1 JOHN 3:2

I am aware that the above referenced quotation is and has been a periodic recurring reading in Roman Catholic liturgy service for several decades. I am also aware that during those six decades or so, I have yet to hear it or its meaning addressed in any homily. As a matter of usual routine, the selected epistle and gospel readings and their significance are addressed in the homilies with specific application to us, the communicants. Having noticed this aberration has caused me to ponder its reason, and after due consideration, I believe I know the “why”. It has to do with the basic fundamentals of religion.

You will recall that the God of the Jews was a vengeful God who demanded sacrifice to soothe his brow. Those sacrifices were usually burnt offerings which were both provided by and offered by the High Priest for a “pretty penny” ­–– a real money-making scheme. The Jews thought of their God as residing in some ethereal place called heaven who would send a messiah to restore paradise right here on earth just for them. When Jesus appeared, they recognized him as that messiah but when they ask him when he was going to restore the Kingdom, Jesus told them the Kingdom of God was spread out all over the earth around them and they didn’t see it. Their consternation became really magnified when Jesus told them he first had to die, but before his death at his last supper, he instructed them to recreate his body and blood from bread and wine.

 Those Bishops who formulated the Holy Roman Catholic Church in 325 AD, honoring their Jewish heritage, created a new ‘sacrificial religion’ known as Christianity. So, now we have the ‘sacrifice of the Mass’ — still attempting to appease an angry, vengeful God, and awaiting Jesus’ return so he might ‘restore the Kingdom’.

It seems quite clear to me that John recognized God in everyone of us. We, however, are blinded now and cannot see our glory, but when we die and see our reflection which is God, we will know and understand all just as our Father God — we are his children — his reflection. Obviously, John’s understanding is in total conflict with us making sacrificial offerings to ourselves. Both Catholic priests and Protestant ministers alike have nowhere to go with John’s philosophy except to negate the validity of their own existence — so, that reading gets routinely ignored.

Likely, there are many others, but I am aware of only four people who recognized God’s presence in all creation, Jesus, the Apostle John, Francis of Assie, and Meister Eckert, a German philosopher. It took me sixty years of intense study, reading and investigation before I stumbled on a course in Particle Physics which made it very clear to me that everything in this universe is made of identical perfect particles of energy which because of their basic characteristics, already exist in eternity but make the substrate for everything that has a temporal existence. Cumulatively, they form a ‘perfect rationality’ and a perfect ‘truth system’ outside of which there is no truth. That understanding not only allowed but demanded an essential definition of God as ‘A Perfect Rational Being’. When we die, our immortality will be exposed and we will see ourselves in  that state of Perfect Rationality just as the One who created us — that will truly be ‘heaven’.