ritual

Obey My Voice, and I Will Be Your God

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2102

Previously, I said that we were to go over the watershed, didn’t I? On my seventieth birthday, outside spiritualists came dancing and said, “Now Rev. Moon has crossed the thirty-eighth parallel.” They are saying that I have crossed the threshold. Now the world of happiness is coming. This is how we should overcome the 1990s. After having passed over this, the Unification Church will be able to make swift and unbridled progress. Now, on this, my seventieth birthday, we must indemnify seven thousand years and the number seven, and must pass into the age of the number eight. Number eight is the number of liberation and making a new start, is it not? This is why America has declared the collapse of communism and so forth. Everything is completed. This is quite curious. This happened on the seventh and eighth after we had finished our event. (199-96, 1990.2.15)

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What is the difference between the second generation children of Blessed Families and young members who are candidates for the Blessing? When those candidates want to receive the Blessing, they need the holy wine ceremony and other ceremonies as well. It is very complicated. However, in the case of the second generation, there is no need for the holy wine ceremony. Their roots are different. Your roots are lodged in the fallen world, but theirs are not.
Everyone looks similar from the outside, but their histories and backgrounds are all different. The beginnings were different and so the process of growing up was different. The current situations they are in are different and their future destinations are different. Even though the final destination (spirit world) is the same, the final place they are going to there is different. It cannot be the same because those of the second generation are in the position of blessed children. (144-281, 1986.4.26)

Beyond Ritual

2. With the Changing of the Age, Old Rituals Are Replaced by Purer Forms of Devotion

Once, as Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai was coming forth from Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed after him and beheld the Temple in ruins. “Woe unto us,” Rabbi Joshua cried, “that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned for, is laid waste!”
“My son,” Rabbi Yohanan said to him, “be not grieved. We have another atonement as effective as this. And what is it? It is acts of loving-kindness, as it is said, ‘For I desire mercy and not sacrifice’ [Hosea 6.6].”
Talmud, Abot de Rabbi Nathan 6 (Judaism) Continue reading “Obey My Voice, and I Will Be Your God”

Many Want to Avoid the Thorny Path that Lies Along the Way

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Today I would like to gratefully take this opportunity and talk about a fundamental solution to the problem of the unification of the Korean peninsula – the unification that is our nation’s most cherished desire as well as the last matter of the Cold War that awaits settlement. I would like to entitle this talk “The Course of Life for the Princes and Princesses of God.”

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What will happen once we have conducted this ceremony? Families in the world today are breaking down, and resolving this issue remains a problem. With the world struggling to solve this problem of family breakdown, the Unification Church will bring together 360,000 young couples to form new families to live in an ideal manner, and this will lead all disordered families in the world to automatically take great interest in them. This will become a global issue.
Once I bless these 360,000 couples and rumors spread worldwide that it was the best thing that happened to the world, and as a result 36,000 couples from each nation were brought to participate in the Blessing, how many couples would that add up to? There are some countries that want to send 50,000 couples. Think about it. (269-300, 1995.5.1).5.1)

Beyond Ritual

WHEN RITUAL IS OVERLY RELIED UPON, it may imbue an aura of sanctity not matched by deeds or wisdom. Ritual is no substitute for authentic piety, love of one’s neighbor and personal realization of God. Nearly every religion has its own internal critique of ritualism. Even when the founder of one religion is apparently criticizing the ritualism of another religion, the passage was originally a prophetic word to his own people.
Father Moon concurs in these critiques, and adds two more: First, ritual can create a barrier between different denominations and faiths, which runs contrary to the will of God for religious unity. In this time of coming together, the barriers of ritual should be transcended. Second, acts of pious devotion to God and Jesus do not often grant the inner knowledge to know their heart and will. For example, many Christians revere the cross as the sign of salvation, when for Jesus it was the accursed instrument of his death and the source of millennia of grief and frustration that he could not have lived to complete his mission to build God’s Kingdom on earth.
Chief among the religious rituals in ancient times was animal sacrifice, yet, with a few exceptions, animal sacrifice is rare in religion today. Religions have come to regard acts of devotion, study, and charity the essence of the ancient ritual sacrifices that are required by scripture but no longer practiced. Thus, the Talmud regards charity to one’s neighbor as the equivalent of sacrificing a lamb as a sin offering. In a similar vein, the Buddha criticizes animal sacrifice as creating evil karma by killing life, and instead teaches a spiritual meaning of sacrifice as fulfilled in honoring parents, caring for family, and giving charity to monks.

Better than Ritual Is a Loving Heart and Righteous Deeds

With what shall I come before the Lord?
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of
rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6.6-8

Even three times a day to offer
Three hundred cooking pots of food
Does not match a portion of the merit
Acquired in one instant of love.
Nagarjuna, Precious Garland 283 (Buddhism) Continue reading “Many Want to Avoid the Thorny Path that Lies Along the Way”

Carry True Parents Picture

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Upon restoring the same level of unity that the Christian cultural sphere had established worldwide after World War II, we must set the direction the world needs to take in the next seven years. These seven years include this year. Because this time has finally arrived, the Family Federation can be founded after my forty years of public ministry, and we can stand and line up horizontally. In the same way that world unity was attempted after the war, if your families will only unite, you can indemnify all the past failures. Therefore, before you can recite the Family Pledge, your mind and body should be one, husband and wife should be one, and parents and children should be one. Without achieving this oneness, you still belong to the satanic world. You recite the pledge on the foundation of having united your mind and body, husband and wife, and parents and children. That’s why we have the Family Pledge. The Family Federation will govern the world based strongly on the Family Pledge. You must have pledge services in your families on the first and the middle of every month. We have two groups, Cain and Abel. (265-249, 1994.11.23)

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Facing the opposition of Christianity, in America and Korea, I stood in the position of a person with no nation. I had no country. Since I had no country I also had no people, no tribe, and no family. Thus, I was like an orphan. From this point, everything had to be restored within forty years, in order to stand on the foundation of spiritual territory on the national and worldwide level. However, just having spiritual territory was not enough. I had to inherit the foundation of the spiritual territory from the realm of the Christian culture and restore the substantial cultural realm on the national level. Upon that foundation, I had to restore through indemnity the substantial realm of the Christian culture on the worldwide level. (143-176, 1986.3.18)

7. Symbols, Images and Relics

Worship me in the symbols and images which remind you of me.
Srimad Bhagavatam 11.5 (Hinduism) Continue reading “Carry True Parents Picture”

Ascribe to the Lord the Glory Due His Name

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2082

North and South Korea cannot become one if they remain as they are. For this, we need patriots who fight without sleep and possess hearts of determination, willing to overcome all obstacles. The unification of North and South Korea begins with people who think, “I truly want to live together. I would like to die together if we must die, or live together if we must live. I would like to live together with our forefathers, with those who are in the spirit world.” (148-277, 1986.10.11

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As viewed from God’s original ideal of creation, the eldest son should come from God’s side and, of course, the second son should also come from God’s side. Due to the Fall, the position of the first son was taken by Satan, and the position of the second son went to God. This has to be made right. Thus, when we consider the story of Esau and Jacob in the Bible, Jacob united with his mother and received her help. He gave Esau the pottage of lentils and bread in exchange for the birthright of the firstborn son. Until today, we could not understand why Bible history is the way it is. With the appearance of the Unification Church, its meaning was clarified for the first time. (134-304, 1985.8.16)

Ritual

FATHER MOON TEACHES THAT GOD INSTITUTED RITUALS in every faith as a means by which people might approach Him. All rituals, therefore, have value. When performed with pure intention and following precisely their prescribed form, ritual offers respect to heaven and establishes for the believer a “foundation of faith.”
There is no way to do justice in this book to the wide variety of rituals and rites by which the peoples of the world worship God and show their respect to Heaven. Some of the types of rituals included here are: keeping a sacred time—the Sabbath, the Eucharist or sacred meal, circumcision, baptism, worship at holy places, worship by images and symbols, and dietary laws.

Liturgy and Worship

Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Matthew 18.20

Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering, and come into his courts!
Worship the Lord in holy array;
tremble before him, all the earth!
Psalm 96.7-9 Continue reading “Ascribe to the Lord the Glory Due His Name”