The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friend,

Jesus is now preparing us for His Ascension. When the Son of God took our flesh upon Himself, He took on the form of a servant. He left off or hid from us the form of His Divinity. For our faith to grow and fully develop into maturity, the servant's form must be taken away, lest we mistake the servant's form for the Divinity. Christ's Body is Divine because Jesus is God. His Human Flesh is divine, but the rest of humanity is not divine. We are servants of God, and our flesh reminds us of our position in God's plan. Jesus became one with us in our humanity so that He could show us the way to serve God and enter into Heaven.

The temptation is for us to see the human Flesh of Jesus and think that It is the same as our flesh, and therefore presume that we are equal to Jesus or equal to God. This is the sin of Lucifer, who claimed to be like God. The Divinity - Jesus - became like us. In our form as servants, we will never be able to claim to be like the Divinity. As long as Jesus remained with us in His Humanity, we would never be able to raise our faith any higher than our bodies and this world.

It was, therefore, necessary for Him to leave us. He took away His fleshly presence, but He did not completely leave us. He remains with us hidden in the Holy Eucharist. But, it is only with the eyes of faith that we are to see Him here. We must lift our hearts and minds above the material world to contemplate the spiritual realm. Because the earthly Body of Jesus is an obstacle to our understanding and faith in the purely spiritual nature of God, the Humanity of Jesus needed to be taken away. The physical must give way to the spiritual. The humanity of the Son of God must give way to the spiritual presence of the Holy Ghost.

Since the time of Pentecost, many have mistakenly assumed that the Holy Ghost enters our human form through us and that we are, therefore, the embodiment of God here on earth as Jesus was when He walked the earth. Cleansing our bodies and souls and inviting the Holy Ghost to enter us does not make us gods. We are not Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, nor will we ever become Him. The Holy Ghost enters The Church and teaches and properly guides us to follow Jesus — not to become Jesus.

We are God's children, but we will never become the Second Person of the Trinity. This body of ours is only holy when we are living temples of the Holy Ghost. The graces we receive and the virtues that we practice are not our works but God's works in and through us. All that God has created is good, including our flesh, but our flesh is made to serve and one day enjoy eternal beatitude with God in Heaven — not be God or take the place of God. We must resist the temptation to divinize our bodies. God became Human not to make us gods but to show us the perfect way to serve God and eternally enter into Heaven's beatitude with Him.

Many have experienced spiritual movements within themselves. These spiritual influences may come from God, The Holy Ghost, or they may come from some other spirit, not excluding demonic ones. The temptation is to confuse the Will of God with our will. Self-will quickly enters and corrupts our thoughts, words, and actions.

There is only One Son of God, only one Jesus Christ. His physical Body is now in Heaven. His Spirit remains with us as long as we remain meek and humble like Him. The Spirit of God shows us the Life of Jesus and teaches us how to follow Him, not become Him.

When the spiritual writers speak of becoming one with Jesus or one with God, we must understand this correctly. We are being instructed to conform our wills to the Will of God so that our hearts and desires are transformed to become conformed to God's Will. It is not God conforming to our wills. We often hear of the need to die to ourselves or destroy our will to do God's Will. This, too, can be taken out of context. God created and gave us free will, and this is good. God does not seek the destruction of what He has created; what He desires is the proper use of our free will. We are His creatures; we are His servants; we must develop the true hearts and minds of good and faithful servants. We must strive to conform our wills with His. Our choices must reflect His Will. They cannot do this if they try to usurp His place or seek to destroy their free will and become robots with no will.

The Holy Ghost instructs us through the life and teachings of Jesus. We must strive to become good and faithful servants — willing and lovingly doing what God Wills us to do.

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