Christmas Letter 2009
Christmas….many words and feelings come to my mind—but the first few are Jesus’ birth, celebration, reflection, love and giving of oneself.
The Christmas Season always brings a transformation: I become a child at heart. The excitement of the Season is with me for months prior to December. It reminds me of the anticipation of my children’s births. It’s important to spread as much joy and love as possible, to strangers and friends alike.
One tradition my children and I have dates back 14 years. I thought we would stop a few years ago as they were getting older. My youngest was so upset I would ever think of such a thing, so it carries on.
We pick a few people who are either alone, have no family around, or who just need some JOY. We leave small gifts at their door and RUN…… it is so exhilarating—and to watch the joy on the recipients face from a distance is such a gift. One year the man came out to find gifts on his doorstep, couldn’t see anyone (we hide well) then he bellowed, “Merry Christmas to you”.
I started that many years ago as it felt like God’s gift to all of us, His Son. He gave us this amazing, unexpected GIFT with no strings attached. Perhaps a hope for all of us to love one another unconditionally, just as Jesus did.
A birth is a brand new start, not just for the child but the parent(s), extended family and the community. Wonderment, an innocence, new hope and new life. Christmas encompasses all of this and more.
May this miraculous season of Christ’s birth be filled with an abundance of love and hope for all of God’s children—and that we pass on His love to all our brothers and sisters, known and unknown to us.
Much love and blessings to you all,
Monica McGannon
From Father Paul
Excerpt from Book of Activity Class, October 27, 1973
“To him that would be silent that he might hear my voice, without speaking to his brother let him also look within, that he shall see my Child.”
This particular verse can be read over very easily, and if you don’t know too much about the Master and his ways of speaking, you might misunderstand the great impact that this particular verse has. When a person sets aside himself in silence for the purpose of making himself accessible to Jesus Christ, the Father, to the Host, he is attempting to place himself where he may be of greater service, and become a true messenger of the Almighty. For until you have learned to be quiet, both physically and spiritually; mentally, you will not be able to hear the true Voice or the communication of the Brothers, the Master, or any of these, for even without speaking you must learn to be silent and quiet and yet stay active to receive. Your act of being silent and quiet is a distinct prayer and it will be answered by those above.
But the impact of this particular verse comes right at the last: Let him also look within that he shall see my Child.” Here is where Jesus has declared and is letting us know that it is not merely a matter of us being with him and in unity, and becoming a part of the body of Christ, but it also is saying this: “You are my offspring. I am not trying to hold you as a composite part of me. You are my child. I want you to grow up in this universe. I want you to get to understand your Father in heaven, as well as myself. My child. I want you to get yourself to the place where you too can live as an adult on a cosmic level.”
Now one of probably the most, to me, idiotic statements, and certainly a tremendous ego statement which is used so prevalently by the metaphysical people is, “let us be in unity with God.” Who on earth do they think they are? That they have the purity and the love that they could even approach the Father, hardly?
“Let him look within that he shall see my Child.” Why and how is it that Jesus would say and call us his children? He did call us his flock in the Testament. But remember one thing: he did go to Calvary for the forgiveness and the atonement of our sins, as well as the atonement of the earth. He did make it possible for us to be reborn, not in the sludge and dirt which had at that time existed, but as a Child, purity in Light, and become a part of a cosmic Family. Now this isn’t some way-off-yonder fou-fou, but a Reality. And this is one of the things that we are going to have to learn.
For until we feel that we can take the place of those whom we have heard him say and quote the Testament, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Until we can take the place of those little children, we aren’t going to get very far. For here is exactly what he was talking about, “My child. Look at my Child. This being the Self-soul, this is my birth to it on the new earth, and therefore it is my Child. There’s not only the rebirth, not only that new birth, that rebirth of a spiritual being, but the physical body. For being born again is really a birth, the whole body is reborn. There is a whole new function, a whole new vibration, a whole new reality to that being who is truly reborn. But he cannot be reborn unless he can be the Child of Christ.
This is something which the conventional church has avoided to talk about, because they were afraid to reach that cosmic level, because they would find that the people themselves would start to have revelation, they would start to see the realities, and they’d have to start to answer questions which they did not want to answer. So they have avoided the true reality or rebirth of the earth and the people, so that they could keep away from freeing them in reality.
And he didn’t say, “I want you to become in unity with God.” He said, “you are my Child. You belong to this family. Now grow. Grow up in my image. Grow up in the image of him who gave birth to you.” He sought to make you an independent, a free, a real Christian with a cosmic background, not something of the old school, of the Old Testament.
“Look within that he shall see my Child.” For your father, then is not only the Father, the Creator, but the Father is the Christ who paid that price for your transgressions—speaking of the past out there—and has brought you into the Holy Family, has made you a part of the Cosmic Family and the reality, and has become the father of the people. (I guess that would make God kind of a Grandfather, wouldn’t it? Well, He’s old enough.)
Now—you see the difference between the Reality and something that somebody would ask you to believe, out here, after they got through mauling it over for years, and taking out what they want and putting in something else? It’s a vast difference, isn’t it? It’s a vast difference. These are his words!
In fact, I just discovered this the other day myself, because I am learning one thing out of this book, even though I have spoken it for him. I am learning that this book has many, many things in it that is going to build a new Christian life, a new Christian reality and way, and it’s pretty potent. That I will say, it’s pretty potent. But unless you look very carefully at this book, you will not see the realities that it is really talking about, because you have to get away from the old way of thinking, the old way of approach and take it clean and clear, just as it is spoken, and everything it implies as it is spoken, and you will find that this way which he has prepared for us is really vastly different than that which we had before.
Politics, Religion, and Reality
Student Q:: This is about an announcement about keeping out of politics…is that to be taken to the extent where you do not have it in mind even?
Father Paul: Well I would like to see it pretty well cornered in the rusty dusty corner of your mind anyway, because we don’t know right at the present time what situations will be—and of course, we don’t need to be in politics necessarily: we can vote as we please, but not talk about it. And I like to say that not only applies to politics, but churches too, and other religious organizations. Of course that’s pretty well spelled out in our by-laws, but it is an awfully good policy, because we are trotting a middle road and we don’t want to be on one side or other of that road. And as far as we’re concerned we don’t particularly need to have any opinions about what exists because we’re not interested in what exists that might not be in accordance with Jesus’ teaching….it’s no concern of ours because we’re not going out there and convert anybody. We’re going to teach people how to teach and we’ll let them teach themselves, in a sense. So we’re not going to do that sort of proselytizing and we can just as well leave that right alone and we keep more friends and get to more people and be more effective, we’re not fighting anything.
This is a very definite policy: in fact, Gandhi had it when he was here on earth, and he sure covered quite a territory. The policy of non-resistance—and you’d only have to even have non-resistance if you resist anything. And you don’t have to fight anything if you have don’t have any objections to anything.
And we don’t need to have objections to things, because we have, as I said the other night, when you come down to the nitty-gritty of it, we’re actually not a religion in our own mind—we are in the mind of the world, yes. We’re just studying and teaching the history of how the world was created and worked, and everything in it as well as heaven and earth. So therefore we have nothing to fight about, see? That’s true, that’s true. It is true, because actually, what we’re teaching is the way God created the heavens and the earth and the way Jesus Christ came and helped this proposition along and made it work.
Advent
The days grow steadily shorter and are often overcast. The air is crisp and cold. The stars glitter with a special brilliance in the nighttime sky. It is winter in the northern hemisphere, and the days are the shortest of the year. And yet, historically, it is a time for festivals of Light, for lanterns and candles to be lighted and carried in procession, or gathered around while festive and joyful songs are sung. It is a time of joy that light is again to be born out of darkness. For the ancient Romans, it was the time for the feast of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. For Germanic people, it is Sankt Martinstag, when the children light lanterns and go about the town, while in older times bonfires were lit or virgins with candles in their hair walked in procession in the forest. In Sweden, it is the feast of Santa Lucia, whose name means light—a time of purity and simplicity, marked by white candles and green moss.
This is the time chosen by Christians to celebrate the Nativity of Christ, the redeemer and saviour and renewer of life in the earth—just after the Winter Solstice, as the days begin once again to lengthen.
Christmas was not officially celebrated until the middle of the fourth century, the first record being 354 AD in Rome. Before this time the emphasis was on Epiphany, the celebration of the visit of the Magi to the newborn child. Advent as a particular liturgical season developed even later, after the fifth century, as a penitential season of prayer and fasting. In Rome, however, there developed a period of four Sundays of festive and joyful preparation without penitential character. By the 13th century the two traditions had merged. This shows a natural blending of our inner and outer life, for only when we consciously prepare our temples with carful interior housecleaning can we be satisfied and joyous about the results of outer activities.
As we enter into the time preceding the celebration of Christmas and the reality which it signifies, we begin to feel the stirrings within ourselves of joyful expectation and uplifted spirits. Yet this often becomes clouded by an intensity of worldly activities, some of which may be charitable, but remain nonetheless, work. We may find ourselves in doubt or fear, having heard that this is a time of joy; that we should go through the customs of the season while feeling something should be done in inner preparation, but quite vague about what that might be, despite a definite concept or two about it.
The character of this preparation remains both penitential and joyful, with expectation and a reaching for purity of heart as if the baptismal waters were again washing clean the soul and beginning again the process of dedication to Christ. The nature of the work leading up to this is undisguised—it is hard labor, as we see in Luke 3:5: valleys are to be filled, mountains made level, crooked places made straight, and rough places smooth—monumental feats that surpass even the efforts made to welcome a great king or head of state, and yet only right in consideration of the greatness of the Christ.
In this spirit we might examine, for example, our valleys: depressions that hinder the joyful expression of life. Perhaps some of these come from the mountains of pride in which we think our achievements are the result of our own efforts, thus cutting off the Holy Spirit which accomplishes the Great Works. There are the crooked places in our lives where we are devious or seek to evade the truth, and the places where we make things unnecessarily rough for others. How to overcome? We don’t obsess about our faults, for this is fruitless egotism.
We can prepare ourselves by reasonable discipline and attention to the Spirit, by loving service, by bringing order to our relationships with people; by avoiding excess, by ridding ourselves of ideas and judgments based upon appearances. We reflect upon the nature of the One whom we hope to receive into ourselves, and the Mother who conceived Him.
No real experience is ever completely as we expect it to be. Our thinking falls short of reality every time!
The birth of Christ within you is the incarnation of all the divine traits into your earthly life. It is a birth that we prepare for, a bringing forth into our physical world that which has been forming spiritually. Just as a couple prepares for childbirth, so we prepare ourselves for Christmas by spiritual exercise, so that the Christ which is already within us might be brought forth into the world we live every day. The life we have been living; our habitual thoughts and attitudes toward people and toward God will naturally affect our experience. of this birth. We are inexorable drawn toward that which we desire. May that be Christ for each one of you, now and always.
Isaiah 9:6: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a sons is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.
Meditations for Advent
First Sunday: It is now the hour for us to rise from sleep, because our salvation is nearer than when we came to believe.
Mon: The powers of heaven will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming upon a cloud with great power and majesty…”look up, because your redemption is at hand.”
Tues: Law must give place to Love, and separate races and nations be united in one universal brotherhood, with Christ as the eldest brother.
Wed.: When our hearts have the living faith, have received Jesus Christ into them, then will the light of the world be born within us as in a humble stable.
Thurs.: So peace will come again on earth, but a peace unlike aught known before. Then will the will-to-good flower forth as understanding, and understanding blossom as goodwill.
Fri: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.
Sat.: Our soul waits for the Lord
2nd Sunday: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called wonderful., Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)
Mon: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. [God with us] Isaiah 7:14
Tues: Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him and his work before him. Isaiah 62:11
Wed.: There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a flower shall spring out of its root, and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and piety, and the spirit of the awe of the Lord shall fill him.
Thurs: Our soul waits on the Lord.
Fri: Let marriage in this age take on a new light, and let it be a profound marriage, not a license to enter the brideschamber but a license to work together, to love and be loved, to have offspring and to accept my Father above all other things.
Sat.: Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ.
3rd Sunday: Divine Mother, Let my soul give birth to that peace that passes all understanding.
Mon: And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
Tues: Mary said: For myself I ask nothing, but for the human race, all. Let the Messiah be born!
Wed: And Mary said, my soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
Thurs: The Lord gives Light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Fri: That Christ is the true Light, which lighteth every one that cometh into the world.
Sat.: As many as receive Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.
4th Sunday: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
Mon: And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
Tues: And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.”
Wed: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.”
Thurs: And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men”…
Fri: And Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.
December 25: Merry Christmas!
The Sagittarious Observance: Feast of the Immaculate Conception
The final observance of the year occurs in December while the Sun passes through the sign of Sagittarius. This is, perhaps, the most exalted and most beautiful of all the ceremonials, the one best loved by the Blessed Lady herself, for it is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
The Master told his disciples that only the pure in heart should see God, and not until the sacred Mystery of the Immaculate Conception is understood and applied in the life of humanity will we have a race conceived in purity. Then shall there truly be a new Heaven and a new Earth.
While studying eternal truths, the inspired Isaiah saw in a vision a glorious future when every man should live under his own vine and fig tree. He declared that all men would beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hoods: “For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
So it was that the Holy Virgin envisioned a new and glorified humanity when she declared triumphantly that future generations would rise up and call her blessed. She fully realized that she was the one chosen to bring to birth the great Master Jesus and, in a physical vehicle, to bring forth the perfected type-pattern of supreme human attainment on this planet—the immaculate conception.
White and azure are the colors belonging to the Divine Lady. White and azure are also the colors with which the Temple is decorated for this exquistite Feast. All during the month of December the Lady, accompanied by multitudes of Angels and Archangels, comes very close to earth and can ofttimes be seen as she passes in triumph through the days and nights of this sacred season, declaring: “I am the Immaculate Conception!”-Corinne Heline Through the Year with Mary