, so that we see this sort of chronology. Luke only mentions when it's noon, which is to say when the sun is at its zenith, when the day should be brightest. And it's precisely at noon that darkness covers the whole land. And then the other thing that's interesting in Luke's account is that as Jesus is dying, the curtain of the sanctuary is ripped in two from top to bottom, before Jesus' death.

[35:17]

What has Luke done here with that then? He, he, he, yes? Before we depart to follow that civilized way, Of course, there are enumerable episodes in the Old Testament where there was the announcement of some tragedy. The father of some of his friends, his daughters and his sons. Is there a similitude between that and the wrecking of the temple veil? The whole father in desperation? No, well, don't worry about reading into it more than is there in the sense of more than is there how? In the intention of the evangelist? Perhaps not in the intention of the evangelist. We're talking about a way of reading the text that lets us make connections like that.

[36:21]

And the only thing you need to worry about reading something that's more than there is if you go beyond the rule of faith in some way, if you betray the rule of faith. But if you don't betray the rule of faith, in fact, your insight deepens one's grasp into the rule of faith. For that reason, it's a legitimate reading of the text in the tradition that I'm speaking about. And, in fact, the Fathers made that very connection. So, I mean, you're in good company for making that connection. The Holy of Holies is exposed. Okay? Which is what? What is the Holy of Holies? It's the heart of the Father. And that's a very good reading of the text. In Mark, in the moment of Jesus' dying, the heart of the Father is exposed. In Luke's account, as Jesus is dying, the Father's heart is ripped open.

[37:26]

John does it this way. After Jesus is dead, one of the soldiers opens his side with a lance. And I think it was already Irenaeus, but I know for sure John Chrysostom says, one of the soldiers opens the door of the temple with a lance. And immediately there comes out blood and water. Which is to say, this blood and water comes out of the very heart of God. All in this mystery of Jesus' death. So the thing I want to draw attention to in terms of Luke placing that before, just slightly before Jesus' death, is he's created here a kind of a two-fold eschatological symbol, cosmic and historical. Two things are going out, two things are being destroyed.

[38:28]

The religion of Israel is being destroyed, is fading out. But the whole cosmos is fading out. With the sun when it should be brightest darkens covering the whole land. But Luke's point is Jesus goes out in solidarity with it. Jesus is in solidarity here with the fading cosmos and with the fading religion of Israel. And all that is a framework. All that is a framework in which there can sound very clearly very clearly a word that Luke wants to place right there so that we can be sure to hear it with precision and clarity. And the word that he places right there, Jesus in solidarity with the cosmos, Jesus in solidarity with the old religion is, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

[39:31]

So here we have, in a sense, the supreme revelation of Jesus as Son and Son of whom you can't be a Son without a Father. This is the revelation of Father and Son. This is the revelation of the Trinitarian mystery as Jesus goes... Jesus has made of a dying world and of a dying history, Jesus has made that who He is. He's made it into His invocation of His Father. And as the last word of the old world and the old religion, it likewise is the first word of the new creation and the new religion. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

[40:37]

And what we see here is that Jesus in this moment is stripped of everything. There is nothing left to him. He is a failed Messiah. He is a rejected prophet. He is a young man dying. He is creation going out. Nothing is left to him. But what this moment in Luke shows us is that his invocation is indestructible. He appears here in the sheer nakedness of his filial relationship with his father. This is stronger than death. This is beyond death. And when he says, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, there is a way in which we can say, this lasts beyond death.

[41:39]

And the father shows himself to be a father in the resurrection of the son. I'll skip way over to another part of the scripture for this half just to show you how nice it is to just reach into every part of this grab bag of treasury that is the scripture where in the letter to the Hebrews in chapter 1 the resurrection is presented with These words that the father addresses to the corpse. He says, you are my son. Today I have begotten you. He says that. in raising Jesus from the dead, but what is clear in the letter to the Hebrews is, you are my son, today I have begotten you. This is what was said from all eternity in heaven.

[42:43]

This is a today that describes eternity. And the Father from all eternity has said, you are my son, today I have begotten you. The Trinity who wants to reveal itself to us in our sinful world has to transpose that, you are my son this day I have forgotten you, to transpose that and play that same song in the key of history and death and sin. And they manage to sing that same song in this key. And they do it precisely by a son who entirely entrusts himself to his father, and a son who says again, you are my son, today I have begotten you. This was already foreshadowed in the moment of Jesus' baptism. In the moment of Jesus' baptism, what was happening there?

[43:48]

Jesus goes to the Jordan and John tries to stop him. John knows who he is and tries to stop him because he says, you do not need to make this sign, this sign of repentance because you are the sinless one. You do not need to make this sign that say the wages of sin are death because you are the immortal one. Don't go down into the water like a sinner. Don't go down and accept the sign of death. And Jesus says, let it be so for now. And so he goes down into this water, he goes down into the waters of the Jordan, acting out his entire solidarity with sinners, the sinless one. Acting out his entire solidarity with death, the immortal one. And when he comes up out of the water, here's Mark's same word, immediately the heavens are opened and the Trinity manifests itself.

[44:53]

The voice of the Father says, you are my son. I am pleased in you. And the Spirit is there in visible form. Doing what? Doing what? Doing what? What does the Spirit ever do? The Spirit forms the life of Jesus. Forms the life of Jesus into a human life. Makes it possible. that in His humanity, in the living of one single life, that life becomes the articulation of who He is as Son. So what we see, and this is very consciously the intention of each of the synoptic evangelists in the way they place the baptism of Jesus right at the beginning of the account, this manifestation of the Trinity, and at the end of the account, His going to the cross. Thus is fulfilled the words of the psalm, the Jordan turns and runs backwards.

[46:00]

That is to say, when Jesus enters the Jordan, the waters run back to the headwaters, the source from which they came, namely the heart of the Father. This is the Jordan really turning and running backwards. There's a way in which we can think of this whole mystery of what is flowing through Christ as a flowing of divine life into the world. We see it especially ... In this detail, we're just moving around the way in which the evangelists tell us about the death of Jesus. We keep finding dimensions of the Trinitarian mystery there. If we look at John's account there, we just take it right at the end of how he expresses Jesus' death. And then after this, Jesus said, I thirst.

[47:04]

to fulfill the scriptures. And then, realizing that all things were accomplished, he bowed his head and, watch the Trinitarian shape of this, handed over his spirit. Handed over his spirit. It's a double entendre. It means he dies, but it means that this final breath That is the Holy Spirit coming into the world. And in the same way that we saw Spirit on the first page of the Bible hovering over chaos, now the Spirit hovers over the chaos of death. hovers over the waters that will soon flow when a soldier comes along and opens his side with a lance and immediately there comes out blood and water and now the spirit that hovers over this water and this blood forms this water and this blood as he formed the waters of the first creation and the first blood forms it in to the sacraments, to the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist.

[48:16]

This is what the Spirit is always doing. The Spirit makes the Eucharist happen. And this water which flows from the temple of His body, we know that Jesus' body in this moment is the temple because already in the second chapter of John's gospel when he went into the temple and said, what are you doing in here? And they said, how dare you drive us out of the temple? What sign can you make? And he said, destroy this temple and in three days I will build it up again. And the evangelist adds, and he was speaking of the temple of his body. Ezekiel already in chapter 47 was lifted up by the Spirit and saw a mysterious vision of the temple which we all must have wondered what the heck is that vision about until this moment. But do you remember this? The Spirit lifted him up and he saw the temple. This is the prophet who is in exile in Babylon, huh?

[49:20]

Lifts him up and he sees the temple and he sees flowing out of the side of the temple water. And as it flows, an angel tells him, go a thousand cupids and measure it off and see how deep it is. And it's ankle deep. And another thousand and see how deep. And it's knee deep. And another thousand and it's waist deep. And then finally it's a stream so large that you can't cross it. And along the sides of the banks of this are trees growing with medicine for the nation. And this stream literally flows from Jerusalem down through that horrible piece of desert that stands between there and the Dead Sea. And it flows down and these waters flow into the Red Sea and turn the waters as sweet as can be. This is what Ezekiel saw. What's it mean? This vision of Ezekiel helps us to follow the blood and water that flows from the side of Christ.

[50:26]

It is a stream that grows ever larger. It is a stream that is still flowing into those waters you and I were baptized. It flowed as far as the 20th century. It flowed as far as North America or wherever it was you and I were baptized. That's the water that's flowing. That's the water that Ezekiel saw. And it's turning death. It's turning all the dead waters of this world into sweetness. And the same blood that flows from Christ's side flows as a stream too. It flows all the way to you and me. You and I drank. this blood this morning in the Eucharist, the blood that flows from the heart of Christ. And we see that what flows from the heart of Christ has its headwaters in the Holy Trinity itself, in the Source of the Fathers. You may think this is lovely, but I've gone too far this time with the text.

[51:28]

But as justification for this reading of the Ezekiel text and everything else, I present you with the last page of the Bible, Revelation chapter 22. in which John sees now also the future in the way that we said all of the past is taken up into Christ and explained there but so also all the future and you and I stand between the time of Christ and the future that John saw. And that's what the last book of the Bible does. That's what the book of Revelation does. All the echoes that echo to the past also echo forward in this. Then the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, clear as crystal, which issued from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Interesting. The throne of God, which is God the Father, and the throne of the Lamb, which is the cross.

[52:31]

So what does John see in heaven? He sees the cross in heaven. Let me put it in different terms so we get the significance of what it means to see the cross in heaven. He sees a particular moment in history in heaven, that moment. crucified under Pontius Pilate. He sees that in heaven and he sees that it's the throne of God and that particular moment of history is also the throne of God and from them both comes the river of life. And it flows down the middle of the streets of the New Jerusalem, and on either side of the river grow trees of life which produce fruit twelve times a year, once each month. Their leaves serve as medicine for the nations. Nothing deserving a curse shall be found there. The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be there, and His servants shall serve Him faithfully.

[53:35]

They shall see him face to face and bear his name on their foreheads. The night shall be no more. They will need no light from lamps or the sun for the Lord God shall give them light and they shall reign forever." This is the whole, these are all the mysteries in one. This is the Trinitarian mystery revealed. in the mystery of incarnation, that what flows as a river of eternal Trinitarian life, that's the Trinitarian mystery, flows now as a river from the incarnation and that moment of his death on the cross. And it flows in such a way as to divinize me. Seeing God face to face and having God's name as my name.

[54:38]

And needing no more light like from the first creation. Because the Lord God Himself will be light. And we shall reign as God reigns. We shall reign forever. It's all there. So the Spirit And the bride say, come, Lord Jesus. So that's a kind of like a romp through the scriptures, aren't you? Sure. Echoing, echoing, echoing. And every place we heard an echo, we look to put ourselves in there. This is what the scriptures teach us, but they are the myriad pieces of a mosaic, which we would not have known how to assemble in this way, except but with the church's rule of faith. None of this was my bright idea. I just sort of demonstrated for you how the tradition puts the text together.

[55:42]

This is what we learn from the tradition. Okay, so this evening. I think to sort of see how some of this kind of thinking lies in a very practical enterprise of Evagrius' arrangement of monastic questions. Father, did you tell me that they have the small book of mine? Could you bring that tonight, those of you that have it, if you have the small book or if you have the big book as well? And that way I can refer to some of the text in Evagrius' Atmonikos. I'll sort of try to acquaint you with that text a little more. and show you how you could use it as an instrument that sort of reinforces what we talked about in these first three hours together. Okay? Thanks.

[56:31]

@Transcribed_v004
@Text_v004
@Score_JJ