Report by John-Peter Gernaat
 
Firstly, a contemplation of the festivals. We have a great gift in The Christian Community of being able to penetrate and extend some of the Christian festivals in a way that allows us to take a step into the future. We begin the liturgical year in the way that the Christian church, the wider movement within Christianity has undertaken for centuries; we begin with Advent, the four Sundays before Christmas. We then move straight from the season of Advent into Christmas, consisting of twelve days. This takes us directly into the season of Epiphany which we extend to four weeks. We take a full Epiphany season. One could see this as ‘bookending’ Christmas: four weeks of Advent and four weeks of Epiphany. There are the twelve Holy Nights in between. We look at the festivals of Advent, Christmas and Epiphany as the festivals of the Father God. These festivals bring something to us. The period of Advent: anticipation, waiting, preparing. There is no arriving at a birth unprepared.
 
After these festivals we enter a period of Trinity. The duration is dependent on the arrival of the full moon with the March equinox. Then we enter into three festivals that follow directly on from each other: Passiontide for four weeks, followed by Easter, followed by Ascension. The festivals of Easter follow the traditional periods: forty days of Easter and ten days of Ascension. These fifty days take us directly into another set of festivals.
 
The first is Whitsun, often referred to as Pentecost, the commemoration of the descent of the Holy Spirit. This is followed by a short period of Trinity taking us into four weeks of St John’s-tide. This really extends the St John’s season. Then we have the ten Sundays between St John’s and Michaelmas. Then four Sundays of Michaelmas. This is followed by a short period of Trinity before the liturgical year begins again.
 
Passiontide, Easter and Ascension are seen as the festivals of the Son. Whitsun, St John’s and Michaelmas are seen as the festivals of the Spirit. The Trinity is at work in the festivals. Each set of festivals consist of three festivals. Even within each set of three festivals we can see the working of the Father, Son and Spirit. Thus, Advent can be seen as the Festival of the Father, Christmas as the festival of the Son and Epiphany – making apparent in the full light of the Divine – as the festival of the Spirit. All this within the festivals of the Father. The same is apparent in the festivals of Passiontide, Easter and Ascension: Father, Son and Spirit. Also, in the three festivals of the Spirit: Whitsun, St John’s and Michaelmas we see the activities of the Father, Son and Spirit.
 
Let is now look at how we prepare for Michaelmas. It is one of the festivals of the Spirit and a festival that brings us ever closer into a relationship with the Spirit. In the festivals of the Spirit, Whitsun is the festival of the Father – the gift of the Father sending the Spirit, St John’s about what we need in order to relate to the Christ, and Michaelmas an opportunity to comprehend, grasp, take hold of the Spirit and come to know this in ourselves. This makes Michaelmas the festival of the present and the future.
 
We can look at this in relation to our thinking, feeling and willing over the span of the last two-thousand years.
 
In the Act of Consecration of the Human Being we hear that with the great Mystery of Golgotha, with the offering of the first transubstantiation – the change of the bread and wine into the mystical body and blood of Christ – we also receive again our connection to the Divine (“Godhead is given again …”). We hear of the new confession and the new faith, and we hear that this must be taken hold of in our thinking. These are words for us today. They would not have been spoken over a hundred years ago to congregations because then people were in a different stage of development, as human beings. We then enter into what is known, liturgically, as ‘The Mystery of Faith’: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. This is quite profound. We hear it differently in the Act of Consecration of the Human Being: the thinking lives in ‘Christ’s suffering and death’, something that has happened, in the past, although we can still think of it in the moment of its happening and the significance thereof. ‘His Resurrection’, this is a thought that should occupy our minds all the time, we live in the experience of that Resurrection. ‘Christ’s Revelation through all ages of the earth to come’ should give rise to a question as to whether we have not already received the fullness of Christ’s Revelation. We have already received the fullness of His Revelation. So, what then is this ‘Revelation through all ages of the earth to come’? We have not yet fully realised the full Revelation of Christ. It has taken us two thousand years to penetrate this Revelation as far as we have it now, and it will take many more thousands of years before we come to terms with the fullness of the Revelation of Christ. It is, and will continue to, unfold in our understanding.
 
On 16 October 1918 Rudolf Steiner shared (GA 182) that the Apostles could only attain a full understanding of the Revelation of Christ about three hundred years after the Resurrection. This means that the Apostles only grasped the full reality of the Mystery of Golgotha, of the Revelation of Christ, once they had crossed the Threshold and were back in the spiritual world. It continued to unfold in them, in their understanding, after they had crossed the Threshold. This tells that the full reality of the Revelation of Christ takes time to dawn for human beings. We can read in the letters written by Paul, who was not part of the Twelve, but was called to be an Apostle, how the Revelation of Christ unfolded for him.
 
One of the fundamental aspects of the Revelation of Christ is that Christ comes in the Gospels as “the revelation of the Father”. Christ comes to reveal the Father: “This is my Beloved Son in whom I shall be fully revealed.” This is why Christ can say to Phillip when he asks, “show us the Father”. “How long have I been with you? If you see me, you have seen the Father.” Christ can say that He has been revealing the relationship to the Father all the time. We realise that even shortly before the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the Apostle were still struggling to grasp this Revelation. Even after the Resurrection Thomas cannot imagine what the other Apostles say to him. He cannot grasp what they are saying without being able to experience it himself, because what they are saying exists outside of his realm of comprehension. Christ says, when he appears to Thomas, “Blessed are those, in the future, who will not see and will comprehend.”
 
What is the external evidence for this assertion of Rudolf Steiner? In the fourth century the church develops a Christian theology. The seeds of this theology are in the Gospels and Paul’s letters, but no one had yet figured it out and grasped what it means.
 
There are three extraordinary church fathers, the Cappadocian Fathers, two of whom were blood brothers (and a very capable sister, who turned the home into a monastery), Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa (Bishop of Nyssa) and a friend, Gregory of Nazianzus, Patriarch of Constantinople, who developed our understanding of the Trinity. They said that all three separate Persons of the Trinity are of one Substance. They arrived at this clarity of ideas. Their work develops the final version of the Nicene Creed at the Council of Constantinople in 381CE. Rudolf Steiner suggests that these Fathers were able to undertake this work because the Apostles were inspiring them.
 
This understanding of a Trinitarian God transforms our understanding, so that Christianity is not so much a monotheistic religion but a trinitarian religion. It is a religion of understanding the relationships of the Father, Son and Spirit.
 
Where does this live in modern life? The Act of Consecration of the Human Being tells us that it lives in us. Listen to the words spoken from the altar when the crosses are inscribed: “… in us …”.
 
Rudolf Steiner points out that it is now possible for people to live this out. The Trinity is difficult to comprehend. Matthew ends his Gospel with: “Go forth and baptise in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”. Paul also states the Trinity, but how do we comprehend what it means, who these three Persons are, and how they relate to each other. How do they form one Being and yet this one Being expresses in three separate Persons?
 
Rudolf Steiner also points out that for the first part of Christianity, around eight hundred years, Christianity lived in the will: people went out to do, without necessarily fully grasping the intricacies. Then, in Western Christianity, an unfortunate understanding of the separation of soul and spirit arises that denies the connection that individuals can have to the spirit. It ignited a feeling of being at one with the Godhead through a feeling realm. This becomes very evident in the late twelfth century in the person of Fransis of Assisi. He writes to Brother Leo and says: “Preach the Gospel always, sometimes with words”. When Fransis is given permission to form an order by the pope, because the pope has seen Fransis in his dreams holding up the Church as it crumbled, he is asked to write a ‘rule’ for his new order and he replies that the Gospel provides the instruction on how to live, no further rule is necessary. His feeling was that the Gospels were the source for a clarity on how to live. This period can be characterised as Christianity living in the feeling.
 
We have now taken a step where Christianity can begin to live in the thinking. This will continue for a long time. Rudolf Steiner speaks to a confidant, Margarita Voloschin, of St Seraphim of Sarov, an 18th century Orthodox monk who, Rudolf Steiner describes, worked in humankind through the feeling sphere of sympathy. He develops pictures through what he said. Some of his sayings: “Acquire a peaceful spirit and around you thousands will be saved”; “It is necessary that the Holy Spirit enter our heart. Everything good that we do for Christ is given to us by the Holy spirit, but prayer, most of all, which is always available to us”; “A sign of spiritual life is the emersion of a person within himself and the hidden workings within his heart”. This is relevant for us because it leads us to realise that if it doesn’t happen in us, the Kingdom doesn’t happen. Another quote: “True hope seeks the one kingdom of God and is sure that everything necessary for this mortal life will surely be given. A heart cannot have peace until it acquires this hope.” Thus, we can see this period leading up the nineteenth century as a period of experiencing Christianity, and our connection to the Trinity, strongly through our thinking life. Most beautifully we sense that if peace lives in us thousands can live in peace.
 
Now we live in a time where three events have occurred that Rudolf Steiner describes.

When we can connect with, live out of, these extraordinarily deep insights of the Cappadocian Fathers, when we can connect to live in this extraordinary feeling for the other, that we hear in the words of people like Fransis of Assisi and Seraphim of Serov, and we can take into our conscious thinking what we feel and do. We hear it for ten weeks in the Trinity Epistle that prepares us for Michaelmas. We know that we are of one substance with the Father. We know that the true creative power of Christ is in our soul’s creating. We know that when we comprehend how to be a human being, filled with the Spirit, I then know what the Healing God is doing in me. We must take hold of our thinking to comprehend this great mystery: the mystery of the Trinity living in us; the mystery of the power we have been given, that we remain free in that power, but we must take up this power every day anew. Seraphim of Sarov said: “It is necessary that the Holy Spirit enter our heart. Everything good that we do, that we do for Christ, is give us by the Holy Spirit. But prayer, most of all, but prayer, which is always available to us.” If we don’t develop a life of prayer, we will not sustain that which we have made possible. It requires a relationship. We sustain the relationship through what we do, through the feeling we carry, and through the capacity to comprehend.
 
“My thinking live in the life of the Holy Spirit” is how we prepare for Michaelmas. Michaelmas is the season that will allow us to realise the importance of this new thinking, this thinking in the new enlightenment of the Spirit.

This is a picture of the incarnation, particularly the incarnation of Christ into the being of Jesus of Nazareth. From this we can understand something of the incarnating process of the Christ-forces in us.

One can consider that each of the four Gospels has a particular signature, something that makes it necessary to be included in the canon of scripture. We may ask why both Matthew and Mark make it into the canon. They appear to be very similar to each other. Matthew expands what Mark has established and there are elements in Matthew’s Gospel that are not found in any other Gospel. We shall use Matthew’s Gospel to accompany our consideration of the incarnation process.

We begin with an element that is found only in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 2: “And now, when Jesus had been born in Bethlehem in Judea, in the reign of King Herod, see, Maggi from the realms of the East came to Jerusalem and said, ‘Where is the newborn child who is destined to be the king of the people of Judah? We saw his star in the realms of the East and have come to bow down to him.’” In the first chapter of Matthew we have, in a very real sense, the story of the preparation of a human being that can bear the forces of the Christ, and in this star, this heavenly light that appears to the Magi, we have the first sign of the Christ-forces descending. It is the beginning of an incarnating process. This means that the incarnation has a direction: it comes from the heavens and must eventually, completely land on the earth. Matthew, in his Gospel, takes us through this process of the incarnation and the elements that appear.

We begin with the light in the heavens; this shining star, that we can say each one of us has. We each have our own particular heavenly light. We can imagine it as carried by our guardian angel. We can imagine it as the light of our guardian angel, carrying our higher self, so that we have a guiding light, one that guides the process. With this we can imagine the Christ-forces being seen by those who have the power to see them. The Magi are not so much seeing something that can be seen by everyone in the external world of nature, but rather that they can see something that exists in the super-natural world, in the world of spirit. The Magi can see this light manifest.

Matthew begins his Gospel with: “This is the book of how Jesus the Christ became human.” It is an extraordinary statement; surely Jesus was born a human being. It is the process of becoming the human being that we are all destined to become. We could therefore translate this as: “This is the book of how Jesus, bearing the Christ, became fully human.” Because, without the Christ-forces in us, there is no potential for us to reach our destiny; the Spirit Human that we are to be.

Then Matthew provides a genealogy, which tells us what it means to inherit a human body that has been worked on from generation to generation. This is worked on in many ways. We know from epigenetics that what we inherit from our parents is only a potential blueprint. Some of the blueprint will be awakened into life by the world around us. We become the person we are not only through nature, but also through nurture. What surrounds us and works on bringing the blueprint to life is not only the physical environment, it is also the social environment. The ways in which the child is raised determines not only their soul but also their physical nature right down into their physical health. Medical professionals know that a child who shows signs of anxiety will express these in their health, right down into their physiology. Thus, we strive to provide a nurturing environment that enhances all the aspects that can develop well in us. What we inherit is expressed through our environment and may become very prominently expressed in healthy and in unhealthy ways.

Matthew begins with the human being, Jesus, but it is the human being, Jesus, bearing the Christ that will become the future human being. In chapter 2 the Christ-forces are beautifully expressed in the guiding star which guides those who can see it, the Magi, to where the child is: “And after these words from the King they went on their way and behold the star, which they had seen in the realms of the East showed them the way.” In the Greek the literal meaning is the ‘realms of dawning light’. This means the realms of the rising sun, the coming into being, the birth. With the rising sun comes the quality of warmth along with the quality of light. The sunrise provides us with a different quality of warmth than exists before its rising. We have the quality of a guiding light, but it has not yet fully descended, it is shining. It is shining over the child and where the child lives. One can experience it as an embrace that now must find its way and descend.

We are dealing with a quality of warmth and light that the ancient world would have described as the element of Fire. Fire is mentioned before the moment of incarnation. After this description we move to: “In those days John the Baptist came…” He says: “I baptise you with water to lead you to a change of consciousness. He who comes after me is mightier than I, unworthy am I to carry his shoes. He will baptise you the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Something of the one coming after John the Baptist is connected to the Spirit, to fire, to coming to a place that we would describe as an experience of ourselves as the place of the I-organisation, the place of the spiritual fire that is essentially who we are and which must warm, and fill, and transform all the aspects of our being human.

With this comes the baptism of Jesus, and only Matthew records it with these words: John says, “It is I who need to be baptised by you” – John recognises that he needs the baptism of the spirit. John is baptising with water and knows what it does for those he is baptising because he already carries that shift in consciousness. John recognises that Jesus also does not need the change of consciousness of the water baptism. This is the response from Jesus: “Let it be so. It is good thus so that we properly fulfil all that destiny requires.” This establishes the idea that we must undergo the stages of our incarnating experience. This is why, when the child is born, we must recognise that everything is there, but not everything is expressed in the way that it will be. The one thing that has not happened and that only now can begin to happen is this process of inner transformation: the process we can call transubstantiation – the substance of who we are has to change. That isn’t present at birth. It can only start from birth, in our earthly reality. We are not going to be able to transform the substance of earth until we are born on the earth.

Matthew’s Gospel takes us on a journey of how this light, that one can say is in the star, descends and starts to permeate, goes through these processes of Fire and Air, and Water to Earth. This is very strong in Matthew’s Gospel, the process of what it means to fully become an earth being. We can see in little children how they are still caught in the heavenly light. Slowly this light will permeate the child so that it can take hold of and finally, as an adult, not only stand on the earth, but ‘quake’ the earth. We can wake up the earth. The earth will not wake up if human beings do not wake up. Nature is not conscious of itself, but we can be conscious, not only of it but also of ourselves. And that is a bit of an earthquake that happens.

With the words of Jesus, John baptises him and Matthew describes that the heavens open and John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove. It is the movement of the Spirit that resembles a dove. John hears: “This is my beloved Son, in him I reveal myself completely.” This is a complete revelation of the Father in the Son. And it is ongoing.

What happens when the Spirit becomes present in the man Jesus of Nazareth? He goes into a period of preparation. We, as modern human beings, should take note of this, that it requires time to transition from one experience of life into another. Transitions in life are a process that needs to be undergone, it is not like a switch that takes us from one situation into the next. We must honour this process. Jesus is taken by the Spirit into the loneliness of a desert experience. It is an experience of nurturing warmth, not a cold experience. After 40 days and 40 nights: a period of gestation – the period of 40 is the period of a process through which something can come into reality. One may imagine that the conception of Christ in the person of Jesus of Nazareth took place in the Jordan and after this period of 40 days and nights the birth of Christ into the person of Jesus of Nazareth takes place. It is at this moment, this moment as of a birth, that something extraordinarily human, filled with Christ-forces, can take place. Jesus can speak and assert Himself. He can discern what the Adversarial forces bring, and He can declare out loud what He stands for and not be swayed.

The Adversary says: “If something of the Divine is truly born in you (if you are the Son of God), let these stones change into bread.” He replies: “The human being does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Our nourishment comes from The Word, it comes from what we can hear and what we can understand. It comes from a relationship. When we are in a relationship we speak with one another. We find ourselves conversing with a newborn baby; we use tone, inflection and carefully chosen words. And there is a response from the baby, even though it is not at the level that a child or adult would give. The newborn recognises from the conversation that it has landed in a place that wants it, welcomes it and wants to know it. This is our first stage of incarnation: a capacity. This is the first thing we wait for in a child, its ability to speak. The capacity to stand and speak for ourselves is huge. It is important in these times to be able to say what we stand for. It is important, when we speak, to speak for what we stand for, not to simply speak in opposition. This is important in this Temptation. It is a confrontation and not a conflict. Jesus stands in front of the Adversarial forces and stands for something. Therefore, it is not necessary for Him to turn the stone to bread. He has another transformation that must occur: His Body is to become the Bread of Life. It is not the external substance of the world that needs to be changed, rather it is the internal substance that needs to be changed.

These are the first two steps of incarnation. The first step is from the light of the star into the body and into the capacity for speech in the human being. And for standing; speaking and standing. The two first elements that make us human.

Now we have to become masters of our world. In Matthew Chapter 8 we hear that the process of incarnation is deepening itself, descending from the heavens into the earthly constitution. One of the signs is when we have mastery of ourselves so that we can manage the chaos of the world around us. “Then He got into the ship, and His disciples followed him. And see, there was a great swell and movement in the sea, so that the ship was quite swamped by the waves. But He slept. Then they came to Him and said: ‘Lord, help! We are perishing.’ He said to them, ‘How full of fear you are, and how weak is your sense of self!’ (The translation is often: ‘how weak is your faith’.) They are not perishing. They are not mastering the conditions around them. The process of feeling fully incarnated into the reality of life is that we can do what He does. He stands up and commands the winds and the sea and there is great calm. Our capacity is to command the circumstances around us because the circumstances around us are usually of our own making. When we are able to master ourselves, we have an ability to do some mastery of the space immediately around us. I can calm this space which is the space around me. “And they said, full of wonder, ‘What kind of Being is this…?’” What kind of being has this level of mastery? In His incarnation He has full mastery of the elements around Him. We have not quite developed to that extent yet, but we have the ability to use the Christ-forces that are within us and do with them what we can to achieve mastery over our inner space to arrive at inner calm and quiet. Christ displays mastery over the air and the water. (Fire, now air and water.)

There is even greater mastery in Matthew chapter 14. This is a capacity that we are working on in our soul-spiritual capacity, which is to walk on the water. “The ship was already many stadia from land and was being beaten by the waters, for the wind was against them.” They are again in the surge of air and water. “In the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw Him walking on the sea they were frightened (Again the disciples experience fear. They are observing something they have not been able to manage in themselves.).” They think they are seeing a phantom, but Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I; have no fear.” John’s Gospel says it more powerfully, “Take heart, I AM, have no fear.” Jesus is not a spirit, He is an embodied spirit, with the full presence of the Christ in Him. “Then Peter says, ‘Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you over the water’. He says, ‘Come!’” It is something Peter can do. He gets out of the boat and walks to Jesus. “But when he felt the wind he became afraid and began to sink, and he cried out: ‘Lord, save me!’ And at once Jesus reached out His hand and drew him near and said, ‘How weak is your heart! Why did you become unsure?’” It is the same thing He said on the previous occasion: Why did you become unsure? Why did you doubt yourself? You had mastery over yourself, so what brought on the doubt that you could not continue, and resulted in fear?

This is the next step in the incarnation of Christ into Jesus: He can stand and declare His position to the Adversary. He has mastery of the elements of wind and water. He can even walk on the water. One can see it as having taken hold of those forces that storm in us and out of us. He can hold the calm and bring everything back to where He is master over it and not subject to it.

Matthew chapter 16: Peter declares that he can see the Christ in Jesus. He can see that He is the one who is anointed. He can declare the Jesus is not John the Baptist, Elijah, or a prophet of old; He is the one, the Christ. After this Matthew and Mark say six days go by while Luke counts the day of the confession and the day of the event and so arrives at eight days going by (an octave). Jesus takes Peter, James and John, “as an intimate group, up on a high mountain. And He was transformed before them. His countenance shone like the sun, and his garments became shining white like light itself.” Here is a radiance that comes. It is a radiance in conversation. They see Moses and Elijah. In the original Greek Moses and Elijah are in a ‘community of conversation’ with Jesus. It is the conversation of the human being. We are structured in a lawful way. We are connected to the law. And we are connected to the inspiration of the prophets, to what they bring. We balance what they bring of structure and form with freedom and aspiration – Moses and Elijah. Jesus needs both the sources – He needs that conversation to radiate out. There is a history here that must be taken into me in order to take hold of something. And they hear again the words that are very similar to what was heard at the Baptism. Now the three disciples hear them. “This is my Son, the Beloved. In Him I have been revealed. Listen to Him.” The power of the Divine is in this human being. What he says will further reveal the Divine. Matthew endeavours to reveal a process from the Baptism, through what happens after the 40 days in the desert, to the mastery of the wind and waves, to the radiance of light. There is something that is becoming ever more real in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We see a mastery of the warming forces, a mastery of the wind and air, a mastery of the water, and a radiance that can now shine, not out there as in the star, but now in the very being of Jesus.

Now we look at the Mystery of Golgotha. The preparation for this happens in the Garden of Gethsemane and reveals something of the incarnating process for each human being. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prays that what is about to happen to him not happen. “If it is possible, let me be spared this cup, yet not my will but Yours be done.” There is an acceptance that we are here to fulfil something, that we are sent into this world. This links back to the words that Jesus said to John the Baptist: “Let it be so. It is good thus so that we properly fulfil all that destiny requires.” There is a plan and a destiny. Yet, we do not have to follow this plan. But if we follow the plan, we incarnate consciously onto the earth. Jesus prays this three times, really anchoring it. Jesus recognises that He is not on earth to indulge His wishes but to fulfil a mission. It is the Divine will He must get hold of. We carry in us an aspect of the Divine will, which is that we develop into the human being of the future, which was the original concept of what a human being is. It is not our will to drive us to that point, it is God’s will. It is not going to happen if we refuse to follow the plan.

It is time that we become ever more aware of what is being asked of us, so that we build ourselves as human beings according to this plan and that we don’t build something that appears human but actually isn’t.

We may wonder why in the Communion of the Act of Consecration of Man (the Human Being) the priests repeat the words three times of taking the bread and the chalice. There is a spiritual reality in saying it three times; it represents something, and the reality is present in a different way. Jesus does not repeat his prayer to the Father three times in the Garden of Gethsemane, each time the words are filled with more and expanded, until they land as a reality. This is the preparation for what will happen at the Crucifixion.

In Matthew 27 we read; “And see, the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks split, and the tombs opened and many of the dead who had sanctified themselves, arose.” This describes the power of resurrection into the very earthly reality – the earth shook. “And the Roman centurion and his men (100 men) who were keeping watch over Jesus were awestruck when they saw the earthquake and everything that happened, and they said, ‘this really was the Son of God.’” We should read this as taking hold of earth-reality and shaking it; it is a spiritual reality that even the Roman soldiers experienced. Through this we know that something has completely landed in the person of Jesus, having taken hold of every aspect and fibre of His being, right down into the physical body.

Matthew chapter 28: “When the Sabbath was over, in the early morning light of the first day of the week (Sunday), Mary of Magdala and the other Mary came to see the tomb”. If we imagine that up to this point we have lived only the first great week of Creation, then this first day of the week, Sunday, is the beginning of a new week and a new creation. It is the eighth day since the first day of the first Creation.

It is the early morning light, the dawning light from the East. This was the same experience of the Magi when they experienced the star.

“And behold, there was a great earthquake – it is the second earthquake that happens at the moment of realisation that the Resurrection has happened – the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, came and rolled the stone away and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning, and his garment was shining white like snow. – He has the radiance that we know existed for Jesus; the forces of the Divine that were real and apparent at the moment of the Transfiguration. – His presence terrified the guards, – Whenever an angel appears, human beings become overwhelmed, overawed and fearful. Therefore, the first words an angel speaks are, ‘fear not’. – they trembled and fell down as if dead. And the angel said to the women, ‘Have no fear.’”

Whenever some substantial element of the incarnation takes place the people around are fearful. When He calms the sea, when He walks on the water, even at the Transfiguration when the disciples fall to the ground and Jesus goes up to them and touches them and it is only Jesus as they had known him. “’He is not here. He has risen, as He Himself said. Come and see the place where he lay. Now go quickly to his disciples and say to them: He has risen from the dead and will lead you to Galilea where you will behold Him. Behold, that is what I have to say to you.’ Quickly they left the tomb, filled with both fear and joy, and they ran to take the message to the disciples.” The great power of this message is not that He has risen but that He has risen AND He will lead you to Galilea where you will behold Him.

In other words, He will take to you to where you need to be. We are on a journey. The whole idea of incarnating onto the earth is that we have something to do and somewhere to go. We are not here by accident. That is very important. It is an extremely powerful reality. We live in a time when we are subject to certain insinuations, certain suggestions, that we really do not need to incarnate onto the earth properly. That we can escape our responsibilities as human beings; that we can hand them over. An Artificial Intelligence can do it better than we can. Someone else can decide it for us. Someone else can take control instead of us. That we can step back, that we can escape. That we do not have to incarnate. Incarnating is not easy, but it is absolutely necessary, if we are to achieve anything.

The one thing that we have to achieve is becoming the future human being. We can only do that by incarnating onto the earth and working on ourselves so that it is possible that the opening words of Matthew’s Gospel are something we can also say about ourselves: This is the book of how I, bearing the Christ, become ever more a full human being.

The process of incarnation is beautifully captured in Matthew’s Gospel, also in its power of how the elements are transformed: fire, wind, water, earth. The earth quakes at the moment of death with a new power that is released and the earth quakes when the women arrive to realise what is the power of Resurrection. Because of the word ‘and’ it means that it is not just the power of the present moment in which something is resurrected and renews, it is the power of the present moment that takes us, because of the ‘and’, into the future; behold, there is a place to go. The power of Resurrection is not the end of the picture, it is the beginning of the next step.

That is why it is relevant for our time that we feel ourselves forever held in that renewal. Because, if we don’t, we feel that the world is coming to an end. The reality that we must not only comprehend, but live, is that the world is in need of the renewal that takes us on the next step and nothing will happen if it does not happen in us. Incarnation is the way that it happens, the incarnation of the Christ-forces in the human being.

​Report by John-Peter Gernaat

​The theme for this talk comes from the Prologue of the Gospel of John. Michaël began by reading a part of this Prologue from the rendition by John Madsen of the translated by Emil Bock.

​John is described here as a witness to the light, and he is described as a messenger of that light (see the article St John – The messenger of Light by Rev. Michaël Merle). In the talk on St John as the messenger of Light this was considered at hand of the word that can be translated as ‘messenger’ or as ‘angel’. This word is used by Mark in chapter 1 of his Gospel which echoes the Prophet Isaiah, Exodus and the Prophet Malachi.

Now we shall consider St John as the witness to the Incarnation. The Greek word for witness comes into the English language with a different meaning. We use this word to mean someone who has died while proclaiming their Christian faith. The word is ‘martyr’. This word means witness and, originally, had no connection with death or dying as a result of the witnessing. A true martyr will keep witnessing even at the cost of their life. In other words, they will continue testifying to the truth. Anyone willing to witness to what they know to be true is a martyr. A witness must be able to speak to the truth; by remaining silent they cannot be a witness. In this sense St John is the great witness of the incarnation. Mark writes it in his Gospel, that it is John who hears the words spoken from the Heavens when he can see the Spirit descending like a dove. This means that many who gathered were not able to perceive the Spirit descending like a dove. They may have sensed that something quite remarkable was happening, but they did not have the soul-organ of perception to see the Spirit descending like a dove, and they wouldn’t have had the soul organ of perception to hear the words spoken from the Heavens. They may have heard it as rolling thunder. But John can hear it: “This is my beloved Son in whom I will reveal myself fully”. That is a very important witnessing, that, from the very beginning of reading the Gospel we know that the very fullness of the Divine is revealed in Christ. This is something the disciples do not even grasp while they are following Christ. At the Last Supper, just before the great Mystery of Death and Resurrection, after three years of being with the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, having come to know him, live with him, experience him, and he is speaking about the Father, Phillip still turns to Him and says: “Show us the Father”. The response: “How long have I been with you? If you have seen me, you have seen the Father!” It is an extraordinary statement of response. Because, in Christ the fullness and the complexity of the Divine is revealed.

We are a lot like Phillip, even though we have the Gospels and have had them for centuries and people have internalised them and have prayed and have come to a realisation of exactly what John was witnessing and have written some beautiful works of theology to impart this insight, we still struggle to comprehend, fully, the complexity of the Divine.

We are still not able to grasp the fullness of this revelation. This means that the revelation is ongoing. It is not a revelation of words, but a revelation of experience. As we are experiencing the nature of the Divine around us, within us and within the community at large, the revelation is alive, it is happening. Christ is revealing Himself, in us to each other. This means that we experience the witnessing of the incarnation and the revealing of the incarnation, the expression of it, in the way in which we can interact with each other. We are still a part of that whole picture.

What John does is bring this witnessing to the fore, and the Gospel of John expresses this very beautifully. There is a reason for that. The full soul experience of John the Baptist pours into the being who writes the Gospel of John. After John the Baptist is beheaded, his soul constitution pours itself into this disciple who writes the Gospel of John. He bears in himself this witnessing of John the Baptist. It strengthens him. It means that he is able to undergo another stage in his initiation and development because he can stand at the foot of the cross and hear the words: “Son, this is your mother. Mother, this is your son.” This is an extraordinary initiation for the community of being. One can say that this ‘marriage’ of mother and son, this uniting of forces of care, love and creativity – a mother gives birth to a son – and here the son is asked to take into himself that quality, to take her. And we hear in the gospel that from that moment he took her into his home, into himself, into his being. He takes her in with him into community. This is possible because the John who stands at the foot of the cross is a witness to the incarnation. That is why the other disciples are not there, because they have not yet reached that level of witness. That comes for them when they feel the power of the Holy Spirit at Whitsun. Then they too can become witnesses.

What is this witnessing? We hear some of it in the Prologue of John: when we hear:​

​The workshop began with a presentation that focussed on the Epistle in this season of St John’s, the letter that is prayed at the beginning and at the end of the Act of Consecration of the Human Being. We will come to understand what it is to pray this letter at the beginning of the Act of Consecration of the Human Being and what it is to pray it at the end Act of Consecration of the Human Being. The inserted prayer for St John’s-tide will also come under discussion. The correct liturgical term for an inserted prayer is an embolism. This term has been usurped by the medical profession.
 
The presentation began by introducing a word that derives from Greek but has lived as an idea since the earliest civilisations. The Zarathustran religion was familiar with the concept and so was the Ancient Indian culture. The word is Aithein from the Greek αἴθειν. The word is pronounced ethyn (with the ‘e’, the ‘th’ and the ‘y’ as in the word therapy). The word meant to burn and to shine. It was a fire that shone, a light that burned brightly and shone. Thus, it was a light where the source of the light was fire. It is a burning that shone out. This word became the foundation for another word in the Greek language: aither. This meant ‘the upper air’, the upper air where the light of the sun is captured to be transmitted to the earth’s surface. What is radiated by the sun, which is a source of warmth, and light and fire, is captured by the upper air and transmitted to the surface of the earth.
 
The word ‘aither’, for upper air, came into Latin, and through old French and the Norman conquest of Britain gives us ‘ether’ in English. There is a lot about ether that is misunderstood. There are several meanings of ether.

• It was used to describe the substance that was believed to occupy space. The space between the sun and the earth and between the planets and beyond the planets is filled with ether. The first problem arises: that a word that was conceptually connected with forces, powers and spiritual insight is used to describe a physical manifestation.
• It is also used to describe a pleasant-smelling, colourless volatile liquid that was used as an anaesthetic.
• It was also used in a literary sense. An example might be that ‘odours dispersed into the ether’.
• It can also mean air as in the medium through which things moves, which is a good understanding of ether on a physical level. One could say: ‘the soul wafts across the ether’. It means more than just the air, it means something that is able to move through the air. There is a power or force that enables this activity to happen.

 
The latter meaning of ether is the nature of ether that is discussed in this presentation. It is the force or power that makes it possible for something to be transmitted through air. In the considerations of this workshop there is a deep connection between ether and air. In physics, ether was considered as a rarified, highly elastic substance believed to permeate all space. Then when the substance could not be found, ether was thought to not exist. What is being described is the force behind what substantially appears or doesn’t appear.
 
The next concept is that of etheric forces. These are the forces of life. They are the forces of creativity. Therefore, we can say that these are forces that belong to Christ. They are Christ forces. We understand the human being and the world around us as having been shaped and formed with a physical form in which there is a living, forming capacity, force or power. Not to be confused with might or strength, which operate in the physical, but power. That is in the etheric. It is the possibility that we have a force in us that keeps forming us. When we lose this force, at death, the living body, now dead, disintegrates. There is a relationship for us between this formative force, the living force in us and air. The air that we breathe, our breath, is part of what sustains us and keeps us alive.
 
So, when Rudolf Steiner spoke about these etheric forces, he spoke about four different types of etheric forces and they appear to us in the stages of evolution. The first great stage of evolution brings us the warmth ether. The warmth ether is the force of coming into being, the force of becoming, of arising. In the second great stage of evolution, we have the light ether. This is our interest today. The light ether has the quality of raying out or extending, of growing. In the third great stage of evolutionary development, we get the tone ether. The tone ether has the quality of levity, of movement and the ordering of movement. In our time, the fourth great stage of evolutionary development, earth existence, we have the life ether. The life ether has to do with the force of wholeness and healing. All four ethers need to be experienced in our time. We need a relationship to the warmth ether, the light ether, the tone ether and the life ether. There are times of the year when each of these ethers becomes more apparent through the experience of the movement of the sun at the solstices and the equinoxes. There are four opportunities to notice the ethers. The warmth ether – the force of becoming, of appearing, of arising – has been associated with Christmas, in our attempt to relate to the spiritual world. We hear in our Advent epistle, the word “becoming”. The warmth ether is the ether of birth and of coming into being. The light ether of raying out and extending, is associated with St John’s. The tone ether of levity, of overcoming gravity, of movement, is Michaelmas. We hear it in the epistle, the quality of not being bound by gravity; of being able to arise in our spiritual force. The life ether, connected with forces of wholeness and healing, is connected with Easter and celebrated with the Resurrection. This is the possibility of growing into our true life as Spirit Human.
 
Michaël read something about the light ether in preparation for a study of the St John’s epistle, as there are many references to light ether qualities in this epistle. “We must understand that every earthly source of light is a receiver for the ether light.” This makes a distinction between ether light as a spiritual force and power that makes physical light possible. Physical light is a form of something spiritual and that is the ether light of which is being spoken. “We must understand that every earthly source of light is a receiver for the ether light whose direction of activity is aimed towards its peripheral origin, the infinitely distant plane.” The ether light fills space. “In contrast to the radial directed nature of light (light radiates from a source and has a direction) air is in itself directionless, a chaos.” The word ‘gas’ comes to us from the word meaning ‘chaos’. “Air is always between things, continuous and coherent within itself, filling the space. This inner coherence of air is evident when one tries to rarify it. It is barely possible to create a true, complete vacuum (because of this inner coherent nature of air). The most characteristic quality of air is its elasticity. It can be compressed and stretched. Light ether must therefore be an expansive, stretching force and the contrary physical force will be the force of densifying and compacting. The opposite of elastic is brittle. Light, physical light is brittle which is why it can be split. If I wave a stick in the air the air moves out of the way and then flows together again behind the stick. If I hold the stick in front of a light source, the light does not join up behind the stick but rather shines on divided in a straight line on either side of the stick.” So, light can be split and broken. That is the physical quality of light, but the ether light is elastic. The force is elastic. The force is able to move in the medium of air. Therefore, when we speak of ether light, we must be careful that we do not think about the qualities of physical light, or we are missing the point. The ether light lives as a force that fills all of space.
 
“Another property of air is tension. There is no air without a certain degree of tension. Tension is an internal effect that creates and sustains. Light demonstrates the opposite phenomenon. With physical light all is outer effect, externalise. Take a source of light, a candle flame, the essential quality is not what holds it together but what it releases, what it rays out. The increase or decrease of tension corresponds to the greater or lesser intensity of light.
 
“The light ether also works organically, active in living organisms when we are able to also grow and expand and increase in volume and take up more space, whether we are a tree or a human being.
 
“The light ether creates the periphery and thereby space itself, or more concisely, ether creates light ether spaces. In the organic realm light ether as growth energy causes the specialness of living things.” We can take up space. There is no living thing that does not take up space, a certain volume. We can see it because it appears and because we can see it, we realise it has a form. The ether light force helps to create the periphery, the skin, the outer shell of what is able to take up that space, and live and grow and expand in space.
 
“In summary, we can characterise the life ether as the actual vitalising and individualising force that creates organic wholeness and heals wounded ones.” This is a description of a Christ force. The ethers are really the forces of the Son God. These are the forces of creativity, of life, of warmth: light, tone, life. These forces of creativity as also expressed in the Trinity epistle in relation to the Son God. The Son God works with the Father God which offers substance and being, with the Spirit God that completes the picture and holds it altogether. They reveal themselves in space and in time: in the ordering of space and in the course of time. We are looking at the Christ forces. St John the Baptist announces to us this force; it has to do with the formative forces of our origin, what has formed and shaped us; created us in the way that we are. St John is the messenger of that light ether force, of that light, the spiritual light that we know as the light of Christ. This is the light that St John longs for and the light that he knows. It is the light that he can see and speak about; and the light that then enters us, and the way in which we develop a new sense organ for this light. It is a new sense organ for experiencing the Christ in our lives.
 
“In summary, we can characterise the light ether as the actual vitalising and individualising force that creates organic wholeness – that created wholeness, organic and spiritual, living and truly living, and heals wounded ones. It forms organisms sculpturally by creating a skin and sustains integrity in every part of the organism. Life ether creates living bodies. It embodies. It is not the body but creates living bodies.” Opposite to this is the earth element which creates object bodies that we can come up against. An object body can be divided. This is what modern science does, it fragments the body when it considers the body.
 
At this point we heard the St John’s epistle and what is says about life and about light. We considered each phrase of the epistle as each phrase expresses a complete concept. This was followed by a consideration of the inserted prayer.
 
From these we learn that St John announces the blessing of Christ. He is the messenger of the light and a witness to its arrival on earth in the being of Jesus who is then known as Jesus the Christ, Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father God, and our Lord, as we hear in the Act of Consecration. We are then able to experience the full power of the ether light, not just in the world around us, but in us, and through us, that ether light can now ray out, because we become a source of it too. That is the great mystery that St John announces, that the light can be in us.
 
We then had the opportunity to listen to and fulfil the Act of Consecration of the Human Being.
 
This was followed by dividing into smaller groups to consider two exerts of scripture: the pericopes chosen this year for the Second and Third Sundays of St John’s-tide: John 1: 19-29 and John 3: 22-36, reading the translation proclaimed from the altar.
 
John the Baptist is the messenger of the light; Christ is the light. The force, the true spiritual power, in what we can speak of as the light ether, is the creative force and life of Christ. The ethers: warmth, light, tone and life manifest as the elements of fire, air, water and earth for us in our material reality. We should not mistake the force behind light for the thing itself. There is a whole world of life and growth and ripening that has produced the fruit (the mango, the avocado, the pear). When we eat the fruit, we eat the substance of these processes but not the processes. However, in the substance something of the processes are present because there would be no substantial form without those processes. We must not mistake the thing for the process that brings it about. We heard earlier that we can split light with a stick, but light ether is everywhere, making the light possible and also belonging to the substance of air.
 
If St John is the messenger of light, he is the messenger, the light is the light of Christ. And much like he is an independent human being, he is also just the message, the process in him is the message, the Word of Flame, the announcing. Then the light that we speak of is the process and the power of what manifests as the Christ being in Jesus of Nazareth.
 
The questions that we considered were the distinction between the baptism of water and the baptism of fire. What is the baptism of water? And why do we not have it today? Baptism means immersion. When we baptise and infant or a child it is with smallest quantity of water and with salt and ash.
 
The first passage from scripture (John 1: 19-29) was read in order to discover what it says about baptism, and about the role of St John and about his relationship to Christ. After reading the passage the question was that John immersed people in water to the point of death and they would emerge gasping for air and be filled with something: a reconnection. The question to consider is how we can immerse ourselves as adults without being immersed in water. The translation provided to us spoke of the baptism connecting the person to the formative forces of humankind. These are the etheric forces that we carry in us. They form us. They are the Christ forces of life in us. This is the life that could die; it is the life that might not last if we cannot reconnect to the intention, if we cannot reconcile ourselves to its true purpose.
 
So, the baptism of John the Baptist woke people up. It matched with his message of “metanoia” – change your mind and heart. It asks us to rethink, feel and act according to this new consciousness, become aware of one’s connection to life and of one’s need to have it. Become aware that one is connected to these formative forces. However, it is only an awareness. This was a baptism that woke one up. It was not a baptism that immersed one in the new life of Christ. It was a baptism that immersed one in the consciousness of one’s original connection to Christ in the Christ forces – the formative forces.
 
Christ comes with a different baptism: the baptism of the Holy Spirit. He immerses us in the new life of Christ, in the reality of the Mystery of Golgotha, in the Resurrection. He immerses us so that we are no longer just connected to our formative forces, we are also connected to our spiritual destiny.
 
John connects us to where we came from, Christ connects us to where we are going. John reconnects us to our memory that we came from the Divine. When an adult arrives at The Christian Community, we understand that the person has woken up to this reality, the person is already baptised in that consciousness, is already baptising themselves in that consciousness. The priest no longer needs to do this for them, the individual can do it for themselves. In The Christian Community an infant is baptised into a community that will carry them spiritually. An adult must carry themselves spiritually, the need for external immersion into such a community is no longer necessary.
 
Baptism in its essence means immersion into a reality. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is to immerse one into the reality of the ‘I’ of the human being finding a home in the human being, integrated into the human being. It is only through the integration of the ‘I’ that we can work from the inside to develop ourselves into the future human being. This will not happen without the working of the ‘I’-organisation. In the Christian Community baptism is ongoing and we confirm it by making the three crosses in The Act of Consecration of the Human Being. We recommit to the baptism in the Father, in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, as scripture requires in the conclusion of Matthew’s Gospel: “Go forth and be teachers of all peoples and baptize them in the name and with the power of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.
 
What then is Christian baptism? Because of the baptism of the Holy Spirit encapsulated in the event of Whitsun (Pentecost), we have a constitution into which we are born that provides us with the power of our own baptism as adults by immersing ourselves in the Act of Consecration of the Human Being.
 
The second excerpt from the Gospel (John 3: 22-36) was read in order to continue the investigation into who John is and who Christ is. What is the relationship between John the Baptist and Christ? The first consideration is to be found in the two talks on St John: St John – messenger of the Light and St John – witness to the Incarnation. A question that was posed was why the announcing of the coming was necessary. We experience this throughout our lives, that events of significance are announced. The birth is announced with labour pains. As human beings we need to prepare ourselves inwardly to fully appreciate the arrival. This can be the overture to a composition that prepares us for the themes that we will hear in the composition, and when we hear them in their context we have been prepared. We find in these excerpts from scripture the statement of John: “He who sent me”. John is sent by the Father to announce the Son and the Son announces the Father – in Him the Father is revealed – and the Son announces the Spirit – “I will ask the Father to send the Paraclete”. We hear it also in the Act of Consecration that the Son orders and bears the life of the world which He receives from the Father and makes whole through the Spirit.
 
Michaël brought the way in which the St John’s epistle expresses John as the messenger of the Light and the witness to the Incarnation. The Epistle ends with our need to develop a new sense organ. As we develop the organ to sense the light, we are developing a sense for love. This is the Christ’s forces of a sense of love. This connects to the instruction given by Christ that we “love another as I have loved you”. This sense of love that we are developing senses the Christ in the other even when the other person is not displaying any Christ qualities. Even when a person’s behaviour is despicable, we should be able to sense the Christ in that person through this new sense of love. This sense will have developed by the sixth post-Atlantean Epoch which will only develop in over a thousand years to come. Then it will be expressed to the extent that we will have developed a sense of the other “so keenly that we will be able to know that our neighbour is hungry, and we will feed our neighbour before we settle ourselves to sleep”. This level of care for the other will develop only if we engage in the world today.

John the Baptist is the messenger and the witness of the light power and earthly reality of Christ. This is the relationship between John the Baptist and Christ. Hold this in the understanding of what the ether light is. The light power is the light ether which is the forming force of light. It is the spiritual light that enlightens; the true light that is the life of a human being; and the true life of a human being, John tells us in the Prologue, is the light that now shines from the human being.

In the first of what is hoped will be many such talks, Derek Cook shared his life story. Having been born in England before World War II he grew up in a society quite different from the one children experience today. The risk of an invasion from Germany in the early part of the war resulted in young children being 'evacuated' to foreign countries for their safety. Derek and his older brother were placed on a ship that sailed in a convoy across the Atlantic to the United States. We were able to share what this experience was like, and the experience of growing up in a foreign country with foster parents.

We learned what brought Derek to South Africa, him meeting his wife, Mavis, and the career he carved for himself in financial auditing and later as owner of a curtain manufacturing business. ​