WORD AND LIGHT

We walk on the road with Jesus Christ (Lk.24) and He talks to us (gospel), making our hearts burning within us like a coal in a censer, as our prayers rise with a smoke (offering); He comes in and abides with us (transsubstantiation), and finally we are at the table with Him and we go to the world as His messengers (Communion).

Through the four phases of the Act of Consecration, we are led from receiving to giving, but constantly staying active within. Participants appear to sit still just observing, but it's not mere stillnes of meditation, when people sink deeply into their own inner being, finding their true essence and strengthening the Self; It is more like common prayer, since prayer is about devotion, not words repeated aloud - and in prayer man is expanding outwards until he loses himself meeting the One greater than himself and completely the Other. In Him we are all One.
From the depth of our souls we gather little pieces of eternal value - that which is gold among the led of lower nature - lifting our hearts up to heaven with this treasure. Together we form a cup of human community. Thus a new force poured into this cup may help us to transform more of our nature to gold. Ultimately, each of us is a chalice: New wine into new wineskins.

Through the meeting with Christ as that timeless stream from Golgotha reaches us in time - provided that we are ready and willing to receive it (for instance in sacraments) - our innermost being is awakened. It will be in us "as well of water springing up into everlasting life" (Jh.4). Whoever drinks this water will never thirst. But this world offers us only the wine vinegar to drink. On the Mount of Olives Jesus prayed: "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done" (Lk.22:42). This is the true spirit of prayer! Jesus drank the cup til the last bitter drop. Yet we are promised in the Psalm 23 that "my cup overflows" when I'm at a table in the presence of my "enemies" - my fears and worries etc. - and my head will be anointed with oil, with the sign of the Risen Lord! Once you grow in spirit, this growth in one aspect of your nature will flow to other cups too!

Fr. Anthony de Mello points out that with the Communion bread everybody receives the whole Christ - I receive the whole Christ, you receive the whole Christ, so does the one next to you and so on. So great is His love!
When Jesus during His ministry repeatedly had supper with people, only requiement for joining the company was to accept HIM at the table! He as a host surely welcomes all!
Communion is the true Mystery of the Bridal Chamber, foretaste of the Wedding of the Lamb, when soul as the Bride meets her heavenly Bridegroom.
As my body is the temple of the Holy Spirit - the Christ in me - so we are members of the Body of Christ; we are the Church. Kingdom of God is both within us and amidst of us. In Jesus Christ God incarnated, through the Holy Spirit Christ dwells in us. As He came in human form 2000 years ago in Palestine, so He comes again and again today in Consecrated elements of bread and wine, nourishing our inner man.

Several times in the gospels we are told "Behold!", and "He that hath an ear, let him hear" and Psalmist also says "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good." We have tasted the good word of God (Heb.6:5). We meet a piece of heaven here on earth provided that we're open for it.
Someone said the Lord's Prayer is a gospel in a nutshell. With these words we are offering the fullness of our heart and soul - our devotion and worship - to Godhead. By prayer we can't change God; Instead, God will change us, even if it is so subtle we don't see it. What we receive through this prayer is really a "Communion of the Mystical Bread"..."Daily bread", artos epiousios or panem supersubstantialem as the Vulgate translates, is supersubstancial bread: That's how many early Church Fathers interpreted the sentence, that's how the Cathars understood it, that's how Pekka Ervast explains in his book "The Sermon on the Mount or the Key to Christianity". It's obvious once you take a closer look at the gospel according to Matthew, chapter 6: Soon after giving His prayer, Jesus says: "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what you shall drink"..."For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."
It is the presence of Christ Himself - "I am the Bread". It is Grace (or love), charis - charismata as the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Catholics acknowledge the act of spiritual communion beside the Mass - but never without.

Now we may understand that the Lord's Prayer is said in the Act of Consecration - as well as in any liturgy - right after transsubstantiation, in the beginning of Communion, and why I like to think of it as Sacrament! Mind is a priest and heart is an altar, as Kahlil Gibran wrote, as we pray "in spirit and in truth" - that is, by the power of spirit and understanding the truth (of what we are praying for). One of the names Jesus gave to the Holy Spirit, is the Spirit of Truth. Big heart and open mind is what we need.
The heart of man is supposed to be the spiritual Sun (the "Sun" of God) - the centre of his being - and his mind, his intellect, was meant to reflect its light just like the moon. Otherwise, if it rebels against the heart as often seems to be the case, mind will become Lucifer with its false light misguiding us. "You are the light of the world"..."If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Mt.5:14, 6:23)

In Scripture, word and light go together; The first thing God said, was "Let there be light" - "and there was light." Along with this creative fiat light comes forth from the very essence of Godhead, which is light itself. St. Luke tells us that when the angel of the Lord appeared before the shepherds in the field to bring them the good news of the newborn Messiah, "the glory of the Lord shone round about them." This glory is doxa in Greek - a word used of the presence of God in the Scripture (as in the doxology of the Lord's Prayer!): "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14). Remember the golden radiant sphere depicted in icons round the heads of the holy men and women of God: They glorify God! In Eastern Orthodox tradition, so called theosis or deification of man, has mostly as outward characteristic a phenomenon of light - enlightment, transfiguration. This light was seen by the holy people in prayer, it was not merely symbolical nor sensory perception. It was the light that shone forth from Christ as He was transfigured and it will light the whole world on the day of judgement. St. Paul also witnessed the light on his way to Damascus. According to Origen, once a mystic takes his final step to unio mystica, when he's united with God, he participates with the light of Logos.

Like a breastplate of the High Priest with engraved gem stones, once memorized, we shall keep the words of the Lord's Prayer upon our heart, each word as a precious stone shining in the Christ-light. Like jewels in all the colors of the rainbow in the golden plate, the Lord's Prayer consists of the full splendor of Christianity.
Prayer by prayer, we are building heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, which will descend from above; "And its brilliance was like that of very precious jewelry"..."And the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp" (Rev.21:11, 23). "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Heb.11:1): By prayer, we do invisible work, for words are works; "As above, so below" - "as in heavens, so also on earth". Spirit to matter.
Christ Jesus gave us the words of the Lord's Prayer, He is praying for us, with us, and in us; in fact, He is in every word of the Prayer. - After all, He is the Word of God!
"And God said, let there be light" (Gen.1:3).
"In the beginning was the Word" (John 1:1).
"Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life" (John 6:68).
"If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you" (John 15:7).
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" (Mt.24:35).
"The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express" (Romans 8:26).
"God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father" (Gal.4:6).
"For all the promises of God in Him are yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us" (2 Cor.1:20).
"[God] Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, when he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high..." (Hebr.1:2-3).
He is "Alpha and Omega" (Rev.1:11) and "the Amen, the faithful and true witness" (Rev.3:14).

No doubt the prayer is the highest form of human speech: In prayer we address God and at best we're completely selfless. Our will is the will of God in action. God's voice is made audible through human voice. "For thine is"... I can't do anything of myself, without God; "The kingdom": The substance of all the realms; "The power": One Life Force that penetrates the worlds; "The glory": Final result, fully perfected, divine being; "For ever and ever": If we only worry for material things, we don't store up for ourselves treasures in heaven - that which is eternal; "Amen": Signature and seal. The church pleads "So shall it be" and God confirms "It shall be so." The word came through Egypt originally from Sanskrit: AUM or OM - and represents the creative fiat, Logos.

Christian writing from the first century says that "Christians are for the world same as soul is for the body". Christ the Sun-Spirit is the Higher Self of the earth. Bread and wine being the true body and blood of Christ, we bear the spiritual homeopathy along with us unto the world, as Emil Bock writes in his book, "The Three years".
"I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world" (John 6:51).
Christ-impulse will grow through us, expanding all over the world!