עברית From Christmas 2023 to Christmas 2024
Third Advent 2024
From Christmas 2023 to Christmas 2024
Third Advent 2024
‘Yes, this am I as a human being, as a God-willed human being on the earth, as a God-willed human being in the universe!’
During Advent 2024 we look back at the preparations for the centenary of the Christmas Foundation Conference and the laying of the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century, celebrated in Christmas 2023. These preparations have extended over many years… We can recall the rich, fruitful developments we experienced during the seven years from our meeting in Israel in Easter 2017. Each year we could add another spiritual impulse leading to Christmas 2023. I look back to these years with deepest gratitude and wonder, and I wish to thank all of you for your active participation and contribution to this work.
The laying of the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century, accomplished in Forum-3, Stuttgart, in Christmas 2023, lives strongly in our hearts. We contemplated it repeatedly during 2024 and its substance and forces is growing steadily among us. It has become a creative force, a real foundation for the Michaelic community that we seek to build anew now and in the near future. The new human meeting we learn to practice with each other, is growing out of the fruitful substance of the renewed foundation stone, from the existential mood and disposition, that seek to embody the present Pauline call: ‘Not I but your I in me’. In recent months, we could experience, in the real praxis, how this substance is growing in depths and strength between us, as we gradually deepen our meetings with each other.
The result of this fruitful process was that the more we practiced the new human meeting, the more we could feel the living and inspiring presence of new communal soul being among us. True, it is very subtle, very gentle soul being, non-intrusive, that one can easily overlook if one is not attentive to the intimate processes that transpire between our souls, when the meeting becomes ensouled resonance and harmonious oscillation, that can only be grasped if we listen to what happen between heart and heart. Nevertheless, this is an absolutely real event, and I am certain that with time- if we continue our devoted, earnest, joyful practice- we will become aware how she becomes more present, when she realizes that we create, in our loving devotion to our partners, warm and light filled heart space for her to dwell in. Then will ’the human being Anthroposophia’- this mysterious being, about which Rudolf Steiner spoke very little, but with outmost seriousness- descend to the etheric body and heart of the renewed Michaelic community, where the etheric earthly-human Sun is formed, and join human evolution on earth for the first time.
Since the laying of the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century in Christmas 2023, we could experience how the first two Michaelic centuries, the 20th and 21st centuries, are linked together in unbroken spiritual bond. Since Christmas 2023, this can become a real experience: how the continuation of the Christ-Michael impulse takes place also now. This bond is essential for our future work, because we emphasized repeatedly the esoteric significance of discovering and maintaining the continuation of the living, supersensible stream of the past, in the present and in all future times. On the earth, on Easter Eve, March 30, 1925, this stream was broken; in the etheric world, it continued with enhanced forces, spiritualized and intensified by the new Christ impulse since 1933-1945, perceived and actualized on the earth at the end of last century, starting its earthly development since the beginning of the 21st century.
When we wish to deepen and strengthen the supersensible bond between the first two centuries of the age of Michael, we contemplate with deepest reverence, earnestness, and holy enthusiasms, the eternal words of Rudolf Steiner about the being of Anthroposophia, spoken at the opening of the Christmas Foundation Conference, in 24 December 1923. I chose to place this passage as the Motto of the German translation of the book about the laying of the foundation stone of the Michaelic movement in the 21st century, planned to be published in Ereignis Verlag in spring 2025.
This passage ends with the deepest words of affirmation and actualization of our true humanness, that we can develop in the present age of Michael:
Yes, this am I as a human being, as a God-willed human being on the earth, as a God-willed human being in the universe.
Opening Lecture of the Christmas Foundation Conference, 24 December 1924 (GA 26)
Now more than ever before we may call to mind that a spiritual movement such as that encompassed by the name of Anthroposophy, with which we have endowed it, is not born out of any earthly or arbitrary consideration. At the very beginning of our Conference I therefore want to start by reminding you that it was in the last third of the nineteenth century that on the one hand the waves of materialism were rising while out of the other side of the world a great revelation struck down into these waves, a revelation of the spirit which those whose mind and soul are in a receptive state can receive from the powers of spiritual life. A revelation of the spirit was opened up for mankind. Not from any arbitrary earthly consideration, but in obedience to a call resounding from the spiritual world; not from any arbitrary earthly consideration, but through a vision of the sublime pictures given out of the spiritual world as a modern revelation for the spiritual life of mankind, from this flowed the impulse for the Anthroposophical Movement. This Anthroposophical Movement is not an act of service to the earth. This Anthroposophical Movement in its totality and in all its details is a service to the divine beings, a service to God. We create the right mood for it when we see it in all its wholeness as a service to God. As a service to God let us take it into our hearts at the beginning of our Conference. Let us inscribe deeply within our hearts the knowledge that this Anthroposophical Movement desires to link the soul of every individual devoted to it with the primeval sources of all that is human in the spiritual world, that this Anthroposophical Movement desires to lead the human being to that final enlightenment—that enlightenment which meanwhile in human earthly evolution is the last which gives satisfaction to man—which can clothe the newly beginning revelation in the words: Yes, this am I as a human being, as a God-willed human being on the earth, as a God-willed human being in the universe.