Where are we? If we should guess, "At the foot of Mount Sinai!" who would disagree?

In recent weeks we have witnessed signs of God in St. Matthew's Gospel:

In this morning's lesson, a drama plays out which is the hallmark act of God: leading Israel by the hand out of Egypt with provision of manna in the desert; freeing Israel from bondage; God bringing His people to Himself, into His purity. It is attested everywhere in the Torah, the Prophets, and Psalter. But this most classic among Divine acts, though it is materially real, is only for the moment in Matthew's reporting. Indeed, it is dismissed as suddenly as it is conceived and ordained:

What is this? What is going on here? Why did this all happen in the first place? Perhaps, to borrow a Kodachrome analogy from the early sixties, it is as if we have dimmed the lights, have taken our places in the living room, and are now watching cherished, family scenes depicted in luminous slides. That is, these scenes found in the Gospels are not intended to be a lasting reality, which we might somehow enter into. Indeed, such permanance is precisely what is not in the offing according to St. John the Theologian. The people move to crown Him king, creating a theocracy in the Levant, but Jesus waves them off and moves on:

Soon after this, Jesus will again walk on the sea. He will again feed the multitudes. These repetitions tell us something important: His wonders are not some sort of shared visionary experience only to evaporate. No, they are the eternal and prismatic reality of God, the solid reality of God, seen wherever God is seen.

Yet, when we try to capture them, even enter into them, making them part of a terrestial reality on earth, they vanish. You see, they are not the thing. His provision of manna in the desert will not crystalize into a sustainable, material world such as kingship leading to a temporal power called Israel. Undeniably, however, they are true scenes of God, lovingly prepared and Divinely crafted. So, what are they? Let us call them the Scenes of Eternity.

Without question, they have been furnished as cherished scenes and foundational memories lavished on the children of God revealing the Kingdom of Heaven. Do they not teach us everything we need to know? We learn that God is Providence. He supplies all our needs. Among these scenes are His teachings on the lilies of the field, arrayed like Solomon, and the birds of the air, who are surrounded by their own ending manna, just enough. These two appear in a section of Matthew's Gospel called the Sermon on the Mount.

But we at the Hermitage call these the Proverbs of Heaven, for they distinguish life with God from dog-pack-think on earth — the way our world is .... inretrieveably, irredeemably really is. Jesus knows that no one can actually live them without being crushed where our disjointed world refuses to square with the empyreal lineaments of Heaven.

Certainly, the scenes of eternity make a deep and lasting impression on the children who sit before this Kodachrome light, for they are marvelous. They reassure them of God's infinite and immovable goodness. And they look back on the goodness of one's family. "Oh my, this what I am part of!" they think.

For many of the parents, though, a different kind of feeling is stirred. For as we set out for the Kingdom of God, many of us slip, some of us slip badly. We fall short of the bright journey we had promised ourselves and God. And now sitting amongst family in this darkness, we are given that most compassionate gift — the gift of being reminded, reminded of how far we have slipped.

This is how the scenes of eternity function throughout the Holy Scriptures. For example, hear these poignant tones sounded in the Book of Jeremiah:

Do we have to ask where this honeymoon is taking place? These are family pictures from the foot of Mount Sinai. The very meaning of the place is, "away from the empires of man." For between this holy place and man's empires God has fixed an impassible boundary, where the might of Pharoah's armies are drowned. You see, the empires of man cannot enter here. Here is the purest holiness of God.

As we have considered so many times, the wilderness is the holy place untouched by the cities of man. It is pure God. The vocation of St. John the Baptist, who lives in the wilderness, is to bring us back to these scenes. His name says it all: cleansing, purity, and restoration to God. He is the Man of Eden, fragrant of the morning of the new earth.

Are the people not moved being brought back to theses scenes of intimacy? And is this not the heart of the Kingdom of Heaven, where we are entirely dependent upon God and where finally we may live dependable, sure-footed, and holy life?

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Out there, beyond these boundaries, people continue to pursue what they call joy. I speak to young people and ask what it is they want. Nearly all tell me they want joy, pleasure, happiness .... on their terms. For these terms are their freedom. But what we call our freedom ends up being life separated from God and, as it turns out, from everyone else, too. This is a general trend observable in all who reject God. It begins with alienation from God, which we engineer. The next stage is alienation from others, for God is relationship and the basis for our love for each other. In the end, we become alienated from ourselves .... driving in one-person "car pools," living in one-person dwellings, dining out at tables-for-one, and taking ourselves to the movies. Nothing shared. Nothing committed. Leading nowhere. And having an anti-meaning, or many anti-meanings, whose threads lead nowhere. A world dominated by depression .... have you not seen it?

And the scenes of eternity? Well these will be cast in our terms, as well. Perhaps you have heard the secular-humanist teaching on the Feeding of the 5,000. It goes like this. You see, Jesus is simply a great teacher and ethicist. We need not believe in fairy tales or magic spells. Jesus has led these people into a wilderness knowing that they would not follow Him there without bringing their own food. Yes, they have the food that will be needed. But will they share it? That is the question. It will be Jesus' soothing words that coax the food out from its hidden places. He is the master therapist who teaches everyone to share.

Such rationalism was the stuff of Christian religion during the mid- to late-twentieth century. It tracked with the rise and eventual idolatry of psychotherapy. Protestant groups morphed into ethical culture societies, such as the former Unitarians, the former Universalists, and the former Congregationalists.

I recall many years ago joining friends at a Congregational Church. I was not wearing clericals. The minister came over and clapped his hand on my shoulder and said, "Welcome friend! You can join us! We don't believe anything!"

In parallel, members of the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus began looking to psychology as a way ahead. You recall this period in the fifties and sixties and seventies. Their spiritual leader, Karl Rahner, SJ, would gently ridicule devout Roman Catholics (famously mocking his mother) as he led his pupils into the so-called light of reason (as he saw it). This mentality persecuted Padre St. Pio, OFM Cap., for God's unreasonableness was writ large upon this saint's life and body. Such men, now occupying the seats of power in the Vatican, were and are desperate to break the Roman Church away from its believing past. They want to be associated with something more "high tone" as they think back on the psychotheraphy culture of forties and fifties. Those were "all the best people." But they did not end up with "high tone."

Today, we look on in disbelief as this pop psychology — especially, "transactional therapy" ("I'm Okay, and You're Okay") — dominates the pages of the present pope's writings. Indeed, these doubtful principles have become a blueprint for a new Church, which goes by the code name called Synodality.

And where will this bold, new vision lead? Well, embarrassingly for the superannuated baby boomers who cling to it, it is not new. And it has already led. It is the program which has formed our present, depraved anti-world.

"You're okay! I'm okay! We will listen to each other and walk together to a higher place." These are the sort of sentences we find in the "Synodality" documents: thin tissues of nothing which are designed to replace the sublime holiness and unfathomable wisdom of God.

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If they have faded from our memory, then go out, go out where you may be reminded of them. For He continues to place these scenes before you every day. Go out to the woods far from the cities of man. And there you will arise in the freshness of the morning of the earth. Your body will breathe in its good air and will drink its pure waters (perhaps with a little coffee mixed in).

Arise before the sun. Go down through the sand dunes of a deserted beach, feel the freshness of the waves crashing on the sandy shore, as the sun begins to spread its gold over the sea. Dive into the refreshing sea, so abundant with healing and life!

Or simply go to a place alone and recall the love you once felt for Father God and for everyone around you. For that is the mind of the child. The child only sees a world as bathed in God's goodness and peopled with friends he has yet to make.

Yes, our God continues to set out the scenes of eternity. And this eternity is renewed with each new life born into the world, where Eden starts yet again. You know, we need not ever have departed. I have known people who never did. I know some of these people today. They have no bad habits. They have no evil thoughts. Their instinct is love and charity. I used to think that this was the outcome of formation. But I see that they have always been that way .... as we all were that way, and never stopped.

As for the rest of us? We made a decision to distance from ourselves from God. But we need never have consented to this evil. For God's innocence within ourselves is itself eternal and above the sordid grit of our world. It is eternal and held harmless under the shadow of His wing. For such as these, God declares, are the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt 18:3). It is only this kindness, this innocence, this heart, which may enter to Him. For otherwise, it would no longer be Heaven but more and more and more of the vagaries of man.

Let us return to the Eden within ourselves! Let us walk away from the many unworthinesses within us and around us. You know, in the end even every counselor and psychologist will tell you: walking away is the only way it can be done. You must hit bottom, they say, in order to make that decisive and clean break. Only seven percent escape from the abyss, and all of them simply walk away, have all made that indispensible clean break.

But every priest will say (I sincerely hope and pray), you do not have to hit bottom. Instead, you must hit "top." For Heaven's skies are right over head. And the King of Heaven stoops down to fill you with the abundance of His light and receive you into the marvelous Kingdom of Heaven, which surrounds us everywhere we go.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.