27 August 2017

By Stefania Caterina and Fr. Tomislav Vlašić

Father Tomislav: Dearest Brothers and Sisters; I welcome you and wish you a good Sunday. It is the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time.

On 7 August we have celebrated the First Person of the Most Holy Trinity, God the Father, source and summit. We want to live these times in a way that take us increasingly closer to Him through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. We have said that this is not a celebration of one day and that it does not finish here; this celebration is the beginning of the path of these times in which we are steadily pushed ahead towards the full light.

This Sunday offers particular readings[1] to prepare us up for the time of autumn when we will be more ready to pray and progress intensively. Today’s Gospel speaks about Peter’s confession and the authority Jesus Christ gives him; we can say that in this Gospel Peter finds his identity and receives his mission. “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” This profession of Peter‘s paves the way in him: Jesus is Christ, the Saviour of the world and the universe, but Jesus does not hold him back directing him to the Father: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.” Thus Peter is directed to the Father. “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

This message of Jesus to Peter is meant for each one of us. If we submit to God the Father, to His thoughts and to His plans for us according to our originality and our mission, Jesus Christ will meet us on our path to open it towards God the Father through His death and resurrection. Peter had to follow that path, and each one of us will have to follow that path to reach God the Father being submitted to the Laws of the pure Spirit that come out of the source, God the Father. We know very well what direction Peter took. That is not human fascination, a magic solution, but a man’s full response to give up his ideas, his mentality and die to himself to live according to the teachings of Jesus and according to His deeds to reach the glory of the Father. This is the path we on Earth have to go because we have inherited the sin of our progenitors who made an alliance with Lucifer because of which we tend to be detached from God and act according to our own will. As soon as Jesus began to speak about His death and resurrection, Peter said that this should never happen. Jesus response was, “Get behind me, Satan!“[2]

This openness for the Father, from whom every thought and all good comes and who leads us to the fullness is contrasted by our mind and our will, and Satan exploits that leading us to the wrong path. Therefore, it applies to Peter as well as each one of us: watch out to follow Jesus Christ in order to be submitted to the will of the Father who guides us from slavery to a life in fullness.

It is necessary that we give up our ego, our complete deformed nature, which was not like that before original sin. Our deformed, materialised, humiliated nature needs to be elevated through Jesus Christ by following Him who is in us towards the Father. We have taught that the whole path is an inner path in which we elevate our thoughts, every problem, every sin and every mistake, but also every joy and happiness to God the Father through Jesus Christ. And everything that we elevate and submit sincerely to the will of the Father will elevate and transform us. The Father will continually reveal to us how we may walk the path of our life and change our nature, our mentality. Eventually our corrupt nature will give place to a new, transformed man in the image of Christ.

It is very important to underline that this path should be firm, continuous, progressing; it cannot be done magically. The man of the Earth, the way he is, resorts to magic, but he also considers the signs Jesus made a magic way to resolve problems; yet, the sings are signs of a greater reality, of the power of God which surpasses all our limits; the signs of laws of a new kind of children of God in Heaven. Therefore, we have to share with God the Father every day everything that occurs on our path elevating all desires to God the Father through Jesus Christ so that they are purified and the desires of the Holy Spirit may dwell in us. This is the way to make progress.

Bear in mind that every thought that we sincerely elevate to God so that the Father may transform it will be transformed; God the Father never rejects anything if it is not corrupt, and He transforms all that is weak and fragile. Thus, every step we do towards the Father will insert us into the Laws of the pure Spirit in which we perceive the fullness, fascination, beauty, which will lead us to experience happiness and, intuitively, nostalgia of the life we lost after original sin.

The decision to submit to God the Father each of our choices, thoughts and plans enables us to take the right decisions in our life doing it in accordance with the will of the Father; when we are ready to give up the corrupt man completely, we will rise again with Christ.

This is the path St. Paul bears witness to in the Letter to the Romans. It is mysterious; but why is it mysterious? Because God is greater than we are; immensely greater. In Him ALL THINGS are; however, in us creatures there is not all; there are some things we can choose of, and we may choose to go to hell. There we find death. In God the Father we find ALL; thus He is greater than us and thus we seek Him. St. Paul discovered that all richness and all knowledge is in Him: ALL. He discovered that God wants to pour out ALL over us if we are open creatures. Then seeking God the Father becomes fascinating, beautiful, but it needs a constant commitment through our prayer and our life to elevate ourselves to the will of the Father to reach what was revealed to Peter, “Blessed are you, …”. He too had to walk his path to reach that bliss; we too have to walk our path to reach that bliss.

I have said that this is hard for us men of the Earth because we want to do it on our own, behaving like we were gods, while the humanities of the high universe are, let’s say, in the antechamber of the new creation; they are very advanced on the path towards the new creation while we struggle, fall, do not want etc. These are times in which we have to be totally sincere and righteous from our heart to seek the thoughts in the mind of the Father. 

When we are ready to receive a thought of the Father, He will pass it on to us; yet, we cannot behave as if we were the owners of His thought to exploit it. No man, not even Peter could do so; he could not behave the way he wanted but had to give up himself and be united with Christ.

The first reading shows us that every time we elevate ourselves to the Father we receive our mission. What we have received inwardly must be revealed to others as a service to all creation, not only to man. The prophet Isaiah explains what the Lord said to Shebna, an officer of the king, who had usurped power overseeing the palace: “I will depose you from your office, and you will be ousted from your position. In that day I will summon my servant, Eliakim son of Hilkiah. I will clothe him with your robe ….” etc.

What the prophet Isaiah shows us as the preparation of the plan of God regarding David, in these times needs to be read in a different way, that is, that no task within the Church, politics or any system will remain the way it is. Everything will have to be submitted to Christ and recapitulated in Christ. Do not delude yourselves! Who wants to go up and elevate himself to the Father, who wants to act in the name of Jesus Christ, can act only in the mystical union with Jesus Christ; with Christ who remained perfectly faithful to the Father and to His plan in the Holy Spirit.

These are the times we have announced and we see, we will see the actions of the almighty arm of the Son of God in the whole universe. Our prayer, our rituals, our religious formulas will not save us if we do not want to elevate ourselves to the Father, for all that has been given to us was given as a means to be united with Christ, recapitulated in Christ and submitted to the will of the Father who fills the whole universe with His love and leads us to perfection.

Thus, I would like us to walk this path not only with the expatiation to hear someone preach but actually as individuals, nuclei, people who are moving towards the face of the Father before whom there is nothing unclean, nothing secret. We are living in a time in which no one of us can remain indifferent or stop halfway. We are all called to reach the fullness. Thus, I would like us to walk this path of light and be light for all peoples of the whole universe along with the new people of the whole universe.

May the light of the Father, of His face, enlighten every child of God; may every one of His children recognize the face of the Father and move towards Him in the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ. May the light, which is the pure love of the Father, attract all of us and make us perfect and at the same time render us light for others in order to enlighten those who want to be light and definitely push away all that is dark and corrupt to Hell; in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

[1] 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time-Cycle A-2017: 1st reading: Is 22:19-23; Psalm 137; 2nd reading: Rm 11:33-36; Gospel: Mt 16:13-20

[2] Cfr. Mt 16:21