Passion Libretto Part V: Remembrance
This is the final day of this six day Holy Week offering. On this Holy and still Saturday, in the Passion Libretto Part V: Remembrance, Cynthia reminds us there is nothing to be done, everything is in the grave. All that has been set in motion, is in gestation and nothing has emerged above the surface quite yet. The texts Cynthia chose to conclude this Passion Libretto are based on Mary Magdalene keeping watch from the wholeness of love, power, witness, and solidarity. Mary Magdalene was full of grief and stability, capable of holding both of Jesus’ natures, fully human and fully divine, standing in remembrance reconnecting herself in the eternal presence. We too are invited into this remembrance.
As a way of meditatively engaging this material, we invite you to light a candle, take a few conscious breaths, find your feet, and sink into the quiet that always exists deeply within the sanctuary of your heart. Then, as you are ready, begin to listen to Cynthia’s commentary from the ear of your open heart awareness. Today’s video is about 13 minutes.
Cynthia invites us to use the last five texts of Part V as a reflection for the five weeks post Easter called the season of Eastertide. Work with the first two parts of the text in Part V, Songs 3:1 and Songs 8:6-7, by way of the practice of Lectio Divina using this simple modified version:
Read the text or portion of the text, paying attention to what word or phrase stands out to you and allow yourself to repeat it briefly.
Read it a second time, slowly listening and paying attention to what is resonating within, what is troubling, what speaks directly to the heart even if we don’t understand or know why. Listen with your three centers noticing how the text lands in your body in sensation, gestures, postures as well as emotions and feelings that emerge. Allow your mind to ponder the thoughts, associations, and images that arise. Chew on what comes up and whether there is a specific way it is speaking directly to you. Listen for what is relevant to your life right now.
Read it a third time, noticing whether a prayer or mantra emerges that can be offered on behalf of you, others, the world, or God.
Listen to the music of Part V of “The Passion,” allowing it to wash over you, resting collected as all that has taken place in the inner sanctuary of your heart continues to settle and assimilate, as you simply sit in the mystery allowing it to draw you deeper. Today’s music is about 27 minutes.
Finally, write down some of what spoke to you from this reflective meditation. What does today’s material teach you about substituted love?
As this offering comes to a close, Cynthia leaves us with a five week invitation to take with us and live into through Eastertide focusing on one of the truths from the last five sections of the Passion Libretto.
Here are her invitations for the next five weeks:
Week 1 – Work with “Behold, I give you a new commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. I am the vine, you are the branches: Abide in me, as I in you.” Live into this in the light of the resurrection. What does it mean to be the recipients of the new commandment, the commandment of inter-abiding love?
Week 2 – Work with “I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. You DO know the truth and it HAS set you free.” Live into the truth is not some sort of dogma that you have to sign your name to, that the truth is the way because it is the life, because it opens to freedom and fullness and you’ve tasted that and the challenge now is to live from what I’ve tasted. How do I live the way in all of its joys and abundance?
Week 3 – Work with “Dear friends, let us love one another for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God. And knows God, for God is Love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.“ Live in love and let that love that you live in be and bear the fragrance within your atmosphere of God, if God is love, as you live love, you live God and you know it.
Week 4 – Work with “Place me like a seal upon your heart. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” How do we perfect this love so that we become fearless, which doesn’t necessarily mean that we have no more fears, but fear doesn’t hold us back from love, perfect love casts out fear.
Week 5 – Work with “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, Even though he dies. And he who lives and believes in me Will never die.” What does that mean to you? How can this be? Does that mean that we don’t physically die or does that mean that something has already been birthed that is beyond the domain of death? Live into it. If we could actually live into this promise we would have been in a whole different place through Covid, through the hatreds and anxieties. So I invite you to live into this promise: in following this path leads to the life which is Jesus, you can operate out of something in you which already lives beyond death, you can ‘die before you die’ and through that death live like you’ve never lived before.
Thank you everyone for journeying together this sacred Holy Week and a special thank you to Finn Kirkpatrick for filming and editing the videos and Andrew Breitenberg for designing the PDF.
A blessed Easter Sunday to you,
Cynthia Bourgeault & Wisdom Waypoints Board
BRAVO <3
many thanks for this divinely timed offering. so beautiful, generous, poignant. thank you.
I am so grateful for your sharing this beautiful piece. God speaks to me so clearly through music. and this setting is powerful and puts my heart in an entirely new focus for Eater and its meaning. Thank you Cynthia, and Wisdom Waypoints.
You DO know the truth and it HAS set you free.
Thank you for these powerful series. I feel I can reclaim my tradition in a truthful way with the message of love and not power & pain.
Most grateful to Cynthia and the Wisdom Waypoint Board for a most selfless gift to truly understand and live the Lord’s passion!
Dear Cynthia, All of my world 48 joys and sorrows melted into world 24/12 through abiding in Christ’s truth, perfected love, and promise of eternal life; which was so beautifully presented in this collaborative work of art. Blessings on your Easter celebration. Mari
Thank you Cynthia. What a beautiful start to Easter Sunday and for the next five weeks leading to ascension. Bless you .
I have cried and cried through this series, Cynthia… thank you so much… I sense this ‘music’ was exactly what I needed to re-view many of my life’s conclusions, to be more precisely in service of Divine Will at this particular time… I look forward to the weeks to come, to a deeper and deeper connection with the Wisdom Waypoints’ collective intention.
Thank you Cynthia and Wisdom Waypoints. I don’t have words to express how deeply I have been touched by your Libretto and the music of Ray Adams. God bless you and yours as this Easter season unfolds.
Thank you Cynthia, and all of you who have been with us this Holy Week together
This has been a deep week in silence and although at home.
With deep gratitude.
God bless you.
THERE ARE NO WORDS… I BOW WITH REVERENCE…
THANK YOU, CYNTHIA AND THANK YOU, WISDOM WAY POINTS.
BLESSINGS,
MARIA ESTHER
As a lapsed Catholic who has kept alive a longing for Jesus, this piece spoke to me so powerfully. And with such Reality. It bridged the pain of Jesus’s suffering with the alchemy of love. Thank you deeply for this gift of the passion that has so awakened my heart.
“I am the vine, you are the branches – Love one another as I have loved you.
Place me like a seal upon your heart. – Abide in me as I in you… “
There is a lot to practice … My Lord, do I still have time… – at least now in this my age of 80:ies ; so much I have wasted my time – to pray strength to abide and hold on!
NOLI ME TANGERE
So powerful! I wonder when it was first performed and how thrilling it must have been for Cynthia. Were you there and where was it? Thank you so very much for sharing it with us this Holy Week!
While I hear why you might have liked it to end after Jesus offering his new commandment, I appreciate the recap of his core teachings. And the finale! Jesus bursting from death itself deserves such fanfare with the trumpets, bells and the proclamation to believe in his way of love.
With Easter love and blessings to you all…
This has been a beautiful way to live into Holy Week. Thank you, Cynthia, for sharing your gifts so generously with us.
Thank you Cynthia. As I leave for 10 days of silence at Snowmass, I will hold one reflection each day. You are a blessing. Thank you for sharing your gifts so generously.
Dear Cynthia (if I may)
I can’t thank you enough for this Holy Week offering. This year the services in the various churches I attended almost seemed calculated to drain the feeling and meaning from this most holiest of times in the liturgical calendar. Each day, it was your libretto and Ray Adams’ music that brought me back to the reality, allowed me to grieve, and feel everything deeply as it ought to be felt.
(And what a stroke of genius to bring in the Song of Songs!)
What a gift! Thank you!
Thank you, Cynthia. Your libretto is stunning and heals my heart. You bring me to God in Christ with the Mary’s and all the saints and angels and disciples and all that is as it is. Here and now on this tiny planet. How beautiful! Thank you.
Anna
This was a marvelous event. Thank you
“Place me like a seal upon your heart. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” This my motto to live in the love of God as Magdalene lived in Jesus’ love. When four eyes become two eyes.
Thanks so much, Cynthia, for awakening my fierce love for God and for Edmund, my husband who has been holding my hand as Cynthia takes us up on eagle’s wings to the heavenly realm. Blessed Easter to all of you who will read this.
Thank you, thank you Cynthia, Finn and Andrew and everyone at Wisdom Waypoints for this beautiful offering. My heart is full of gratitude. It has enabled a deeper Holy Week passage for this one and it has been such a blessing for us to journey together.
with a deep bow of Gratitude and taking Heart to Abide in Love,
emma