Jesus Christ. - Revelations of Christ: proclaimed

How is one to understand the life and teachings of the great master Jesus, whose title the Christ meant the anointed of God? Tradition offers us two approaches: one, the authority of the Church; the other, that of historical analysis, which Christian scholars lately have been applying to certain recently discovered texts.

There is another approach, less widely known but more reliable than any other: It is to study the writings and sayings of, or better still to live with and study under, saints who have communed directly, in deep states of ecstasy, with Christ and God. Such persons are true spiritual masters. They have lived in every country, and have belonged to every religion and every social level. They have taught the Truth from their own deep realization. When theyve been free to speak out, their impact has been widespread and profound. Often, unfortunately, freedom of speech has been denied them; theyve had to submit to the control of religious superiors, who considered their own authority a supreme right bestowed on them by God.

All true saintsthose, in other words, who have reached the highest spiritual attainmentshave endorsed the teachings of Jesus Christ either directly or indirectly, by stating the same truth similarly. Christian saints want to support their Church, and usually consider it their duty to sow seeds of harmony, not of dissension. There have been times in history, on the other hand, when a saint was divinely commissioned to correct one or more serious errors.

The difficulty saints have endured under church authority has been dueunderstandably, but at the same time unfortunatelyto officials who were administrators but were rarely, if ever, themselves saints. Such authorities have insisted that their approval was needed before anyoneparticularly anyone of meritcould preach spiritual truth. The very fact of any Christians being also saints has been perceived, at least during their lifetimes, as a threat to institutional authority. For what the authorities want first of all to ascertain is whether some saintly upstart is preaching truth or heresy.

Saint Francis of Assisi, whose sanctity was certainly due to his own deep love for God and to his deep, inner communion with Him, has been acclaimed by the Catholic Church as a true son of the Church, which takes credit for his holiness and attributes it to the saints humble obedience to Church authority.

Any saint in Christian history who ever spoke, or even hinted at, truths that werent sanctioned by the Church was punished and, in many cases, excommunicated. An example of an excommunicant was Meister Eckhart in Germany, who (fortunately for him) died before notice of his punishment could reach him.

Saint Joseph of Cupertino, to whom even crowned heads in Europe came for inspiration and blessings, was orthodox in everything he said and did. He repeatedly, however, performed the miracle of levitation, an act which embarrassed his less-than-saintly superiors. After fifteen years of virtual incarceration in an apartment of the Basilica in Assisi, he was carted off in the dead of nightnot once, but repeatedly whenever his whereabouts became publicly knownto a succession of small, distant monasteries.

A Claretian monk of my acquaintance in Los Angeles, California, developed a reputation for bilocation (appearing in more than one place at a time). He was quietly transferred to a distant house of the same Order in Spain. Catholics themselves describe this practice of quiet removal as sending one to prison.

Therese Neumann, the great Catholic stigmatist in Bavaria, Germany, was prohibited for a time by her bishop from even seeing people.

And Padre Pio, in southern Italy, was also for a time forbidden from performing mass in his capacity of priest. Regarding this saint, an Italian friend of mine in Rome once visited him, and, during his confession, stated that he practiced Kriya Yoga (a meditation technique brought to the West by my great Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda).

Oh, hush! the saint warned hastily. You mustnt speak of these things. Then he added, But you are doing the right thing.

There are two major disadvantages to having a church as the supreme authority. The first is that the churches are committednecessarily soto giving priority to their own supremacy as Christs representatives. Therefore they cannot be objective concerning any concept they perceive as a threat to that supremacy.

The second disadvantage follows from the first: Church authority, if too firmly exercised, reduces religious teachings to a faint echo of the divine truths it proclaims. Water cannot flow higher than its source. When religious institutions appoint themselves as the only source of truththough in fact, such truths as they utter can only flow through themthey block that flow. Of course, they never state that they are that source; all of them claim to be representing Christs Truth. Nevertheless, the teachings they promulgate wane in power from a mighty waterfall to a gurgle.