Wisdom Liturgy
OPENING READING FROM THE WISDOM JESUS
Jesus, the living master, is real, alive, intimately and vibrantly enfolding us right now, more present, in fact, than even your breath and your heartbeat. (136)
OPENING CHANT – Deeper than My Very Breath, by Marcella Kraybill-Greggo
Lyrics based on Cynthia Bourgeault’s Easter Wager in The Wisdom Jesus p 136:
Jesus, the living master, is real, alive, intimately and vibrantly enfolding us
right now; more present, in fact, than even your breath and your heartbeat.
Lyrics:
You are, Closer, closer, closer than my very breath;
Deeper, deeper, deeper than my beating heart.
READING FROM THE WISDOM JESUS
Cynthia approaches the life of Jesus as a sacrament: a sacred mystery whose real purpose is not to arouse empathy but to create empowerment. In other words, Jesus is not particularly interested in increasing either your guilt or your devotion, but rather in deepening your personal capacity to make the passage into unitive life. If you are willing to work with that wager, the passion begins to make sense in a whole new way. (106)
Jesus implanted himself deeply at ground zero, at the root of the root of all density, in order to insulate us from its sting and empower us to live within our human flesh as he himself had lived. (107)
Fiat is Latin for let it be, the essential ingredient which enables the mystery to unfold. (111). Connecting Fiat with Kenosis and Fiat as Divine Creativity; once this point is grasped, Jesus’s Fiat in the Garden of Gethsemane is not merely a capitulation to divine necessity; it is his conscious participation speaking into birth the New Creation. (112)
For the first 40 days [post Easter] Jesus is back on the planet among his friends, and disciples, offering his final teaching and transmissions by way of a series of miraculous visitations known collectively as the resurrection appearances. Next comes the ascension…Then 10 days of hushed expectant waiting. Then comes the promised fiery descent of the Holy Spirit, which Christians celebrate as Pentecost [aka the 50 days of Easter]. (125-126)
Cynthia says: I believe firmly that during these great fifty days of Easter, that same invitation is extended to each one of us: to catch the drift of what Jesus is really inviting us to and to deepen our capacity to receive the intense spiritual energy available to us during this sacred season as a catapult to our own transformation. (126)
But to really know this presence you need to tune in on a different wavelength: to shift from your usual binary operating system to the heart frequency where this Jesus connection broadcasts. (136)
Jesus, the living master, is real, alive, intimately and vibrantly enfolding us right now. more present, in fact, than even your breath and your heartbeat. (136)
SILENT PRAYER
READING FROM THE WISDOM JESUS
When you do the practices that nurture the heart, you will sense this connection as a living bond. Your being becomes receptive to the higher meaning. …You are the vessel, the instrument that receives the wisdom. As you attune and fine tune your instrument, you will know. It’s not knowing something more, like a new fact of piece of esoteric information; it’s knowing deeper, knowing with more and more of your being engaged. (137)
The wisdom walk with Jesus is at every step of the way a recognition drama. At each new level of subtlety something in us must be able to see, to find our way to who he is now. Jesus [holds] a mirror before his friends to show them what stands in their way, what they will have to look at and work through in themselves in order to be able to see him through the light of their own hearts. (129)
The decisive breakthrough is not so much in what the disciples see as in how they see. They have come to understand that their attuned hearts are the instruments of recognition and that these same attuned hearts will bring them to their risen Lord moment by moment and forever. (130)
CHANT – by Elizabeth Combs
Lyrics:
May I never never lose my way, to the well of your memory;
And the power of your Living Flame; May it rise, May it rise in me.
CLOSING READING FROM THE WISDOM JESUS
We don’t often see that body of Christ hidden in the dots of our everyday, ordinary lives.
But every so often, if you let it, it will come to meet you; and with the patient opening of the eye of your heart it can become more and more an abiding state of your own being. (136)
Wisdom Liturgy Credits
This Wisdom Liturgy offering was contributed by Marcella Kraybill-Greggo and Henry Schoenfield. All chants and texts were credited above and used with permission from the authors.
A special note of thanks to our founding teacher, Cynthia Bourgeault, whose teachings and writings have inspired so many across the globe in reclaiming the Mystical heart of the Wisdom Path.