Scripture is the story of the soul. Today’s readings chart two soul movements. In both, the soul meets Christ, who shines the light of Spirit on its composite parts, its buried contents. In each, the soul responds to that Christ-light differently.
In the first, what is “dead” in the soul quickens and is brought to the descending Christ who reunites it with what is still “living.” Paul uses imagery familiar to the Roman world: the triumphal procession of the emperor entering the city gates, met by a jubilant crowd.
For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.
- 1 Thess. 4:16-17 (NRSVue, CE)
The soul is reintegrated, restored to its intended pattern in the presence of Christ.
In the second, Christ enters the synagogue, the holy sanctuary where the soul-forces gather. But the acceptable, the proper, rejects Christ because he embraces the whole self, not just the chosen. Faced with this loss of ego control, the little self repels the Christ entirely, driving him out of the city of the soul.
But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”
- Luke 4:27-30 (NRSVue, CE)
The soul remains unregenerate, the illusion of self still firmly in control, unwilling to be remade in the image of the Logos. It is not ready for the gift of Christ, who passes through its midst and goes away.
How does my soul receive the visiting Christ within?
Scripture quotations are taken from the Catholic Edition of the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue
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