we prepare to approach the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ, in our story from
the New Testament, is likewise
clothed in simple linen when He
teaches the disciples the value of
repentance. As He washes Peter’s
feet, he is clothed much as a high
priest would be on the Day of
Atonement.
We ourselves can imagine
taking off our normal thoughts and
identity like clothing. Take off your
bank account and job description,
take off your memory and
intelligence and worries, take off
your hobbies and your disposition
and your habits, and put on the
thought that you are simply to be obedient to the Lord’s truth.
Once he is clothed in the simple linens, the high priest then mixes holy
fire from sacrifice with incense to fill the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle with
smoke. This is our second step. We must adopt the state of wanting to replace
our loves – our identities – with the Lord’s love.
We are not accustomed to imagining the Lord as dangerous. As a God of
love He wishes for us our eternal happiness with Him in heaven. Normally
there is nothing scary or risky about us being with the Divine – all that we are
is from Him already. Every now and then, however, having achieved a state of
humility, we can imagine, if obscurely, what it would be like to want what the
Lord wants.
This can be a frightening mental process, demanding more than simply
identifying how we might love the neighbor or find peace in following His
commandments. The high priest reaching past the veil into the Holy of Holies
is us reaching for the true notion that there is nothing lovable about ourselves
that is not the Lord’s – and we should, ideally, love this notion.
We only rarely approach the celestial state represented by the Holy of
Holies. Angels of the celestial heaven not only recognize that they are nothing,
but also can sense – can feel – the influx from the Lord into their affections.
(Divine Providence 44) They desire to lose their proprium, their sense of self,
yet retain it to obey the Lord. They know that all they are apart from the Lord
is their evils, which are essentially imaginary and insane.
Who on earth can adopt, even for an hour, the desire to lose their own
We realize that we have
no power and need help.
We practice the thought
that we are not masters
of our fate, that we are
not the authors of our
own happiness, and
that left to ourselves we
would be incapable of
use, thought or life.
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