Tonight we are finishing our Eastertide study of Richard Rohr’s book Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self. We will be discussing Chapter 8 “Intimate with Everything” and Chapter 9 “Love is Stronger Than Death.” Chapter 9 is the end of the journey (or maybe the end of the introduction to our journey). In this Chapter, Rohr returns to the message that Love underlies everything. God is love. 1 John 4:8. All of Scripture is based upon the two-fold commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. Matt. 22:40. Love is the only basis for morality and ethics. Rom.13:8. Only Love is eternal and everlasting. 1 Cor. 13:8. And it is love that is stronger than the grave. Songs 8:6
As Rohr writes, love, as most fully shown in the Resurrection, does not remove and replace who we are but transforms it. p.183. As he says in Chapter 8 “Resurrection is not woundedness denied, forgotten, or even totally healed. It is always woundedness transformed.” p.162. After the Resurrection, Jesus’s body retained the physical marks of the Crucifixion but had been transformed into something that could also pass through walls. John 20:26-27. As Paul tells us, “for this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.” 1 Cor. 15:53. The perishable and the mortal still exist but are changed. In the Divine Love which we find as the True Self, we are the same but perfected because everything has been placed in its proper perspective. p.186. Like the Risen Christ, we may still bear wounds and will still encounter the problems of being in this world, however, the Divine Love is there to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things with and for us.
Dinner is at 6. The menu is baked potato bar. Discussion about 6:45. Hope to see you here.
Only the doubter hates death, because in no case does the beloved hate to meet his lover.
Sufyan al-Thawri (716-778)