The Five Lenten Mysteries of the Holy Rosary

 

Holy Spirit of Creation, Save us

In the name of the Living Light, the Eternal Word, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Creed

I lovingly trust the eternal Creative Source of boundless, infinite and compassionate Love, who is our divine Mother and Father.

I lovingly trust the Eternal Logos, the Creative Energy in whom all life is brought into being, and in who there is divine oneness of love, without fragmentation, division or separation.

I lovingly trust that the Logos came among us, in the person Jesus of Nazareth. Through the Holy Spirit, the Logos became the living Christ in the womb of Mary.

Jesus became the object of the ego’s projection of fear, separation and self-loathing. He was crucified by fearful minds trapped in a consciousness of sacrifice, death and separation

I lovingly trust that the Logos extended his presence to those dwelling in the realm of the dead and restored to them knowledge of the truth of their divine nature. On the third day he dissolved the illusion of death and rose from the dead, transformed, transforming and revealing that we are not limited humanity but limitless fractals of Light. He traversed the boundaries of time and space and returned to the experience of oneness with the Living Abba.

I lovingly trust in the Holy Spirit who comes with wind, fire and power that changes the face of the earth. I believe in the oneness of all creation as veiled expressions of the Source of Love.

I lovingly trust in the transformation of our shadow, through divine compassionate tenderness and forgiveness; our resurrection and transfiguration, and the realisation that there is only life. Amen.

1 Our father, 3 Hail Mary’s, 1 Glory to the Living Light, the Eternal Word, and Holy Spirit.

First Mystery: the temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4)

This was Jesus’ vision quest before he entered his ministry.

“Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the spirit through the wilderness being tempted there by the devil for 40 days. During that time he ate nothing and at the end he was hungry” (Luke 4: vs 1-4).

The Desert is a place well known to us all. We all know the experience of being alone with our darkest thoughts, feelings, emotions and stirrings. Often in our own personal desert we are visited by the inner demons of shame and unworthiness. We can feel like a fraud waiting to be unmasked. But we often don’t ask ourselves the question: “Why do I believe my demons?”. If only we realised how much our minds and bodies have been conditioned by the subtle messages of our culture which are buried deep in our psyches and bodies, especially reinforced through the media and now, social media. The social structures and institutions of our societies, social, religious political legal and educational, have been conditioning our minds since we came out of our mother’s womb. The powerful don’t want us to us to become “Too big for our boots”. The interests of the powerful are best served by keeping us in a state of emotional servitude and needing approval. We have been conditioned to  do the job of policing one another’s thoughts, feelings and ideas in various contexts: in the pub, in the workplace, in our families with our friends, on social media and in many other places.

It was important for Jesus that before embarking upon his public ministry to journey into the wilderness in order to confront all possible demons; both psychological and spiritual, so that he could be truly confident in knowing who he really was when confronting the powerful, dominant and destructive powers of his time.

The socially conditioned superego [our harsh internal critic] often knows how to silence us into shame and fear when it senses that we are breaking the socially conditioned rules of our society. The superego can communicate a narrative of fear and inadequacy at the speed of light throughout our entire neural network and bodies in order to keep our ego self, in check. The ego self – our experience of being a separate individual– if deeply wounded by past experiences of feeling humiliated or undermined can become angry, resentful and even wrathful when humiliations occur again in our lives. The superego has been super-conditioned to subdue our egos so that we don’t upset the equilibrium of our socially constructed society “You Can’t break the rules”. This can be costly to our emotional and mental wellbeing. In today’s Western neoliberal societies we are commodified to work and consume. Those of us who are extremely wounded by the system or who have awakened to the insanity, are often not easily controlled by either internally or externally imposed societal rules. The rebellious often become the social rule breakers. But at best these rule breakers can become the prophets and visionaries against our corrupt societies. If they are unlucky enough they may become revolving door patients of the mental health system or offenders in the criminal justice systems.

In the gospel of Thomas Jesus asks

what did you go out into the desert to see? A person wearing fancy clothes, like your rulers or powerful people? They wear fancy clothes but they cannot know the truth [saying 78].

The truth has always been within us. Jesus called us salt and light [Matthew 5:13-16]. Often the elite rulers and powerful people are unable to make contact with and access the wellspring of their divinity deep inside. They identify with being merely an ego with articulate opinions, deceitful thoughts and distorted beliefs about how things should be. They have often ensured control over legal and political powers to enforce their egoic ideologies onto others.   

Jesus knew his own divine power, strength, wisdom, courage, tenderness, limitlessness and luminosity and was able to access this power when needed and could live fully through his divinity in his humanity, completely. He wants this for us too. Jesus’ time of examen and self-knowing in the wilderness was essential to the work he had to do. We are all the progeny of the living light says Jesus in the gospel of Thomas. In the gospel story of Luke we witness Jesus tempted by the devil in the wilderness who wants Jesus to succumb to grandiosity, pride, instant gratification and ego inflation. On each occasion Jesus does not enter into dialogue with the trickster but simply quotes Scripture at him as an antidote to the relentless ruminating voice of fear, scarcity and separation.   

An important part of discernment is recognising the difference between good conscience and the sometimes vicious fiction of the superego. Jesus did not come to reinforce feelings of guilt, shame, inadequacy and dependence upon powerful others. He up wanted us to know that we are loved and that we are love. He wants us to wake up to the truth of who we really are and not to be afraid of our tremendous gifts.

Prayer: 1 Our Father; 10 Hail Mary’s; 1 Glory be  

Jesus associates with social outcasts: tax collectors and prostitutes

“While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Matthew 9:10-17

Today, the outcasts of society are often demonised in the media, on social media, in parliament, by legal institutions, religious institutions, respectable in-groups and by the general public. Such is our need to find others worse than ourselves onto whom we can project our unowned shadow material. Imagine the disdain of the religious authorities of Jesus’ time when Jesus enjoyed hospitality with raca (Matthew 5;25) the unworthy. Tax collectors and prostitutes were the alienated ones of Jesus’ society and Jesus embraced both. Imagine his tenderness, warmth, presence, humour and intimacy with these outcasts. Can you imagine being so loving towards those whom you consider to be raca? The question we are challenged to ask ourselves in this mystery is, whom do I consider to be raca?

Prayer: 1 Our Father; 10 Hail Mary’s; 1 Glory be  

 

The Mysteries to come:

  • Jesus heals the sick and possessed and restores dignity
  • Jesus enters Jerusalem and is projected upon.
  • Jesus cleanses the temple confronts hypocrisy

 

 

© Brendan Anthony Mooney 2023

Emancipating divinity from patriarchy through the heart ~ Rev Brendan Mooney OEC

 

I am reading a book called Setting God Free by Fr Sean O’Laoire, an Irish Catholic priest who is spiritual director to a community of lay people in California called Companions on the Journey. He is a beautiful soul; a radical, imaginative, intelligent and compassionate man who is deeply respected by many people across many spiritual traditions.

Sean began his spiritual journey as a child in County Cork, Ireland, and was deeply influenced by his kind hearted Catholic grandmother whom he describes as a genuine mystic who lived comfortably between this world and the divine realm. His grandfather was a druid who was deeply embedded in the mysticism of his tradition. The influence of two deeply spiritual grandparents in his early life and living in a Gaelic speaking community, immersed him in the earthiness of Celtic Spirituality.

In the 1960s Sean studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood. His studies consisted of pure mathematics and physics followed by several years of academic philosophy, scripture and theology. He spent many years working in Africa as a priest after his ordination. During his time in Africa he became knowledgeable of the local ancient wisdom and spiritual traditions of the people whom he served. He later went to the United State where he studied for a PhD in Transpersonal Psychology and became a clinical psychologist. His study of mathematics, theology, philosophy, spirituality, transpersonal psychology and many other disciplines, informs his ongoing spiritual inquiry and development. His aim is to contribute to the development of a spirituality that is enriching and transformative to the evolution of global human consciousness.  

Sean has lost favor with the institutional Roman Catholic Church, and so now is ministering independently from the institutional Church. He has a very broad and encompassing cosmology which seeks to free people from unwholesome, oppressive and discriminatory anthropomorphisms of God that create separation and division. Sean in his book, Setting God Free talks about an experience whilst ministering at a Catholic parish in Palo Alto, California in the 1980s, which deeply influenced his decision to carefully examine and retool his religious cosmology. He had a close friend, a Jewish woman called Arlen who decided to bring her mother to Mass to meet Sean in person. Arlen’s mother was a survivor of the Holocaust and had lost many family members in an Easter Pogrom. The Gospel of the day at the Mass attended by Arlen and her mother caused him to feel profound discomfort. It was the story from John’s Gospel of Pilate absolving himself of the blood of Jesus, and in which John records the “Jews” as saying, “His blood be upon us and upon our children”. The ramifications of this anti-Semitic passage, and how it was used by the post Constantinian Church to orchestrate persecutions against the Jewish people, landed deeply with him. This was a turning point in Sean’s spiritual journey that changed everything. He believes that creating a god in our own image, rather than seeking the God in whose image we are made, is something that needs to change if God is to mean anything purposeful for human conscious evolution.

Sean’s book spoke deeply to me about how religion, when it becomes self-referential, institutionalized and concerned with its own image, becomes something that doesn’t serve humanity’s journey of conscious evolution. I believe that this evolution is importantly something that must be rooted in the human heart, in a spaciousness of deep compassion, love and service to others. Sean O’Laoire makes a very important observation:

“God is nothing like the religion has made out to be –especially the jealous, irascible, patriarchal, genocidal god of the world’s greatest monotheistic religions”

In the theistic religious traditions throughout history, divinity has been the object of egoic patriarchal projections creating a caricature of God. These traditions have often been unfriendly towards the lives, liberties and bodies of both women and children. Within the Christian Church patriarchally informed projections about God have created an ecclesiology that bolsters systemic clerical power and privilege over others. It has privileged a patriarchal ecclesiology over and above an organic ecclesiology that draws upon the diverse gifts, wisdom, experience and insights of the whole people of God. The term people of God only became a meaningful concept within the Catholic Church in the 1960s during the Second Vatican Council.

The notion of God as the divine feminine (i.e., the goddess or divine mother) has been ignored by institutionalized theistic religion in favour of a muscular, militaria, patriarchal God who most often sides with male clerical, authoritarian, and even, military, power. Even now, in these days of liberation, feminist, black liberation and creation centred theologies, the idea of God as a tender, strong and protective mother – akin to the Buddhist image of the compassionate and protective Tara emancipating her children from suffering oppression and fear – is rarely a reference point for theology or liturgy. Sophia, as feminine divine wisdom, is also an underrepresented image of divinity in ecclesiastical language. Most often the notion of a male god who speaks through a patriarchal system of authority, and who is exclusively called, Father, is the most privileged image of the divine.

I would suggest that each one of us would do well to take governance over our own personal cosmology, ecclesiology and spirituality. Be discerning of ecclesiastical patriarchs, grandiose gurus, authoritative teachers and dynamic evangelists who claim that their way is the best way. There is one divine ocean that flows into many wells. You and I are one of those wells. The true teacher is within you. Good spiritual teachers will always point you towards your inner teacher. Your mind when immersed in the tender place of your heart, quietly listening for divine wisdom, is a good space to discern for the whisperings of divinity.

Namaste brothers and sisters 

References:

Setting God Free: Moving Beyond the Caricature We’ve Created in Our Own Image, 2021, by Sean O’Laoire, Apocryphille Press US.

Interview by Evan McDermod of Fr Sean O’Laoire, Setting God Free, YouTube, December 2022 Seán ÓLaoire – Setting God Free (Podcast Interview) – YouTube

The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation  – 1 Nov. 2018 by Miranda Macpherson, Sounds True Press

New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton, New Directions Paperbook, 1091) Paperback – Illustrated, 13 Nov. 2007