3.5 new age and theosis The God within?

[esieffe]

From Vatican.va
JESUS CHRIST
THE BEARER OF THE WATER OF LIFE

A Christian reflection
on the “New Age”

vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html#2. NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY: AN OVERVIEW

Question… I know that we were created by God, but what is our connection with God? Do we have some inner connection with God or is this new age thinking. I know we connect with God and the Lord through prayer. If someone could “break it down for me” and or refer to something in the CCC I would be grateful.

 

[fhansen]

From Vatican.va
JESUS CHRIST
THE BEARER OF THE WATER OF LIFE

A Christian reflection
on the “New Age”

vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html#2. NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY: AN OVERVIEW

Question… I know that we were created by God, but what is our connection with God? Do we have some inner connection with God or is this new age thinking. I know we connect with God and the Lord through prayer. If someone could “break it down for me” and or refer to something in the CCC I would be grateful.

We’re to commune with God; this is what justice and order in His universe demand, this is what He’s always desired for us, this what Adam rejected, and this is what Jesus came to reconcile. “Apart from Me you can do nothing” John 15:5. “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” Matt 19:26. This is the essence of the New Covenant. We “become” God not in the sense that we are Him, with all His attributes including self-existence, but rather we become God in a dependent relationship of sonship by partaking of His nature and enjoying the happiness derived from union with that sheer goodness. In New Age thought we already are Gods; we already are the highest being possible; we just need to awaken to that fact. In Roman Catholic and EO thought we’re made to become as He is, but still little “g”, not big “G”, and by relationship with Him.

 

[Vouthon]

God permits us by grace to share in His own Beatitude, His own happiness or felicity. This is what the state of heaven essentially consists of. Theosis, in this life, is a foretaste of that glorious existence of the Blessed in heaven, whereby we participate in the divine nature (as much as is possible by God’s power in this life), through the gift of infused contemplative prayer.

This has nothing to do with ‘new age’ beliefs. We are not, as pantheists or auto-theists would hold, innately “God”. There is no concept of the Self as Brahman in Catholicism, as one may find in certain strands of Advaita Hinduism.

God, nonetheless, is more interior to us than we are to ourselves because our being “hangs” in His divine power for its very existence. We are created in His Image.

Blessed Ruysbroeck beautifully explains this as follows:

“…Beyond reason,
In the most secret part of the [human] intellect,
The simple eye is ever open.
It contemplates and gazes at the Light
With a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself:
Eye to eye,
Mirror to mirror,
Image to image.
This threefold act makes us like God,
And unites us to Him;
For the sight of the simple eye is a living mirror,
Which God has made for His image,
And whereon He has impressed it…”

- Blessed John of Ruysbroeck (1293 – 1381), in "A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness"

A New Age practitioner may admire or like what Blessed Ruysbroeck says above but their understanding of it would be deepy skewed. There is no comparison between new age pseudo-spirituality and authentic Catholic mysticism.

 

[Vouthon]

We’re to commune with God; this is what justice and order in His universe demand, this is what He’s always desired for us, this what Adam rejected, and this is what Jesus came to reconcile. “Apart from Me you can do nothing” John 15:5. “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” Matt 19:26. This is the essence of the New Covenant. We “become” God not in the sense that we are Him, with all His attributes including self-existence, but rather we become God in a dependent relationship of sonship by partaking of His nature and enjoying the happiness derived from union with that sheer goodness. In New Age thought we already are Gods; we already are the highest being possible; we just need to awaken to that fact. In Roman Catholic and EO thought we’re made to become as He is, but still little “g”, not big “G”, and by relationship with Him.

Excellent post my friend

If I may quote Blessed Ruysbroeck (yet again), since I think he explains this so well:

"…The Love of God is a consuming Fire,
Which draws us out of ourselves
And swallows us up in unity with God,
Where we are satisfied and overflowing,
And with Him, beyond ourselves,
Eternally fulfilled.

As much as is iron, so much is fire;
And as much as is fire, so much is iron;
Yet the iron doth not become fire,
Nor the fire iron,
But each retains its substance and nature.
So likewise the spirit of man doth not become God,
But is deified,
And knows itself breadth, length, height and depth:
And as far as God is God,
So far the loving spirit is made one with Him
In love.

AND thus the Fourth Mode is a state of emptiness,
made one with God in bare love and in Divine Light,
free and empty of all the observances of love,
above actions, and enduring a pure and simple love,
which consumes and annihilates in itself the spirit of a man,
so that he forgets himself, and knows neither himself nor God,
nor any creature, nor aught else but Love alone,
which he tastes and feels and possesses in simple emptiness.
He feels himself one Breadth with Love, Which is measureless, comprehending all things,
and Itself for ever remaining incomprehensible.
He sees himself made one with the eternal Length,
which is immovable, without beginning or ending,
going before and following after all created things…"

- Blessed John of Ruysbroeck (1293 – 1381), in "The Twelve Beguines"

And in a different one of his books:

“…And therefore these enlightened people are lifted up with free mind above reason to a bare vision devoid of images. There lives the eternal invitation of God’s unity, and with imageless naked understanding they go beyond all works and all practices and all things to the summit of their spirit. There their naked understanding is penetrated with eternal clarity as the air is penetrated by the light of the sun. The bare elevated will is transformed and penetrated with fathomless love just as iron is penetrated by the fire. And the bare elevated memory finds itself caught and established In a fathomless absence of images. Thus the created image is united threefold wise above reason to its eternal image, Which is the source of its being and of its life…”

***- Blessed John of Ruysbroeck (1293 – 1381), in “The Little Book of Enlightenment” ***

 

[JimG]

Our first connection to God is by our existence.

We and all things are created from nothing. Things created from nothing can continue in existence only if their Creator continually wills it. (If He forgets us, we cease to exist!) So by our very existence we have a connection to God at the center of our being.

Then, as Christians, we have a connection to God through Grace.

The Church calls sanctifying grace a created sharing in the divine life of God. God allows us to share in his own life, which enables us to live in his glory in Heaven. Without grace, we could not be fully in his presence; we could not enter heaven.