THE
THREE GREAT FESTIVALS OF THE CHURCH
BY REV. ERIK SANDSTROM, SR.
In the New Church the great festivals of the year are
CHRISTMAS—EASTER—JUNE NINETEENTH. I
think they relate among themselves as promise—fulfillment—explanation. Each brings to remembrance some major event
on this earth, and each is a move towards the establishment of a new and
eternal kingdom of the Lord in both worlds.
The opening of the Word is at the heart of all three. When the Christmas and Easter events
happened, together they gave us the New Testament and the First Christian
Church, and June Nineteenth gave us the Writings and the New Christian Church.
Easter fulfilled what Christmas promised. For unless the Babe of Bethlehem, growing to
manhood, and after completing His three years of public mission on earth, had
risen from the tomb in glory and had been seen in glory, then the wondrous
birth and the miracles and preachings following could not have been remembered
as ending in a victorious triumph. His
life’s work would have appeared to end in the crucifixion. So it was His resurrection that changed the
history of man. He rose as the Immanuel,
God-with-us, our God visible and near. These
two festivals cannot be comprehended separately. Nor for that matter can the three! For the
third festival, celebrating an event in the spiritual world, builds on what
happened centuries earlier here on earth, and at the same time explains what
then took place and what is now taking place.
So there is also a trinal unit. And
together the three festivals lift us into an inner vision of a rational faith. Together they show us our Lord and God
reaching out to save.
With this in mind we will therefore review the first two
festivals as a unit, so that afterwards we may see the third festival in the
perspective of the first two. For June
Nineteenth has a mission of its own. It
invites our understanding to enter into all things that have happened before,
so that by understanding we may find the way to a truly human life, one that
leads to the Lord’s New Church and to His New Heavenly Kingdom. And it is fitting that we try to deepen our
celebration of the third festival in the month of June.
CHRISTMAS (Promise)
In all the festivals we tend to be attracted chiefly to
their dramatic aspects. For Christmas,
these include the scene at the manger with the Babe, Mary and Joseph, the
adoration of the shepherds, and (much) later, the arrival of the wise men led
by the star, from Jerusalem, “till it came and stood where the young Child was”
(Matt. 2:1,9). For Easter, they include the cross, Golgotha,
the empty tomb, and the resurrection stories.
And for June Nineteenth, we see the calling together of the twelve who
had followed the Lord in the world, and their being sent forth on the following
day to preach throughout the spiritual world the Gospel that the Lord God Jesus
Christ reigns.
These knowledges, learned from childhood and remembered with
deep affection, are good and holy memories.
Nor could we learn and understand deeper things without them. We should, however, from year to year try to
see more of the Lord’s wisdom and providence in the things we celebrate; for
the more we comprehend the inner causes that made all the above things happen,
the more will we exult in the wonders of the festivals and their impact on the
spiritual history of the Church.
As for the First Festival, we therefore ask,
Who was the
Babe born in Bethlehem?
In general we know that His soul was Divine and truly was
His Father, and that His body was born of a virgin. But what of His mind? And we now learn of the
Lord’s two heredities. For brevity we
quote the teachings with minimal comments of our own.
The Lord’s Two Heredities
1. From His
Divine through heaven. “Before the
coming of the Lord into the world, there was influx of life with men and with
spirits from Jehovah, or the Lord, through the celestial kingdom, that is,
through the angels who were in that kingdom, and hence they then had the
sovereignty. But when the Lord came into
the world, and thereby made the Human in Himself Divine, He put on just that
which was with the angels of the celestial kingdom, thus He put on this
sovereignty.” (Arcana Coelestia 6371. Please
note: Emphasis in this passage, as in all subsequent quotations, is added.)
The above teaching is given as the spiritual sense, or inner
meaning, of Jacob’s words as he blessed his twelve sons, here his son Judah. He said: “The scepter shall not depart from
Judah...until Shiloh comes” (Gen.49:10).
Judah is the celestial kingdom, and Shiloh the Lord.
But then the teaching goes on to draw the important
distinction between the Human Divine and the Divine Human, and we read:
“For previously the Divine transflux through that heaven had
been the Human Divine; it was also the Divine Man which was presented to view
when Jehovah so appeared. But this Human
Divine ceased when the Lord made the very Human in Himself Divine” (ibid.). And for clarification of this last sentence
we read two pages later that “the Lord made the Human in Himself Divine, in
order that from the very Divine Human of the Lord the Divine truth might
proceed, and thus might save man” (Arcana Coelestia 6373). Therefore, the “very Human” in Himself was
the Lord’s Divine Human. Finally, for a
distinction and definition of the two important terms “Human Divine” and
“Divine Human” we go back to Arcana Coelestia 2814e, where we read: “We may call the truth with the Lord which could be tempted,
and which underwent temptations, Truth Divine in the Lord’s Human Divine; but
the Truth which could not be tempted, or undergo any temptations because it was
glorified, the Divine Truth in the Lord’s Divine Human” (ibid.).
These statements concerning the Divine heredity through the
celestial kingdom will also give us some insight into the related teaching,
that “[the Lord] alone was born a spiritual celestial man ... [and this so] that He might make His Human
Divine, according to order from the lowest degree to the highest, and might
thus dispose into order all things in the heavens and in the hells” (Arcana
Coelestia 4594:2).
Further, these same teachings will lead us to see some of
the great secrets enfolded in the angel Gabriel’s words of Annunciation: “The
Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow
you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the SON OF
GOD” (Luke 1:35). Are we not here called
to ponder the very essence of Christmas? Who was He, the Babe of Bethlehem?
But we must also know of the Lord’s other heredity.
2. From the
Jewish race through the mother. “One may
be surprised that it is said there was hereditary evil from the mother with the
Lord; but as it is here (Gen 13:7) so manifestly declared, and the internal
sense is concerning the Lord, it cannot be doubted that it was so.... But there is a difference between hereditary
evil which is derived from the father, and that which is derived from the
mother. Hereditary evil from the father
is more interior, and remains to eternity, for it can never be eradicated. The Lord had no such evil, since He was born
of Jehovah as His Father, and thus as to internals was Divine, or Jehovah. But hereditary evil from the mother pertains
to the external man: This was with the Lord.
Thus the Lord was born as another man, and had infirmities as another
man.... The Lord, however, had no actual
evil, or evil that was His own, as He Himself declares in John: ‘Which of you
convicts Me of sin?’ (John 8:46)” (Arcana Coelestia 1573).
EASTER (Fulfillment)
The three festivals, singly and jointly, like the Sabbath,
are to be remembered. They are powerful
in our spiritual life. And we needed
first to see that Christmas tells us Who He was who came, and What in the Lord
rose to complete union with His infinite Divine, the Father. And on both of these points the Writings give
us detailed answers.
Now, as for Easter, our focus must be on
the Lord’s
Resurrection Body. For unless we know
that the Lord in rising rejected all things whatever that he had from the
mother, we will retain a confused concept of the Lord’s Divine Human. We will think that perhaps the Lord added
something finite to His Divine. For we
read that the Lord “rose again with the whole body, differently from any man”
(Divine Love and Wisdom 221:2).
Yet the idea that there is something finite, thus limited,
in the Lord our God is unthinkable. Indeed,
the very teaching just quoted is preceded by clarifying words that show how
that teaching is to be understood. We
read: “The Lord came into the world, and took upon Him a Human, that He might
put Himself in power to subjugate the hells and to reduce all things to order
both in the heavens and on the earth. This
[Divine] Human He super-induced over His former Human [Divine]...both His Humans
being however Divine, and therefore infinitely transcending the finite humans
of angels and men. And because He fully glorified
the natural Human even to its ultimates, therefore He rose again with the whole
body, therein differing from any man” (Divine Love and Wisdom 221:2). Thus He rose in a Body that was Divine and
infinitely transcended the finite humans of angels and men.
The fundamental teaching, not to be overlooked in contemplating
the Lord’s Resurrection Body, we find in the explanation of Abraham’s calling
his son’s name Isaac at his circumcision (Gen.
21:3-4). Three arcana are here
drawn forth, one of them (referring to “born unto Abraham”) being as follows:
“The Lord’s Divine Human was not only conceived, but also born, of
Jehovah, and
hence the Lord as to His Divine Human is called the Son of God and the
Only-begotten” (Arcana Coelestia 2628). Thus
the body in which the Lord appeared to His followers after His resurrection was
not born of Mary but of His own Divine. The
son of Mary died on the cross; the Son of God rose from the tomb.
This whole secret can also be seen contained in the Lord’s
words from the cross when He transferred His son-relationship from Himself to
His disciple John. “When Jesus therefore
saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His
mother: ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold your
mother!” (John 19:25-27).
Moreover, with regard to the body the Lord had from the
mother before His death and resurrection, we read that “the Lord, in the
sepulcher, and thus by death, rejected all the human from the mother and
dissipated it... and so He assumed the
Human from the Father. Thus the Lord,
thoroughly and clearly glorified, rose with the Human” (Athanasian Creed 162;
see also a similar teaching in Arcana Coelestia 6873).
We therefore see within the beloved Gospel stories that the
Lord throughout His life in the world struggled with a two-fold heredity, that
He fought against the one and glorified the other. He was in continuous temptation battles. We say, He fought against the maternal
heredity, but this really means He fought against all the hells, because
through this heredity these had an entry into Him before He was glorified, and
through it they fiercely attacked Him. We
see, also, that His Human, in which He rose into union with His infinite
Divine, was totally a Divine Human, without a shadow of the maternal human, and
was our God visible—truly God-with-us. The
Word in the letter also confirms this. For
the Lord Himself never called Mary His “mother,” though others so referred to
her (see Lord 35:5 et al.). And since
His glorification was successive (Canons.
Redemption vii:6), the Lord addressed Mary as “woman” even early in His
ministry: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come” (John
2:3,4; True Christian Religion 102; Lord 35:4).
No, in His resurrection, in His glorified Human, there was not one iota
from the mother.
And now we turn to June Nineteenth, similarly looking for
the essential wonder within the events that we best remember. The Writings will equally lead us here.
JUNE NINETEENTH (Explanation)
June Nineteenth, or New Church Day, is of course unique to
the New Church. The rest of the world
does not yet know about it. To us,
however, it is of equal standing with the other two, but is at the same time
the culmination of these. Christmas and
Easter both come into their full right because of the Writings, thus because of
what we celebrate in June. Now we can
see the interior meaning of the Gospel as well as those basic stories
themselves. We see all of our three
glorious festivals as three Sabbath Days.
Remember them, to keep them holy!
And so we now ask: What is the essence of this our third
festival? We know that it was on the nineteenth day of June in the year 1770
that the Lord called together His twelve disciples, and that on the following
day He sent them out into all quarters of the spiritual world to preach a new
triumphant gospel. But why just then? It
was because it was then that The True Christian Religion was completed!
Let us here recall the familiar charter of this New Church
festival: “After this work was finished, the Lord called together His twelve
disciples who followed Him in the world; and the next day He sent them forth
into the whole spiritual world to preach the Gospel that the Lord God Jesus
Christ reigns, whose kingdom shall be for ever and ever, according to the
prediction of Daniel (vii:13,14), and in the Revelation (xi:15); and also that
They are blessed who come to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. xix:9).
This took place on the nineteenth day of June, in the year 1770. This is meant by these words of the Lord, ‘He
shall send His angels… and they shall gather together His elect... from one end of the heavens to the other’
(Matt 24:3 1)” (True Christian Religion 791).
Here, we note first that this statement, in the original
Latin, is set aside on a page of its own and is given a heading of its own:
MEMORANDUM. “Memorandum”
means worthy of being remembered, or memorable.
Second, we note that this event in the spiritual world, a
world that knows no time, stands alone in the body of the Writings in being
given a specific date on earth. The
completion of the True Christian Religion, thus the completion of the published
works, did of course take place here on earth and this on the nineteenth day of
June, 1770. But the resulting dramatic
event just described was neither seen nor known by the people on earth who
lived at that time. It is as though a
date is given so that we might have a day for celebration.
But what is the connection between a book being completed
and the announcement of the good news that the Lord God Jesus Christ reigns?
The connection is that He could not reign before this completion, thus not
before the whole series of the books that constituted His new Advent had been
brought into a summary in “The Universal Theology of the New Church” (the
sub-title of True Christian Religion). The
Lord, even more than any good earthly king, rules only by means of law. But the Word had been perverted in the
Church: “They had made the commandment of God of no effect by their tradition”
(Matt. 15:6). The Lord had no law by which to govern. So the Church made Him but a “nobleman,” and
rejected Him. He was for many centuries
in “a far country to receive for Himself a kingdom and to return” (Luke 19:12). But now the time had come for His return. The law had been restored; The True Christian
Religion had been written. His new reign
could be proclaimed. This is what happened
on June Nineteenth and the day after, and this is what gives the New Church a
crowning festival to celebrate.
We say that giving an earthly date to a spiritual event is
unique. Two other events, however, come
close, and we can find their general timing, yet neither is given a specific
date. The first was the Last Judgment. We learn that this great revolution swept
through the world of spirits in the year 1757.
It happened a few months after the completion of the Arcana Coelestia in
1756. The second was when “the angelic
heaven from the east to the west, and from the south to the north, appeared of
a deep scarlet color with the most beautiful flowers.” (Ecclesiastical History
7) Swedenborg was a witness to this in the company of “the kings of Denmark and
others” (ibid.). And what was the
occasion? The publication of A Brief Exposition of the Doctrine of the New
Church.
A word must be said of this power-packed, strongly worded
little work. It preceded The True
Christian Religion by about two years, and it may be regarded as a forerunner
and herald of that major work. Is it a
second John the Baptist? The major work itself can be seen as the crowning work
in a series of books that shine with Divine light. The Lord comes in all of them. Nevertheless, through A Brief Exposition He
calls special attention to the crowning work, and makes us aware that this was
the book that proclaimed the reign of the conquering, returning King.
Further, we must note that the little posthumous work,
Ecclesiastical History, first says that “the books are to be enumerated which
were written, from the beginning to the present day, by the Lord through me,”
and then adds: “In the spiritual world there was inscribed on all these books,
‘The Lord’s Advent” (Ecclesiastical History.
3 & 8). We also quote: “The same I also wrote by command on two copies in Holland”
(ibid.). And we can add: One of these
copies has been found! It is preserved in London, England, in the Library of
the British Museum, and is there available for inspection (though not for
handling). On the inside of the first
cover we find in Swedenborg’s handwriting these words: “Hic Liber est Adventus
Domini, Scriptum ex Mandato” (“This Book is the Advent of the Lord, Inscribed
by Command”). (See an editorial
postscript at the end of the little work.)
And now we observe at least two things that the above three
events have in common. (1) They all
happened in the spiritual world. (2)
They are all based on a momentous event in this world, namely, the publication
of one or other works of the Writings. The
Last Judgment, beginning in 1757, was set in motion by the eight-volume Latin
Arcana Coelestia finished in 1756; the brilliant display of colors and flowers
on the heavenly sky was lit up by publication of the Brief Exposition; and
finally, the sending forth of the twelve disciples with the everlasting Gospel
that the Lord God Jesus Christ reigns followed completion of that Magnum Opus,
The True Christian Religion. I think it
is allowable to think of the Arcana as the Alpha in the successive production
of those Writings, and of The True Christian Religion as the Omega. This, however, is not to belittle in the
least those works which were written by the same “Servant of the Lord Jesus
Christ” and posthumously published by others, but likewise Divinely
commissioned. I think of these as “the
cup running over.”
All these Writings give cause for humble thanksgiving and
joyous celebration. The world,
unknowingly, is waiting for them, for on them and on influx from the New Heaven
depend the resurrection of the remnant from previous churches and, at the same
time, salvation from ignorance, false concepts, and evil destructive ways of
living. As we read: “It is clear that
unless the Lord [in His First Advent] had come into the world no one could have
been saved. It is similar today; and
therefore unless the Lord comes again into the world in the Divine Truth, which
is the Word, no one can be saved” (True Christian Religion 3; see also 182
& Apocalypse Revealed 9).
One day, we may think, June Nineteenth will be a holiday all
over the world. For the New Church will
be known—perhaps hastened by electronic means now available everywhere, and
will be accepted by many. We have the
Lord’s own assurance in the Apocalypse Revealed. It reads: “It is certain that a new church,
which is the New Jerusalem, will exist, because it is foretold in the
Apocalypse (chap. xxi, xxii); and it is
also certain that the falsities of the former church are first to be removed,
because they are treated of in the Apocalypse as far as chapter XX” (Apocalypse
Revealed 547:e).
Yes, the Nobleman will return victorious to claim His
kingdom. And He will reign for ever and
ever, “according to the prediction of Daniel...
and in the Revelation.”
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