Breathing Light

Rev. John J. Lombardi

Description

Father John “Jack” Lombardi is a Roman Catholic Priest of thirty-four years and past pastor of a parish in Western Maryland and recently, Baltimore city. He enjoys outdoor recreational activities, spiritual adventure, travel, mystical theology, all summarized by St. Thomas Aquinas, “God is the artist, and the universe is His work of art”. Father Jack enjoys hikes and walks with his dog and faithful companion, Bella, a Labrador Retriever, a spiritual community and working for The Lord!

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Religion

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 03 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669854050
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Breathing Light
A Little Book on Christian Mystic Living
Rev. John J. Lombardi

Copyright © 2022 by Rev. John J. Lombardi.
 
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-5406-7

Softcover
978-1-6698-5404-3

eBook
978-1-6698-5405-0
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 11/02/2022
 
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
817512
Contents
Introduction
Interlude
 
Chapter 1Creativity, The Church, and Christ
Chapter 2Innovators and Exciters
Chapter 3Thoughts, Thinking, and New Thought—Some basics
Chapter 4New Age and Christianity
Chapter 5Christian Mystic Spirituality
Chapter 6New Thought and New Age Pervasion in Culture
Chapter 7Christian Approach: Responses, Critiques, and Meditations
Chapter 8More Practices: Meditations
Chapter 9Conclusions


The author at Hudson River Valley, West Point, New York, enjoying summer vacation and travels.
Introduction
The Trinity is a wholly creative and energizing reality, self-consistent and undivided in its active power.
— St. Athanasius
And that is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not a static thing–almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.
— C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.
—St. Paul (Col. 3:4)
Modern Woodstock spirit festivals; meditation sessions; essential oils; contemplative activists, locavores—local, food-only consumers; Christian yoga; hydrotherapy; crystals and precious stone healing; purging meditation walks; soaring musical vibes and enchanting music of the spheres; healing labyrinths; and mystical mindfulness—these are all in vogue, and they’re all Christian more or less or can be. Read on about these and other topics and renew your Christian walk through this little book and its mission: How to be a dynamic, not dead Christian
Many Christians today are seeking God; a deeper, dynamic life of prayer; and also a kind of discipleship that is not a stale recipe from an old spiritual box top or from a run-of-the-mill institutional church as in “dinosaur” religion. So it’s no secret or a mistake that many Christians are searching for a faith that integrates mysticism and morality, spirituality and service, meditation and community—an engaged and enlightened religion to live in this modern, sometimes mazelike world. Obviously, many others feel Christianity is dead, or they choose to no longer attend church or congregate with other Christians. They’re looking for a combination of the old and the new. So, dynamized or dead—w hich are you as a Christian?
Mystic spirituality, that is what many people are looking for today. The quotes at the beginning of this introduction–two on God as a dynamic reality and one from the Bible refer to this reality, and what our little book is about mystic living .
These days, even in Christian circles, folks are looking for the newest, best thing, and so, almost everything is subject to marketing squads and branding. It’s not just for politicians and internet searches anymore. By this catch-all term, branding, we mean the essence of a product and its promotion of such to the marketplace and the world.
Question: Did Jesus have a branding squad?
Answer: No, not back then, but He definitely does today. That’s us! We need, as Christians, to rebrand ourselves in order to present our faith, Christianity and Catholicism in new, spiritual, savvy ways to a world that desires mystical life in the here and now while retaining our orthodox essence. Or said another way, the masses want experiential religion, not just creeds and moralism.
My method: Appeal to the spiritual aspect of every person’s soul that has perhaps been siphoned off by materialism or splintered away by countless dry churches, institutional and otherwise, or else by New Age spirituality. Then I can show there is a real, spiritual, supernatural component to our faith that is being neglected, or even rejected, today.
We will explore mystic spiritual experiences of God and supernatural phenomena within Christianity and other religions and contained inside something I’ll call New Thought (example: The Power of Positive Thinking ). Then I’ll discuss why so many people are attracted to these phenomena and how we can deepen our own faith where appropriate.
Since you’re reading this book, it’s likely some of those movements and personages described have probably attracted or affected you at some point. That describes me too with caveats! Here is my approach: critical adventure is needed in contemporary spirituality inside and outside of Christianity. Described another way, there is a little good and bad in the various ways of thinking regarding mystic spirituality and New Thought. Furthermore, Christianity (at least Catholicism, which has mystically morphed in many ways over the centuries) has always taken a little of human culture and its spirituality’s best offerings and integrated them into her spirit while discarding what is not healthy or holy.
Examples? All right, how about church architecture? Early church leaders utilized basic building design from Roman courthouses and temples (think of the Pantheon in Rome with its vast, soaring dome) and formulated a sacred symmetry later incorporated into various cathedrals and chapels that show within those structures a vision of heaven and the concept of divine light. Here’s another: the Christian church amalgamated incense and candles from secular and non-Christian rituals (from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the Elysium in the Mediterranean world for instance). And on a nonphysical level, we note how Greek philosophy (especially the majestic Plato) affected Christian spiritual movements for millennia.
In later centuries, some groups (the Puritans come to mind) thought these so-called alien elements were pollutants and vehemently rejected them, but other groups rejoiced that these philosophical bits have been refined for the church’s understanding and positively influenced western civilization. Most famously and pervasively perhaps, St. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle’s words and basically Christianized his whole Greek system, including epistemology (the study of knowledge), cosmology (how the universe operates), and ethics into a genuine Christian perennial philosophy. To this day, innumerable “disciples” are studying this system of Thomism all over the world and passing it on as a living system.
At this point, let’s utilize particular terms for our approach. These are OC/DC that are squished together. This translates into O rthodox C atholicism/ D ynamic C hristianity or Orthodox Christianity. This combines the best, brightest, and most beautiful qualities of Christianity and Roman Catholicism that feeds our dynamic faith today. All of this comes from the heart of our sacred tradition, the vast treasury of graces, creativity, and splendor which is true and godly.
Note: The above means going full-on classic Christianity and Catholicism from morality to mysticism through pastoral practice and pragmatic spirituality versus a “pick and choose” mentality, “cafeteria” Catholicism, or Catholic Lite approach (which is a lot of fluff without substance or spirituality without religious weight). When I use the term, “dynamic Christianity,” I mean all of the life-giving streams of spirituality, social awareness, art, discipleship methodologies, ethics, and outreach that make up the mighty river of Christianity. This also includes spirituality as a doctrinally solid and life-giving solvent!
Here’s something to make you extra comfortable in this venture: We may describe our little book’s goal another way instead of ceding meditation, energy, and other words or realities to the New Agers and Eastern mystics, we actually want to transform these realities and incorporate them into our own, or better put , re-own them. We are not taking what is of the world and appropriating it for our religion but, rather, we are reappropriating what is and was Christianity’s reality in the first place but is now misunderstood or underappreciated. Just as Martin Luther King Jr. was helped by Gandhi’s peace activism in South Africa, Greek and Near Eastern philosophy positively affected Christianity. We can progress in a righteous manner and maturely in spirituality with the help of God’s anonymous spiritual seeds in various places.
Interlude
The Synesthesia Principle

Beauty inspires and when we use all our senses to perceive God and his world we are alive.
As we close this introduction, here’s yet another aspect of a dynamic mode of Christian spiritual synesthesia , which relates to the book, Breathing Light.
Say what? Synesthesia means the combining of senses not normally gr