Divine & Healing Path: An Old Catholic Catechism

The Divine & Healing Path:

An Old Catholic Catechism

The Most Reverend Bishop Elijah

Old Catholic Bishop of San Francisco

Edited and with a forward by

Archbishop Wynn Wagner

Regionary Bishop of the Southern Province USA

North American Old Catholic Church

The Divine and Healing Path: An Old Catholic Catechism

Bishop Elijah

Old Catholic Bishop of San Francisco

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2009 Wynn Wagner

Edited and with a forward by

Archbishop Wynn Wagner

Regionary Bishop of the Southern Province USA

North American Old Catholic Church

Quotations from Scripture are from the Authorized Version (KJV), unless otherwise noted. When the New King James Version (NKJV) is used, the New Testament and Psalms are usually from the Orthodox Study Bible (New Testament and Psalms), Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1993 (prepared and copyright 1993, by the Saint Athanasius Orthodox Academy, Santa Barbara, California).

Other versions

Second Edition, print version

ISBN: 978-0-557-17424-9

Find us on the internet at—

www.naOldCatholic.com

www.OldCatholicChurch.com

www.occSouth.com

www.global.org

Forward to the Second Edition

Jim Rankin, Requiescat in Pace

Walking with God

Symbolon

The Symbol of Nicea–Constantinople

The Catholic Creeds

Angelic Hymn

Te Deum Laudamus

Bible Creeds

Image and Likeness

Christian Psychology

Psyche

Care & Cure of Souls

Incarnation

Incarnation

The Our Father Prayer

The Ten Commandments

The Summary of the Law

The Will of God’s Good Pleasure

Incarnation, Resurrection, Transfiguration

Prophet, Priest, & King

The Church of Christ and The Communion of Saints

Baptism

Confirmation (Chrismation)

Eucharist

The Sacrament of Matrimony

Healing Unction

Pray without Ceasing

Prayer Unceasing

John Cassian

The Jesus Prayer / Prayer Ropes

One Little Word (Centering Prayer)

The Prayer Rope, East & West

Forward to the Second Edition

By Archbishop Wynn Wagner, Regionary Bishop

Southern Province USA, North American Old Catholic Church

It began as one of those simple internet things. The Presiding Bishop of the North American Old Catholic Church asked if I knew any good catechisms. The Old Catholic Church in America casts itself all over God’s Reality Map: some are rigid with lots of rules against women and gay people, while others seemingly require diversity as a condition of membership. (If you are keeping score, I’m much closer to the second group because that’s where the interesting people live.)

I was happy to recommend Elijah’s catechism: the one you are reading. Off to the internet to glom a few copies for the archbishop. That’s when things took a nasty turn. Although I fancy myself above average in being able to find something hidden in an e-nook or e-cranny, I couldn’t find a single copy of Elijah’s catechism.

Amazon failed... off to ABE [www.ABE.com] and the other used book carriers. What the Sam Hill is the benefit of being an internet guru if you can’t make it work?

Help! I cried out through my gnashing teeth.

Bishop Rob Angus Jones came through for me, although I wasn’t pleased to hear what he found. Bishop Jones knows absolutely everyone in the independent catholic movement.

Bishop Elijah was Jimmie Ray Rankin. He died on August 9, 2005, at the age of 63.

I was bummed completely. Elijah has popped off this plane before I could meet him, before he had written all the books I wanted him to write. He left us for his reunion with God.

From what I can tell, he was as cantankerous as he was spiritual, which makes me like him even move.

Jim Rankin, Requiescat in Pace

By a friend of the Bishop

Jimmie Ray Rankin died ... on the 9th of August (2005), at only 63 years of age. He died in his sleep, without trauma, and his sister (who found his body) told me in tears of the radiant smile that remained on his face in spite of death. That didn’t surprise me too much. Jim beat the Bad Guy in high style; whupped his ugly ass, in fact, and found the God that he had sought all his life. Like me, he believed less in eternal rest than in eternal challenge — he was a writer and a preacher and a mind always in furious motion. I hope God has something for him to do, because he suffers boredom badly.

Just as Catholics choose a new name on their confirmations, Old Catholic bishops often choose a new name on their consecrations, to reflect their new identity as the caretakers of the Catholic faith. Jim chose the name Elijah, and that is how most people on the Internet (where he was most visible) knew him, as Bishop Elijah of the Old Catholic Church.

It was an odd thing, but almost simultaneously back in 1998, I met two of the most formidable men of the Old Catholic Church: Bishop Elijah of San Francisco and Fr. Sam Bassett (since made a bishop as well) of Santa Clara. The two of them roped me back into Catholicism after a lonely 20-year wander through agnosticism and various odd corners of the New Age. Privately, I sometimes think of them as the Hounds of Heaven, who (separately and without much apparent effort) made it clear to me that I was God’s own and could not be taken from Him by any power in Heaven or Earth.

Fr. Sam taught me that faith requires rigor; and Bishop Elijah taught me that faith requires discernment. Not every damfool notion one might have about God has value. Jim chewed me out here and there for surrendering to odd ideas without adequate reflection. Faith is often a struggle, but it is never passive acquiescence to the first solution one finds to difficult and cosmic questions. There is such a thing as Sacred Tradition, and it must be respected, and if we challenge it, we had better be ready for a lifetime of wrestling with the wisdom of those who have gone before us.

On the other hand, when the ashes of Coriolis were piled up around my ankles in 2002, and 12 years of hard work seemed to have vanished without a trace, he sent me a little vial of holy oil that he had blessed (via FedX!) and told me to anoint myself, start healing, and get back on track. God allows us sadness, but He does not allow us self-pity.

He used to tease me on occasion about my enthusiasm for the very eccentric Old Catholic movement (which he also embraced) and referred to me once with a grin as The Only Known Old Catholic Layman, a silly title I will wear with honor in his memory.

Jim was also a publisher, and his Dry Bones Press used the emerging short-run print-on-demand technologies of the late 1990s to publish books that would never have reached print in the days when a 3,000 copy run was considered a minimum viable effort. I hope to republish some of his Old Catholic Studies series once I get my Copperwood Press up and running. He willed me the copyrights to all his books and asked me to shut Dry Bones Press down gracefully in the event of his death. He was not the healthiest of men, but we had been exchanging long and lively emails until two days before his unexpected passsing. So it was with considerable shock that I learned of his death this past Sunday, and I caught the first flight I could to Sacramento, to honor his life and fulfill the promise I made him two years ago.

Unlike many Protestants (who fret endlessly about whether God will toss them in the fire) Jim and Sam and I were and are confident about our role in the world and our ultimate (and, I feel, inevitable) reunion with God. To us, salvation is not an event but a process, begun and enabled by God but facilitated by the power of human friendship and a willingness to reach out to the lost and confused. Jim helped me get my head around the notion of God — and Sam is still out there urging me on. In each life, I think, someone eventually stands face to face with us and demands that we pay attention and get on the path. So it happened with me. Jim Rankin, Bishop Elijah, who got in my face and hauled my ass back into the Faith, is now face to face with the Ground of All Being. If someday some confused person comes to me and asks me which way is the Way, I hope to God (truly!) that I can give as well as I got.

Our union with God is first of all a unity of love and experience…

Thomas Merton (1915-1968), (commenting upon Ephesians)

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; all is vanity.

Ecclesiastes 12:8

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Ecclesiastes 12:13

And I will betroth thee unto me forever; yea, I will betroth thee to me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the Lord.

Hosea 2: 19–20

For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

Hosea 6:6

Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? Prudent, and he shall know them? For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.

Hosea 14:9

And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for the law shall go forth of Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Micah 4:2

For all people will walk every one in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the Lord our God for ever and ever.

Micah 4:5

He hath shown thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Micah 6:8

But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Amos 5:24

Oh Christ our God, who are Thyself the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, who did fulfill all the dispensation of the Father: fill our hearts with joy and gladness, always; now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. /Amen.

Prayer at the Placing of the Gifts on the Table of Preparation, after Communion; Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Ephesians 1:22–23

Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple to the Lord, in whom you are also being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

Ephesians 2:19–22

The stone which the builders refused is become the stone of the corner. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:22–24

Walking with God

Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. (Isaiah 40:27–31)

"For we walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7)

Our faith calls us to walk a path every day of our lives, a way of discovery. We do not keep to this path because it gives us a set of propositions that we may adhere to, or a set of rules by which to live, but rather because on the way we are drawn ever deeper into truth, and faced every moment and every day with the sheer reality of things. If we persevere in the Way, we evolve a certain understanding of the world, and of what makes it tick; we begin to understand how to live. We become whole, a person with a heart; which is to say, a person in whom body, mind, and spirit are one. Integrated. A person of integrity. Or, to express it in more traditional terms: righteous. Godly (god–like), a person in whom the righteousness of God is revealed.

When we depart from this path, we begin to know suffering. The sheer distractedness of our life begins to teach us how sin, and death, and suffering came into the world with the sin of Eden, and persists still, even to this day. Our perceptions of things, and even of ourselves, become distorted, at the very core, and we cease to have a human heart. We dis–integrate. We are, as Luther tried to remind us, radically (at the radix, root), if not substantially, separated from the very ground of our being. We are uprooted — or, at the very least, unrooted. Or, as the Orthodox would say: the image of God in us persists (reason, freedom, choice), but the moral likeness of God has been effaced.

Someone walks with us. As we continue in the Way, the more certain we become of that unseen presence that shares the path with us. Even more, we come to understand more and more that not only does Someone share this path with us, but that it was this Someone who called us, from the beginning, this Someone to whom our faith responded — and responds every day, as we are called every day.

We do not set foot upon the path in any particular spot, or in any particular way: when and where one is, will do. And whoever one is, will do. (Just as I am, and waiting not… — Traditional hymn.) For He says: ‘In an acceptable time I have heard you, and in the day of salvation I have helped you.’ [Isaiah 49:8] Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. [2 Corinthians 6:2– 3]

For the testimony of God is that the Cosmos was to be perfected, and the human person in it — even before the Fall. We are eternally predestined to grace, and mercy, and compassion, and perfection in the presence of God. Cur Deus homo? the ancient question — Why did God become Man? The reply of the Alexandrian Fathers — as indeed, that of the Catholic Church — was that God became man, that man might become God. Deificatio, the expression in Latin; theosis, the term in Greek. In English, deified or deification does not express the included reality as much as does the term, divinization. For it is the eternal destiny of Man to enter into union with, participate in, the energies of God, whose eternal essence remains and will always remain ineffable, unknowable in its depths: God is the Abyss, but to us — created in the image and likeness of God — is given the grace to participate, as our birthright only a little delayed by the Fall, in the divine life. This is our life. This is our path.

Oh, happy fault of Adam, by which we knew the grace of God! This is the cry of Saint Paul (died 64), echoed each Pascha of the Western Church in the Exultet hymn of the Vigil of the Resurrection.

We do not walk the path alone, for what is true of ourselves is true of others: that they are called of the Spirit, and respond when they are able and as they are able, wherever the call reaches them. We are a body of people, walking with Someone who calls and loves us, sharing the experiences of love as they come to us, sharing all experiences and learning from them. Every day. Every step of the way.

Merton’s insight that our union with God is first of all a unity of love and experience is a profound perception of the transcendent mystery of our life with God.

And with each other. For, our life with God, while experienced at times as individual, is at the last, in its depth, communal. No one is a Christian alone. We are united to God in Christ, as one body, and diverse in our oneness as the Spirit leads us, even as the heavenly flame at Pentecost founded the Church of Christ as one, yet stood over the heads of those gathered in the Upper Room, individually.

We are a mystery of unity and diversity, of individual and communal, a communion of saints, even as we share in the life of God, partakers of a unity of love and experience.

When shall we begin to walk? A story is told, of a man who was given a revelation that to attain salvation he would have to walk one million times around the great circle of the earth. Stunned by this news, he fell back upon the earth, and sat pondering this statement of the heavens. For ten thousand years, he sat and pondered. Then, one day, he got up and began walking...

This is our life also, except that we know another dimension to the mystery: the journey is half the fun, if not more. For the journey is already the end of the journey, and when we are in the path we are in Heaven, since we walk in fellowship with one another, and with that Someone whose presence is Heaven itself, and salvation.

I want to do things out of love. Most people do not understand the importance of developing their love. They feel they are living to accomplish goals or tasks before they die. When I worked with children, it was because for me I could (I thought) do what I love and therefore be in the process of developing my love. But, no one cared about this; for them, it was task–related: to teach the children the curriculum so that the children were able to complete tasks throughout their lives.

— Cheryl Lee Morrow

What new heavens and new earth there may be is not given us to know in this time, but to know that One at whose word they appear and dissolve is given to us — and to know the path we share, and to walk it together.

Amen.

Symbolon

If kerygma [(pronounced kay-roog-ma) is the Greek word used in the New Testament for preaching (see Luke 4:18-19, Romans 10:14, Matthew 3:1). It is related to the Greek verb kērússō, to cry or proclaim as a herald, and means proclamation, announcement, or preaching. The New Testament teaches that as Jesus launched his public ministry he entered the synagogue and read from the scroll of Isaiah the prophet. He identified himself as the one Isaiah predicted in Isa 61. The text is a programmatic statement of Jesus’ ministry to preach or proclaim (Kerygma), good news to the poor and the blind and the captive. (Wikipedia)] tells us we walk a path, the catechesis of the Symbol of Nicea and Constantinople tells us with whom we walk it. The apostolic faith came to the Church as an internal mystery, Tradition, which was not held fitting for the unbaptized — or even for the learners (catechumens) who were preparing for baptism. Holy things are for the holy. The Symbol, which the Western Catholic refers to as the Creed, was deemed worthy to be given out to the learner, while such internal prayers as the Our Father and the eucharistic mysteries were for the initiated Christian only.

The Symbol, which like an icon participates in the reality it expresses, is both kerygma and catechesis. To the initiate, it expresses the depths of the mystery of the Christian path, or way of life. For the catechumen, it is both an introduction to the concept of a path or way of life, and a formal introduction to the central mysteries of the Catholic faith.

The Symbol of Faith, first introduced at the Council of Nicea (325 AD), and completed in its present form at the Council of Constantinople (381 AD), is a capsule presentation of the Catholic faith. Its authority is complete, for it is received by all the Catholic Church, and the councils which enacted it are recognized as ecumenical by all Catholics, of whatever tradition.

Symbolon refers in Greek to being thrown together, implying a kernel statement of faith, an icon which while it expresses the fullness but not the entirety of Tradition, participates in the very faith it expresses. The Western Creed, referring to the Latin of its initial word, Credo, focuses on the statement of belief itself. The Symbol is reverenced so highly that it precedes the Eucharist in almost every Liturgy, and it is said that according to one custom, not even the priest celebrating the Eucharist was allowed to receive Communion without first reciting the Symbol.

However important as an expression of the true and Catholic faith, it would be a serious mistake to see in the Symbol a set of propositions to which one must give moral and verbal assent, to be considered an orthodox Catholic. Rather, it tells us with whom we walk, and the eschatological hope in which we walk. And the whom and the hope are one.

The Nicene Creed, or Symbol of Faith, is the great statement of the early Church of its journey in this world, and of its understanding of that daily journey as a body walking with that Someone who both accompanies us, and awaits us at journey’s end as our salvation and our hope. We have already begun to live in both worlds, says the Church — in this world, and in the world to come. Herein lies the mystery of the Incarnation (and the Word became flesh), our firm belief in the redemption of the Cosmos entire, and our own eternal destiny (the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come), in which hope, as of an accomplished redemption, we already live.

and calling to mind all that has been accomplished for us: the Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Seating at the Right Hand, and the Second and Glorious Advent, which is to come. (Anamnesis, from the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom)

The Way of a Christian is witnessed in the apostolic proclamation of the glad tidings of Jesus Christ (kerygma), carried forth in the Church by the leading of the Holy Spirit (Tradition), and is encapsulated for the learner (catechumen) as well as the Church as a whole in the