Gospel Reading: John 3: 1-21

Dear Community of Christians,

In this conversation between two high masters who recognise each other, we hear of the cycle of births occurring firstly out of water – from the womb into earthly life and secondly out of what we have learned during life of the spirit as a spiritual womb, so as to be born well into the spiritual world. A great cycle from spirit to flesh, again to spirit and so on.

In the conversation the word power is used six times as Nicodemus, the teacher of Israel grows stage by stage in his understanding of repeated earth lives. This growth happens in the ‘in-betweeness’, the interval of space which both separates him from and connects him to the Christ.

Do we not live in a culture of ‘in-between-ness’, which is both personal and communal? The old forms and traditions are no longer certainties, fewer jobs are for life, science is no longer as steady an authority, traditional religious forms seem weakened, understanding friendships can seem preciously fewer and our personal and collective identities less stable.

In their place do we not live in our increasing individuality in a growing isolation and loneliness and with an increasing longing for connection? In a state of ‘in-between-ness’, a diminishing of the past can seem to overshadow a slowly growing awareness of a new future.

Rudolf Steiner described in 1912 a path of reconnection to this great archetype ‘The Son of Man, who is in heaven’. That the Christ’s soul body grows in the accumulated Wonder of human beings on earth – Wonder for all we encounter, which reveals the spirit’s actions manifesting in life. A child’s laugh, a songbird, bees on blossoms in the sunshine.

Secondly, that the Christ’s life-forces body is created out of the gathering presence of human compassion and love from each person for our fellow beings, opening our hearts ever more.

Thirdly, through the presence of human conscience acting for the good of others, for the good of the earth, the Christ’s resurrected body of the earth is built.

We seem to have spent our last year on one hand in a weakened state of connection and a heightened isolation of Self, yet we have been free in our manner of responding to this.

​The experience of the unfolding flame of the self of the other in the light and wind of Whitsun calls for a new community of authentic connectedness, that through our small daily windows of wonder, our open-hearted listening compassion and our acting as our conscience prompts us, a new world is beginning where we begin to see that in doing what is true, our deeds may act in the will of God in the great and small cycles of life.

Gospel Reading: John 14: 23-31

Dear Community of Christians,

In the Christian world there are many different customs for celebrating the various festivals in the home and in church communities. It is an attempt to approach a deeper understanding of the respective festival with external markings. Such customs arose at a time when the spiritual life warmed the souls of men. For example, at Pentecost, white doves were released into the heavens, or the Whitsun fires were lit on the mountains. Such customs have disappeared more and more from social life. One can also feel this as a loss, especially if they were meaningful customs.

On the other hand, the disappearance of such customs shows the progress of human consciousness. And so today the question arises: what has taken the place of meaningful heart-warming customs? Certainly, there is a loss of understanding of the deeper meaning of Christianity itself. And related to this is the loss of the sense of each Christian festival.

The soul distress of many people points to a loss of which people are not aware of in their souls. It is the loss of the Christ Being as our soul guide. No heavenly being has ever inhabited a human body and then led a purely human life, with the necessity of also having to eat and drink.

​The being we call Christ has taken this step with all its consequences in order to no longer be at home in heaven, in the spiritual-divine world, but in the realm of earth, in living together with human beings. And now, with the event of Pentecost, it is possible for every single human soul to experience this leadership inwardly, perhaps also recognizing its significance in one's own destiny. This can then perhaps be experienced as a flame of realization in our consciousness.

Gospel Reading: John 6: 24-33

Dear Community of Christians,
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We can find a very important conversation in the work of Johann Wolfgang Goethe.  The story, of the Märchen, called in English the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, has to do with the quality of Gold and its transformation.

The conversation is conducted between the Golden King and the Serpent.
The king who asks: "What is more precious than Gold?"
and the serpent replied: “Light”.
"What is more refreshing than light?" asked the king:
"Conversation," replied the serpent.

You may ask what does this conversation have to do with the festival of Ascension?

At Ascension, we see the golden borders on the Casula during the service. It is expressing the mood of the human soul in the progression of the course of the year. Now it has changed from the green of Easter to the gold of Ascension. The word in the service underlines the process: “He lives in earthly being transfiguring earthly being with heavenly being”. The Risen One has given his entirely being to heaven and the earth. Heaven and Earth are no longer separate domains. From now on heaven and earth are in conversation with each other. With this interpenetration of heaven and earth, the heavenly spiritual-divine powers are again accessible to man. In the course of the development of earth, man had slowly lost this connection. The human being can now enter into conversation with the heavenly beings of the spiritual world again, now in fully consciousness.

And if the world situation has brought the threat of silence in the conversation between people, then the soul experience of Ascension, their connection, is of gold. It stands to remind us that there is a quality in the human soul that we can call the gold of the heart. This quality humans can manifest and make shine. This shining can reach the other, so that the lost connection may be revived between man and man.

Dear Community of Christians.

It is Ascension, for Christians an important day, an event of the greatest significance. An occurrence not really understood and mostly forgotten. It is the event between Easter, when Christ has overcome death for the whole of mankind, and the festival of Pentecost; the receiving of the Holy Spirit.

Over three days after the crucifixion, Christ laid aside his spiritualized physical body and gave it over to the earth as a new substance. And then, it took him 40 days to bring his resurrected body to full completion and to hand it over to heaven and earth.

In these 40 days between Easter and Asension the disciples were permanently able to experience Christ’s presence. Their still clairvoyant constitution made it joyfully possible to feel his permanent nearness.

If the presence of Christ continued for human beings, as it was for the disciples, then man would never be free. Christ would ever direct one's actions from the inner life of man.

And so, after these 40 days, Christ was no longer accessible to the disciple’s clairvoyant constitution. They felt an incredible loss for 10 days. It was as if the essence of their life was no longer existent.

The fact that human beings are no longer clairvoyant is of the greatest importance for human development. However, the loss of connection with our divine spiritual origins is the inevitable consequence.

This disconnection is the tragedy of our time. This also closes us to the source of the Holy Spirit. This source only opens up for us when we begin to feel the infinite pain of being tied down to the new religious faith of natural science alone. Through this kind of science, we seem to be offered, above all else, a good, carefree life here on earth. The fact that we are also spiritual beings does not appear in the kind of science that is practiced today. There is no question not only our physical body needs to be taken care of, but also our soul life must be nourished.

We still have to live with this tragedy. If more people become truly conscious how they are led by outside authorities, instead of by inner guidance, then we can overcome the limits of the new religion of natural science. Through free spirit-led thinking, we can also be inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Dear Community of Christians,

For all beings, from plants to humans, it is a prerequisite of being on earth that there is the need of a fatherly, and a motherly element.

And as human beings we can consciously experience the example our own father in different ways. We could discover the whole range of thoughts, feelings and emotions. And this experience has shaped our idea and our ideal of a father as someone who feels responsible for the family.

In the moment when Christ speaks of the Father, we get confused. Especially when Christ says to his disciples: “Do you not believe that I am in the father and the father in me.” This means, the father was permanently present in Christ, but the Father is also present in another realm when Christ goes to the Father.

When we try to understand Christ’s word, we have to go back to the Creative Spirit of the heavens and of the earth. The father is the original essence of all being and becoming, and is also in the elemental world, and beyond, with the hierarchies.

The magnitude of the Father God is thus present in our physicality, but also in our soul substance and in all other earthly realms. The Father spirit ever works in the body and soul. Therefore, in our Creed is the sentence: “An almighty divine being spiritual-physical is the ground of existence of the heaven and of the earth who goes before his creatures like a Father.” This has its validity to this day and for eternity.
Admittedly, the adversarial powers distorted this image of the Father spirit and death is identified with the Father God today.  Does it mean that we do not have a truthful image of the working of the divine Father today?

We can also ask ourselves whether our view of illness and death has its origin in the distorted image of the Father God? A central question! Every human being faces the fact that he or she will die at some point.  However, the awareness of being able to reconnect with the original creative forces of the cosmos means connecting with the creative light and power that originally lay at the root of creation. Would dying not take on another quality? A new view on Death and illness can lead to life or death, and take on a completely new aspect. After death we will become part of this creative power and in this way, it becomes an important responsibility how we die. To have no truthful image of the Father is a tragedy for mankind.

Rudolf Steiner said:
“not to recognize the Father God is illness. As a result, we also don’t recognize Christ in the right way and that means misfortune, and not recognizing the Holy Spirit means blindness of the soul.”

Dear Community of Christians,

The writer of the Gospel uses the image of childbirth, that when the woman is in labour and about to give birth, the woman is in pain.

We can no longer look away; humanity is in great pain in the process of giving birth to a new era. An era that carries along with it the decadence of our current society. This is a bitter realization because we are all part of this decadence. What do we carry along with us? First and foremost, our total dependence on our egoistic bourgeois comfort. Then our intellectual pride in what we have achieved. And last, but not least, our sense of freedom from all superstition or belief. A spiritual world, God, Angels, even Christ, or spirituality, all of these are considered a superstition today. This comes about through our intellectual thinking, and no one is excluded from this manner of thought.
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In the divine-spiritual plan of the world it is preordained that this ability should be received by mankind. The spiritual world frees these forces from its spiritual possession. And with this intellectual power we can now work and be free to use it. We can see what an incredible power is now in the hands of humans and the peak it has reached in the last 100 years. But this power of sharp materialistic thinking in mankind’s hands is the background for the suffering and pain of today. This suffering is a necessary step to give birth to this upcoming new age we have to achieve.

​But at the same time this intellectual capacity has also become free for other, higher pursuits. For the human being can now lift this intellect quite freely - out of free will, into the sphere of the spirit, where the light power of the angelic hierarchies’ shines. When they shine through our intellect, our thoughts become lightened, warmed and free from egoistic drives and desires. We begin to love the world and human beings in their incredible diversity and beauty, even with their dark sides. Then our whole will can be directed to serve this grandiose divine creation.
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We are moved to do everything possible to birth this new era, which we can also conceive of, as a being that will continue to develop in the service of the original creation. In this sense, this burgeoning age will not be pulled into the abyss by the dark sharp and godless intellectual forces but turn instead to higher worlds.