Mani – ☩ Ecclesia Gnostica

The Nature of the Redeemer

A Homily for the Fourth Sunday in Advent

by Bishop Steven Marshall

The nature of the Redeemer is a very real mystery to the Gnostic, not in the conventional sense of something that is to be deduced and solved but in that it is something that is too great to be expressed in ordinary words and speech. It cannot be figured out rationally or in statements of fact or theory. It cannot be reduced to a single person in history, a specific figure in religion or even a single experience that is true for all. In this case, we must approach the amplification of this intent with caution and the realization that all we can do is open some windows that may reveal a few facets of this great mystery. As recounted in the collect for this Sunday, “O Thou our Redeeming Power… our thought has not swerved from searching Thy secrets.”

Many references and insights of Gnosis may appear secret, but they are secret only in that they can only be apprehended through mystical experience; they transcend ordinary thought and speech. Without the Gnosis, without the mystical experience for ourselves, such theoretical knowledge is nothing worth. Only the interior experience can transform us. Our Pre-Eucharistic prayer refers to “the Grace beyond thought and speech.” The prayer of Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom), one of the principal Goddesses of Tibetan Buddhism, refers to her in the title “beyond thought and speech.” In the same way the nature of the Redeemer is beyond thought and speech.

The use of the word “nature” in this context might also be explicated by the Buddhist term for the essential and true nature of a thing, which is Dharma. It is similar in meaning to the Chinese Tao or “way” as well. This relates to a phrase in the Gospel of St. John where the Christ exclaims, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Yet we must not narrow this to one person in history; the nature of the Redeemer cannot be contained in such a fashion. The “truth” and the “way” suggests something much more intrinsically universal and yet individual in expression and realization.

In the Gnostic framework the individual is redeemed through a process of internalization and consciousness of the figure of the Redeemed Redeemer. One of the mythic representations that most fully expresses this process is that of the Holy Prophet Mani. Although Mani’s vision is the result of a unique transmission, he poetically draws upon the religious imagery surrounding him, including that of mystical Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Alexandrian Gnosticism. He describes the First Man (Human), the androgynous Anthropos, as a Man (Human) of Light who is tricked and trapped by the Darkness or is otherwise knowingly sacrificed to the Darkness to redeem the Light previously consumed by it. One can find remarkable parallels of the consuming of the Light by the Darkness in the story of Ungoliant, the monstrous spider who poisons the life and drinks the light of the Two Trees in The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien. (I do not pretend that Tolkien was inspired by the Manichean writings, but suggest that, although inspired by Finnish, Celtic and Germanic mythology, he primarily drew upon a vision of mystical truths and a source common to the prophets of any age.) The Darkness wishes to defeat the Light by consuming it, and by that means the Light is fragmented into sparks and dispersed throughout the cosmos. Such a metaphor is described equally in the Lurianic myth of the fragmented sparks of Adam Qadmon and in the Sethian Gnostic accounts of the seed of Seth. In the Manichean myth the distress of the Darkness, in having consumed the Light, brings forth material creation and the living universe. This entire cosmos by which the Darkness hoped to capture and defeat the Light becomes a mechanism for freeing and putting back together the fragments of the Light dispersed throughout the Chaos. Yet this redemptive process does not happen automatically. The dispersed sparks of the Light of the First Man suffer from a faint of ignorance, a forgetfulness of their origin. The Father of Greatness who with the Mother of Life engendered the androgynous First Man together send envoys of light in the form of Messengers of Light to remind the fragments of the First Man of their celestial origin and perfection. In this scheme the process of redemption is remembering from whence we came. This call to remembrance is present in all the traditions of Gnosticism, in all times and cultures. It is poetically recalled in the “re-membering” of the body of Osiris in the Egyptian mysteries and in the Manichean myth with the gathering together of the fragmented light of the First Man.

“When men asked for the Redeemer, then the Mother of Life, and the First Man and the Spirit of Life decided to send to their children One who should free them and save them, to show them the knowledge and the righteousness and rescue them from evil.” (The holy prophet Mani) A Messenger of light is sent by the Father of Greatness and the Mother of Life for our Redemption. Another portion of Manichean writings lists not just one, but a stream of such messengers sent throughout history: “Seth-el, Shem, Enos, Nikotheos, Enoch, Elias, Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus, Mani.” The Redeemer is not just an occurrence in history. The Messenger continues to come to us, the ever-coming and redeeming Logos. Like the Chanticleer of the dawn the Redeemer comes to awaken us from the slumber of ignorance, to guide us to Liberation. The Christ came to free us, to save us, “to show us knowledge and righteousness and to rescue us from evil.” He did not come to bring us a vicarious atonement by dying on a cross, but he came into this world to bring a message of liberation and a redeeming power to achieve it. According to the writings of Mani, the Christ only appeared to be a man: “While coming, the Son changed himself into the form of man, and He appeared to men as a man, being no man, and men fancied him to have been born.” The Gnostic Christ is both a mysterious otherness and a perfect likeness within us. In the Odes of Solomon, the redeemer figure states, “I am from another race.” We too, our essential spirits, are alien to this worldly reality; they are the exiled sparks of the First Man (Human), the Redeemed Redeemer. So too, we bear a kinship to Christ in that way. The goal of the Gnostic is not to become a Christian but a Christ. To seek to know this divine nature is to “wonder at the place from whence we have come.”

(The Untitled Apocalypse from the Bruce Codex)

In reference to the Redeemer as the way, the truth and the life”, the Sanskrit word dharma besides the true “nature” of a thing and the “way”, also means the “law.” The nature of the redeemer, then, is the Law, for the Law of the Gnostic is one, the Law of Love:

“And he also gave us the law: to love one another, and to honor God and bless Him, and seek Him—who He is and what He is—that we should wonder at the place whence we have come, and not return to evil again but follow after Him who has given us the Law of Love.”

(The Book of the Gnosis of the Light, from the Untitled Apocalypse of the Bruce Codex)

The commandment to love one another and to love God intends that we “should wonder at the place from whence we have come.” To discover the nature of the redeemer within us we must seek God within ourselves and find our way to the place from whence we have come. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, “If they say to you: whence have you originated, say to them: We have come from the light where the light has originated from itself.” When we seek who and what God is, we find who and what we are. The Redeemer and the redeeming power within us are one; the nature of the Redeemer and our true divine nature are the same. “If you will know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the sons (offspring) of the living Father.”

Redemption to the Gnostic means liberation, liberation from the collective powers of the mass psyche, as well as those bonds within our own individual psyches. If not for such a redeeming power from outside the system, the hyletic and even most of the mind-centered people of this world would never make it. The wheels of karma and fate are not sufficient to the task. Certainly, we have our own work to do in the process of purification and redemption; yet our worldly oriented egos alone are not sufficient to the task either. Without the Divine Aid we end up in the same hole, shoveling and shoveling the same old mire, without ever getting out of it. The Redeemer came to lift us out of both our individual limitations and the bonds of the mass psyche. Besides the message of an alternative world view, the Redeemer brought a liberating power, a power to alter our consciousness into more elevated states of perception, a power conveyed through the institution and revivification of mysteries, which the Church today calls “sacraments.” The sacraments are mysteries; the Redeemer also is a mystery. The sacraments are doorways to a transcendental mystery. The sacraments enact metaphors and myths of transcendent and timeless processes of purification and apotheosis. The rituals become external cues to an interior state of consciousness as well as external symbols of an interior and invisible grace from on high.

The whole world has a need for redemption and liberation. Mani writes of the light of nature trapped in the suffering world of material creation. To the Gnostic salvation is, as the alchemists of old, to liberate the light of nature and the light fragmented in ourselves. We can accomplish such a task only by becoming liberated ourselves through recognition of the transcendent and redeeming power within us, however it may reveal itself to us. Whether yellow, black, red or white, masculine, feminine, young, old, Neopagan, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Moslem or Jew. The Redeemer humbly adapts itself to our humanity, not just once 2,000 years ago, but every time it reveals itself to us. Every time that the mystery of the Eucharist takes place the redeeming power and light of the Logos sacrifices itself to the limitations of matter for our sakes. Like Buddhism, Gnosticism places more emphasis on the message and the redemptive process itself rather than on the individual founder in history. And yet, one cannot really discuss the nature of the redeemer without giving due recognition to the inestimable importance of the mystery-figure of Jesus in the Gnostic soteriology and world view. He lived an archetypal life, the Word made flesh, that we too might have that life of spirit and wholeness, which is our spiritual birthright, not by mere belief in a historical or pseudo-historical event, but through Gnosis, a knowing that his story is the story of each one of us and that we must discover the redeemer and the one in need of redemption within.

Another aspect of the redemptive process related to this world view is the bringing together of the masculine and feminine parts of the Androgynous First Man, Adam. In this regard the mythic figure of the redeemer transcends gender designations. The Gnostic myths are replete with stories of divine feminine figures redeeming the fallen masculine as well as divine masculine figures redeeming the fallen feminine. To some degree the Gnostic journey towards wholeness involves both these relationships within us, regardless of our outward gender. In the Sethian gospels Eve is called the Mother of life, the Mother of all living, just as the divine feminine is titled in the Manichean scriptures. The Gnostic Eve is not an evil temptress; rather, she is the bringer of enlightenment and Gnosis to Adam; she awakens him from the sleep of unconsciousness of who and what he is. Through the divine, feminine spirit of Eve, Adam’s progeny, the seed of Seth, carry the light and its message forth to all generations of Gnostics, which culminates in the advent of the Christ.
The Christ is the divine redemptive image of the redeemed Adam, just as the Blessed Virgin Mary is the redemptive image of the divine Eve. Likewise, the Sophia who gives herself to the depths of the material chaos for our redemption is redeemed by the Christ to become the feminine image of the redeemed redeemer. The Gnostics portrayed this latter image of redemption in the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The point of all this juxtaposition of masculine and feminine images is that we have both these natures and their relationship to the divine within us, spiritually. Thus, for the Gnostic, the story of the Advent of Christ brings not a mere recounting of historical or pseudo-historical facts but a rich mythic weaving together of timeless archetypes and our potential for liberation and redemption.
In referring to the Redeemer as “the way, the truth and the life,” the way implies a process, in Gnostic terms, a process of interpreting religious symbols to represent, illumine and further develop an interior Gnosis. The varied, diverse and occasionally contradictory mythologems of the Gnostics model this process. These are not “just” psychological symbols but symbols in a Jungian sense, symbols that are not simply to be studied but to be used in the process of portraying the interior realities of Gnosis, a process facilitated by mystery actions using them (sacraments). When we “do” something with them they may “do” something with us. Symbols, in this sense, represent spiritual potencies that are at once intra-psychic and extra-psychic, mystic and cosmic, individual and collective, subjective and objective. In this manner, the religious symbols of Christmas: the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Christ child and others can take on an even more transcendent and illuminating character.
The mother Mary of the Christmas story is called, in the Western Church, the Immaculate Conception. The Immaculate Conception refers to the doctrine that Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was conceived without original sin to be a fit vessel for the birth of the Christ Child. To put this in a Gnostic context we must understand that the doctrine of original sin was by no means universally held in Christendom until after its popularization by St. Augustine of Hippo. The Gnostic myth rather indicates a doctrine of original divinity. In this fashion, we are all immaculately conceived. But we are yet far from that divine nature with in us. Rather than an original sin, we suffer from an original ignorance, an ignorance of our divine origin. Each of us, in spirit, is conceived immaculately in the love of the Father of Greatness and the Mother of Life. We have the potential and capacity to bring forth the “virgin birth” of the Christ within us. Yet without Gnosis and an awakening from our ignorance, without the Gnosis of this Divine Love, we have nothing. In reference to the “virgin birth,” it is the realization that the Mother of Life, her unadulterated love remains ever itself, one, undefiled and pure, regardless of its myriad forms of expression, for it is by the Law of Love that we are brought to “wonder at the place from whence we have come.”

A passage from an Ethiopian manuscript based on the Protevangelion describes Mary’s conception and announces her role in the birth of the Savior:

“Gabriel appeared to her and said: Peace be unto thee, O Woman. Fear not, for thou hast found mercy with the Lord, and behold, thou shalt conceive and bring forth a daughter and thou shalt call her name Mary; from her shalt spring the light of creation and Him for whom the worlds wait.”

Mary is the immaculately conceived and purified Holy Grail prepared for the descent of the Christ. Yet, she in many ways is an image of our own souls and represents our individual role in and preparation for the Advent of the Christ within us. As announced by St. John the Baptizer: “For this is He that was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah… the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight a pathway for our God.’”

Mary affirms this role in the Gospel story of the Annunciation by saying, “Be it done according to Thy word.” She realizes that the Holy Grail that is herself, before it can bring forth the Christ Child, must be cleaned and emptied to receive the Fullness. So too must we, in some way, empty and clean our cups to receive the Christ, for the ego-personality alone cannot transform the base metal of our personality into the golden chalice of the divine birth. The womb of Mary, the Mother of life, represents the Holy Grail. Through Gnosis we are prepared to conceive the interior Virgin Birth, spiritually. She has been called the Spirit of Prophecy and the Daughter of the Voice, both represented as a dove. Dove, or the Latin “Columba”, is the title for virgins, such as Mary who were dedicated in the Temple of Jerusalem. The Christmas season brings to us the Dove of Peace. Thus, it is the spirit of Mary, as a dove, who ushers in the peace at Christmastide. She speaks in the heart, announcing the coming of the Redeemer and our own Redemption. She introduces us to the nature of the Redeemer, the Prince of Peace that dwells within us. As in Jung’s “Hymn to Izdubar” in “The Incantations of Liber Secundus” of The Red Book, we must in some paradoxical fashion become the mother of our Selves: “I am the maiden, the simple mother, who gave birth but did not know how.” The mother “who gave birth but did not know how” speaks to the mystery of the process of the birth of Christ, which must occur within each of us.

As our consciousness grows and our ego is transformed, the birth takes place, the peace descends upon us, and we bring to fruition the seed of our redemption. Thus, we become one with Christ and know the Redeemed Redeemer within us; we know the redeemed and the Redeemer as one. We know the one who is redeemed and the one who gives birth. The Holy Mother of all gods, Our Lady reveals to us the nature of the Redeemer who dwells within us and is our truest Self. We find the mystery that that which is born in us, like Christ, has always been, is now, and ever shall be, the ever-coming and Redeeming Logos.

My Lady is a fragrant rose,
And near to God my Lady grows;
And all my thoughts are murmuring bees
That haste in silent ecstasies
Upon her beauty to repose.
Sweeter than any flower that blows,
Since all the scents her lips disclose
Are prayers upon the heavenly breeze,
My Lady is.

Her summer never comes and goes
And, for the sweetness she bestows,
My heart’s the hive where, by degrees,
I hoard my golden memories.
For Mary, as my Angel knows,
My Lady is.

-Anon

Steven Marshall is the Bishop of Queen of Heaven Gnostic Church, a parish of the Ecclesia Gnostica in Portland, Oregon.

The Lectionary of the Ecclesia Gnostica

An Introduction

by ☩ Stephan A. Hoeller
Regionary Bishop, Ecclesia Gnostica

It is a time honored practice of sacramental Christendom to make available to its communicants selected passages of sacred scripture, marshalled in accordance with the holidays and seasons of the Church Year. The Roman Missal as well as the Roman Breviary (especially in their pre-Vatican II form) are eminent and admirable examples of such selections. While the Protestant emphasis on a non-selective reading of scripture has robbed some of Christendom of the use of Lectionaries (as such selections are often called) such books retain their value to this day. The Gnostic Church possesses a unique lectionary in the English language which is enjoying an increasing popularity. It is known officially mainly by its descriptive title: The Collects, Lessons and Gospels to be used throughout the Church Year and was issued under the authority of the bishop of the Ecclesia Gnostica in America in 1974.

The Gnostic Church [Ecclesia Gnostica] is a Christian church and considers itself as a part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Ecclesia founded by the Logos and His apostles. In view of this, it is evident that the canonical Christian scriptures would be well represented in its Lectionary. The availability of a fairly large number of Gnostic scriptures in our days makes it possible as well as desirable, however, that scriptures of the specifically Gnostic corpus should be included in fair numbers. In addition to the canonical Christian and the Gnostic scriptures, it seemed also desirable to include a certain number of gnostically related writings, such as the Hermetic, the Mandaean and the Cathar scriptures as well as the Chaldean Oracles. The Lectionary is not of a universalistic character and thus it does not include writings from traditions other than the Christian Gnostic, although the closest relatives of this tradition, i.e. the Manichaean, Mandaean and Hermetic documents are represented also. Contemporary scholarship recognizes that Hermeticism with its texts, such as the Corpus Hermeticum, the Poimandres, and others, is but a non-Christian variant of Gnosticism, as is the Mandaean religion. Manichaeanism is in fact more Christian than the former two schools of thought. The Prophet Mani considered himself a spiritual apostle of Jesus Christ, and the Manichaeans used several known Christian scriptures, such as the Gospel According to Thomas. There exists sufficient justification therefore, for the inclusion of all of these variants of the Gnostic tradition.

The various Sundays and Holidays of the Church Year have ascribed to them special intentions. The collects, lessons (sometimes known as epistles in other lectionaries and liturgies) and gospels have been carefully selected so as to express, as far as possible, the intentions of the Sundays and Holidays. Of the collects, 24 are taken from Manichaean sources. (A collect is a prayer manifesting a central keynote or point.) The break-down of the sources of the lessons is as follows: Manichaean: 14; Pistis Sophia: 3; other Pre-Nag Hammadi scriptures: 14; Hermetic Writings: 4; Mandaean Scriptures: 3; Cathar Scriptures: 1; Chaldean Oracles: 3; other miscellaneous Gnostic sources: 4; Canonical Scriptures (both Old and New Testament): 39. The gospels in the Lectionary are taken from the following scriptures: Manichaean: 1; Pistis Sophia: 3; other Pre-Nag Hammadi scriptures: 4; Gospel According to Thomas: 18; Gospel of Truth: 7; Gospel of Phillip: 19; Hermetic Writings: 2; Cathar Scriptures: 2; Canonical Scriptures (both Old and New Testament): 31. The Lectionary comprises 185 pages, including seven pages of occasional collects to be used at the discretion of clergy either within or outside of the context of the Eucharist.

Scriptures for Private Study

Gnostic clergy and communicants ought to be particularly aware of what may be called the primary sources of Gnostic teachings. A primary source is a scripture that comes to us directly from the ancient Gnostics themselves. Among these primary sources we find, first the Nag Hammadi Library, and second, the codices and treatises whose discovery precedes the Nag Hammadi find. The latter are: the Askew, Bruce and Berlin Codices, the Acts of Thomas, Acts of John, and a few others. Less reliable because of their anti-Gnostic bias, and no longer qualifying as primary sources, are the references and quotations of Gnostic content in the writings of certain Church Fathers, Epiphanius, Irenaeus and others, who, for the most part, acted as polemicists against the Gnostic teachers of the early Christian centuries. Although certainly biased and often distorted, the information in these sources is still often quite informative.

To address ourselves first to the most important primary source, we must turn now to the Nag Hammadi Library of Gnostic writings. There are six separate major categories of writings, when they are analyzed according to subject matter. They are as follows:

Writings of creative and redemptive mythology, including Gnostic alternative versions of creation and salvation. These are: The Apocryphon of John (two versions); The Hypostasis of the Archons; On the Origin of the World; The Apocalypse of Adam; The Paraphrase of Shem.
Observations and commentaries on diverse Gnostic themes, such as the nature of reality, the nature of the soul, the relationship of the soul to the world: The Gospel of Truth; The Treatise on the Resurrection; The Tripartite Tractate; The Tractate of Eugnostos the Blessed (two versions); The Second Treatise of the Great Seth; The Teachings of Sylvanus; The Testimony of Truth.
Liturgical and initiatory texts. (These may be of special interest to persons of sacramental and initiatic interests): The Treatise on the Eighth and Ninth; The Prayer of Thanksgiving; The Valentinian Exposition; The Three Steles of Seth; The Prayer of the Apostle Paul. (The Gospel of Phillip, listed under category 6, does in part have great relevance to this category also, for it is in effect a treatise on Gnostic sacramental theology).
Writings dealing primarily with the feminine deific and spiritual principle, particularly with the Divine Sophia: The Thunder: Perfect Mind; The Thought of Norea; The Sophia of Jesus Christ; The Exegesis of the Soul.
Writings pertaining to the lives and experiences of some of the apostles: The Apocalypse of Peter; The Letter of Peter to Phillip; The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles; The First and Second Apocalypses of James; The Apocalypse of Paul.
Last but certainly not least, the scriptures which contain sayings of Jesus as well as descriptions of incidents in His life: The Dialogue of the Saviour; The Book of Thomas the Contender; The Apocalypse of James; The Gospel of Phillip; The Gospel According to Thomas.

This leaves a small number of scriptures of the Nag Hammadi Library which may be called “unclassifiable.” It also must be kept in mind that the passage of time and translation into languages very different from the original have rendered many of these scriptures abstruse in style. Some of them are difficult reading, especially to those not familiar with Gnostic imagery, nomenclature and the like. Lacunae are also present in some of these scriptures. The most readily comprehensible of the Nag Hammadi scriptures is undoubtedly The Gospel According to Thomas, with The Gospel of Phillip and the Gospel of Truth as close seconds in order of easy comprehension. There are various translations of most of these scriptures available; the most complete being the one volume collection The Nag Hammadi Library in English, (edited by J. Robinson) which is readily available.

The Gnostic writings, whose discovery precedes that of the Nag Hammadi Library have been in large part accurately and sympathetically translated by the late scholarly Theosophist, G.R.S. Mead, in such works as Pistis Sophia, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, and his series of smaller books, entitled Echoes from the Gnosis. Mead’s works have been reprinted in recent, albeit probably small, editions. There is also an excellent selection of Gnostic writings of the pre Nag Hammadi variety, entitled The Gospel of the Gnostics, edited by another outstanding scholar and Theosophist, Duncan Greenlees. The same scholar has also edited and published a very fine selection of Manichaean writings under the title, The Gospel of the Prophet Mani. Both of these fine books are out of print, but may be obtained in Libraries of the Theosophical Society for study.

Nearly twenty years have elapsed since the complete translations of the Nag Hammadi Library was completed and published. The exegetical literature based on these writings is slowly growing. Curiously enough, one of the most useful books of this sort is still one which was published very soon after the Nag Hammadi Library: The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels. Some other useful authors in this field are: Bentley Layton, Giovanni Filoramo, Simone Petrement, Dan Merkur, Marvin Meyer and Ioan Couliano. An increasing number of books employing the name “Gnostic” in their titles are being sold. The usefulness and authenticity of such literature need to be evaluated and judged by individual students on a case by case basis.

Conclusion

It is important to remember that later varieties and recensions of Gnostic teachings are present in virtually all transmissions of the Occult tradition in the West. Some of these later variations resemble the original model more closely than others. Clergy, members and other persons interested in the Gnostic Church often possess Martinist, Masonic, Rosicrucian, Theosophical and similar affiliations and dedications. All of these schools of thought, whether they acknowledge it or not, are related not only to each other, but by way of historical and mystical descent also to the matrix of ancient Gnosticism. (Certainly some of the leading figures of these movements have acknowledged their relationship to Gnosticism, as H.P. Blavatsky’s numerous writings on the Gnostics exemplify.)

Whatever the other interests and dedications of all of us may be, we are Gnostics. We are Gnostics moreover, not only in the sense of pursuing, or possessing a quality of consciousness that might be called Gnosis, but we are members of a specific tradition. This tradition, the Gnostic tradition, is the one represented by the Gnostic Church. It may be true that the non Gnostic branches of Christendom have or claim a certain kind of Gnosis, which they may call at times “Apostolic” or by any other name. Aspects of the Gnosis have passed into many hands over the centuries. Yet, we must not be satisfied with that which is in part, for we are heirs of the fullness, the Pleroma itself. And this is the principal reason for our interest in and dedication to the Gnostic Scriptures. These scriptures are one of our chief links with our origins. (The other links are the seven mysteries, or Sacraments and the arcane, oral tradition). It is by way of these scriptures that we may in large measure join ourselves consciously with the Fathers of the Gnosis, great sages like Valentinus, Basilides and their company. It is also thus, that through them, we are joined to the Holy Apostles and through them to their and our Master, Jesus Christ, the most precious flower of the Pleroma, the Logos, the Pansother, the fountainhead of all true Gnosis.

Day of Independence of the United States

July 4

Color: White

The COLLECT

O Sovereign and most worshipful of all Masters who in thine infinite love and wisdom hast caused our nation to be formed on this day; we bless and glorify thy glorious name for the abundant blessings thou hast conferred on thy children in this land. Thou who holdest all nations and countries in the hollow of thy hand, guard our country from all evil, and endow its people with wisdom and understanding, with strength and discernment, so that Thy will may be fulfilled and the great Temple of humanity be erected under Thy guidance; O Thou great masterbuilder, to whom there shall be praise and glory for evermore. Amen.

The LESSON

The Lesson is taken from the first Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians:
As the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of that body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many; and the eye cannot say unto the hand: I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet: I have no need of you. There should be no schism in the body, but the members should have the same care one for another. And where one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular.

The GOSPEL

The Gospel is taken from the Gospel according to St. Luke:
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed His people, and hath raised up a mighty salvation for us in the house of His servant David, and He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began; that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hands of all that hate us; to show mercy towards our fathers, and to remember His holy covenant; that we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life. And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto His people in the remission of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day- spring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.