DAILY DEVOTIONAL
Thursday, May 10, 2018

Has the Lord grown silent?

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, the Spirit will guide you into all the truth, for the Spirit will not speak on his own authority, but whatever the Spirit hears the Spirit will speak, and the Spirit will declare to you the things that are to come.” – John 16:12-13

Christ explains to His disciples that He still has more to say but I will have to share this with you by way of the Spirit. In the days to come, in the years to come, in the centuries to come, I will be there teaching you the spiritual significance of matters not yet revealed. You will come to know so many things about life, people, Creation, and I will be there by way of the Spirit to teach you spirituality to be found in what you have discovered and what God has revealed.

In the third century, our list of writings that the Church thought were reliable and were used by sizeable shares of Christian communities was set. This is referred to as the Canon of scripture. The canonization of early Church writings has been taken to mean this is the limits of God’s official inspiration. For centuries, the orthodoxy has imprisoned the holy truth within a first and second century culture and within a first and second century state of knowledge. But I have of late thought that the orthodoxy has misunderstood and misapplied what the canon was meant to be. I believe the canon was not meant to a wall that demarcated the boundaries of the Truth but rather the channel markers through which the River of Truth would flow.

I believe in the cautionary discipline of the canon, but not in the manner the Church has used to limit the maturation of our understanding. For Christ said …”I still have many things to say to you” … and Christ placed no limit as to the length of Time.

The Lord speaks. The flow of knowledge continues. The Lord is still revealing though we tend to call it our discovering. The voice of the Spirit has not yet been silenced.

Always in His Service,
Fr. Charitas de la Cruz