Marcus Borg makes some interesting points about Jesus. [1] “He was a remarkably free person. Free from fear and anxious preoccupation, he was free to see clearly and to love. His freedom was grounded in the Spirit, from which flowed the other central qualities of his life: courage, insight, joy, and above all compassion.” Why was he free?
I believe Jesus was free because he and the Father were one. God was his Abba. I believe that Jesus grew to know who he was and what it was that he was supposed to do.
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Jesus took time to pray and be in silence. These times prepared him for the action he was to take. Scholars are divided on whether he thought or did not think of himself as God in person.
Marcus Borg reflects, “Though the story of the historical Jesus ends with his death on a Friday in A.D. 30, the story of Jesus does not end there.” Here we are some two thousand years later. The story is far from over. The historical Jesus has died. The resurrected Jesus, the Jesus of our faith is very much alive and a powerful force in this world.
Jesus is a powerful force in my life. I sit with this powerful force during my centering prayer practice. I arise from each sit resurrected with new life! Amos Smith wonderfully describes what happens during centering prayer in his book, Healing the Divide.
“During prayer we don’t name the silence. It’s beyond names. But when we return from the luminous silence, we exclaim the holy name: Jesus. The Jesus Paradox becomes the best phrase we have for penetrating the silent mystery.
Jesus has two aspects, absolute God and relative human. In the deepest forms of prayer we move beyond the bodily fatigue, various distractions, and pain to experience the absolute or non-dual aspect of Jesus (Jesus’ Divinity).
When we return from prayer we experience the relative or dualistic aspect of Jesus once again (Jesus’ humanity). These are the two aspects of The Jesus Paradox: absolute consciousness beyond names and forms and relative consciousness steeped in language.”
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Go Further:
Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith
Amos Smith, Healing the Divide: Recovering Christianity’s Mystic Roots
[1] Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith, (HarperOne): 1995
Silence and the Spiritual Journey by Contemplative Outreach: The purpose of our historical lifetime is to provide us with space for the upward journey of evolution into vertical time and our assimilation of the eternal values that Christ brought into the world. This journey consists of everything from great touches of God (consolations) to the Dark Nights.
Lectio Divina Heart to Heart – Listening and Living with God by Contemplative Outreach: The ancient practice of praying the Scriptures is being rediscovered and renewed in our time. Known as Lectio Divina (Divine Reading), it is one of the great treasures of the Christian tradition of prayer.
The Gift of Life by Thomas Keating, Mary Anne Best, Susan Rush: This course will explore the gift of life in all its phases, even those of diminishment and death, as phrases of evolution and transformation in and through Christ. It is based on the recent DVD series with Fr. Thomas Keating, The Gift of Life: Death & Dying, Life & Living.
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