Tag: The Blessing

Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership

Strengthening Families and Communities Forum:
#111-Jamal Johnson; Having Sex Outside of Marriage Is Bad for Society

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2084

Using South Korean military power to force North Korea to submit is not the way. We should have an ideological foundation that is stronger than theirs. We should have the ability to naturally inspire the North to surrender and have the philosophy of loving our nation more than they love theirs – and of loving God more than they love communism. Otherwise, we will not be able to win the heart of North Korea. Based on our character, we should impress them with our character, our outlook on life, our lifestyle, and personal history. Unless we can surpass them, we can’t win over those armed with the ideology of communism. We cannot restore a Cain nation without a persuasive environment. Furthermore, if the Cain nation can’t be restored, then the restored nation that could become the worldly nation centering on the heavenly nation, will not be established. (46-123, 1971.8.13)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1241

    The literal meaning of the word “blessing” is “praying for blessings.” If you break down the word chookbok (blessing), chook means to pray or wish for something. When you are praying for blessings, what is it that is most precious? It is none other than the blessing of love. The Unification Church uses the word blessing with this meaning. The blessing of love is the greatest, because the fundamental origin of life begins with man and woman coming together in a holy wedding. It represents the most precious commitment of the universe. When praying for blessing, the best blessing you can ask for is the blessing of love, and so the Unification Church refers to marriage as the Blessing.
    The people who come to our church for the first time must understand this. When we say we have received the Blessing in the Unification Church, we don’t mean we have received just any blessing. When we speak of the Blessing, what we actually mean is we have been joined in holy matrimony by True Parents in the presence of God. (83-226, 1976.2.8)

FAMILY

THE BASIC FORM OF LIFE

Conjugal Love

4. Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership, Aligning Two Human Beings with the Divine Image

II am He, you are She;
I am Song, you are Verse,
I am Heaven, you are Earth.
We two shall here together dwell,
becoming parents of children.
    Atharva Veda 14.2.71 (Hinduism)

Representing heaven and earth, I have created husband and wife. This is the beginning of the world.
    Mikagura-uta (Tenrikyo)

From the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.” “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.
    Mark 10.6-9 Continue reading “Marriage Is a Sacred Partnership”

The Family Is the Textbook for Attaining the Kingdom of Heaven

Listen to Dr. Kelly Kohls, founder of the National School Boards Leadership Council, speaking at the Strengthening Families and Communities Forum:
#109-Dr. Kelly Kohls: How to Fix Boards of Education

Cheon Seong Gyeong 266

    The path we are walking has not ended. You will receive the Blessing through the gratitude you show before Heaven. You should be grateful individually and you should also never forget the value of having received the Blessing representing your tribe, your clan, such as the Kim or the Pak clan, and, moreover representing the thirty million people of Korea and all the people of the world.
    Furthermore, you should know that you have inherited the responsibility that True Parents are to carry out on earth. Why do the Blessed Families have to inherit this? If the Blessed Families are going through the course to restore a people, True Parents should be going through a course to restore the world. In other words, they should be going one step ahead. Yet without establishing the victorious standard of having restored a people, True Parents cannot walk the course of worldwide restoration. That is why you must inherit the responsibility to restore a people to ensure that True Parents can walk the worldwide course. Until your death and until the sorrow of this people is removed, you must shoulder the responsibility to restore a people. (13-293, 1964.4.12)

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1242

If you have the opportunity to attend a Blessing Ceremony, you should not go thinking you are just a man or a woman and there is nothing else to it. When you attend the ceremony, you are there representing men and women who have come and gone in the world over the past six thousand years. You must understand that you have been invited as such. You should experience this reality deep in your heart. (30-169, 1970. 3.22)

FAMILY

The Basic Form of Life

2. The Family as the School of Love and Virtue

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

The family is the most important school in human life, for it is the school of love. (271:80, August 22, 1995)

The family is the training ground of the heart. You are trained in brotherly and sisterly love, so treat your classmates in school with that same heart and your fellow citizens in the nation with that same heart. Hence, the education your parents give you to be loving brothers and sisters is for the sake of the school, the community and the nation.
    Parents should bequeath their heart and sensibility to their children and descendants. As parents you are role models, but this involves more than teaching by example. By your love you are laying the emotional foundation for your children, so that they are able to live for the family, the community and the nation. (180:131, August 22, 1988) Continue reading “The Family Is the Textbook for Attaining the Kingdom of Heaven”

Can Celibacy as Taught by Catholicism and Buddhism Be the Basis for Human Happiness?

Listen to Dr. Kelly Kohls, founder of the National School Boards Leadership Council, speaking at the Strengthening Families and Communities Forum:
#109-Dr. Kelly Kohls: How to Fix Boards of Education

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1950

England was able to create a world-wide empire because it was the successor to Roman civilization. Before England was occupied by Rome, her people did not bathe properly more than once a year. Isn’t that barbaric? They could not bathe because it was freezing cold. The English people are all descendants of pirates. Would they have had time to bathe? England inherited Roman civilization and expanded its global domain, centering on the ocean. God had them dominate the world. “You, island nation, conquer the world!” That was God’s will. (110-41, 1980.11.8)

Richard: Things just don’t happen. Although individual events are the reslult of human decisions (human responsibility), the overall flow of God’s Providence, as evidenced by the reading above, is overseen by God.

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1246

    Do you know Lee Gap-seong? Of the thirty-three people who participated in the March 1st independence movement, he is the only surviving member. When you consider him with regard to that movement, is he higher or lower in rank than the president of Korea? Without question, he is higher.
    In the same way, the people who receive the Blessing through True Parents will be glorified by the world. Even if the last couple to be blessed is crippled, with one eye, crooked nose, one ear, and one arm, they will be glorified by the world. Their physical appearance and anything else that is lacking will not matter; only the fact that they received the Blessing through True Parents will be important. That is something you cannot buy even if you were to pay billions of dollars. Women in the Unification Church, do you understand that? How much do you understand? (35-71, 1970.10.3)

Richard:  The March First Movement, or the Samil Movement (in Korean, samil means “three-one” or “March 1”) was one of the earliest manifestations of Korea’s independence movement during the Japanese occupation of Korea. The name refers to an event that occurred on March 1, 1919, also referred to as the Mansei Demonstrations (“ten thousand years,” in Korean).
    The March First demonstrations established the high-water mark in Korea’s struggle for independence from the Japanese colonial government. Although the nationwide demonstrations failed to accomplish the goal of effecting independence, they unified the Korean people in spirit as they awaited their eventual liberation from Japan. 
From:  The New World Encyclopedia.

Special Reading: Cheong Seong Gyeong 1404-continued

    Through this ceremony, the environmental conditions necessary for all humankind to be able to participate in the Blessing have been created, and all people connected to the mainstream ideal can now belong to You through attending it. This amazing and incredible miracle has been wrought, not just by the work of the Unification Church but also by the joint efforts of Yourself and the spirit world. Therefore, I hope and pray that You can forever hold the victorious dominion and sovereignty of eternal love and glory gained from this ceremony, and establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth and in the spirit world through the liberation achieved by this Blessing. All humankind connected to the 360 Million Couples can now unite in heart and strive to achieve the unity of mind and body, husband and wife, and within the tribe, race, nation, world, and cosmos. These couples have been established as the nucleus representing the True Parents on earth and the family in the garden of Your love. They have been blessed in order to complete the Kingdom of Heaven on earth with the sovereignty of the love central to the ideal of creation, which has been Your eternal dream.
    I stand before them on this occasion which You have long desired, and bless them to become Your children who from this moment can inherit Your will to build Your kingdom on earth and in heaven as true individuals by uniting mind and body, husband and wife, parents and children, and with their siblings in the blessed world. Please be with them and bless them as they march forward to the place of victory and glory. I pronounce my benediction upon the 360 million Couples in the name of the True Parents! Amen! Amen! Amen! (299-109, 1999.2.7)

Ascetism, Monasticism, and Celibacy

4. The Problem with Asceticism—Lack of Love

Teachings of Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Can celibacy as taught by Catholicism and Buddhism be the basis of human happiness? No. Yet no religion on earth has demonstrated what the basis of happiness is. Religions did not uphold the family as the basis because no family had appeared that was worthy of that position. However, sensing that one day such a family would appear, they emphasized celibacy. It was the foundation for people to form a pure and correct family. (Blessing and Ideal Family 2.2.4) Continue reading “Can Celibacy as Taught by Catholicism and Buddhism Be the Basis for Human Happiness?”

Obedience to God’s Will Is Necessary

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2156

The result of this Fall is that humankind became ignorant of such basic issues as the facts relating to God, life, and the universe. Throughout my life, I have spoken in public more than ten thousand times, and presented a true view of the world, of life, and of history based on the principles of ‘Godism.’ This content in its entirety has been translated into twelve different languages and published in a series of some three hundred volumes. It was not brought to light as a result of some kind of comprehensive literary research or academic study, but is comprised of the fundamental and essential answers I found while freely traversing both the visible and the invisible worlds.

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1380

The topic of our conversation moved on to the wedding of the 30,000 Couples and I asked, “Elder Brother Il-sung, would you be willing to open the thirty-eighth parallel if I were to bring the 30,000 Couples to North Korea?” He answered, “Of course, of course! Wow, that is splendid!” He actually invited me to bring the 30,000 Couples to North Korea. So I replied, “But there aren’t any hotels here.” He then told me, “The Songdo Beach Resort is very famous worldwide and hundreds of thousands of people can be accommodated in the pine fields there. So if you brought one tent for every ten people, you wouldn’t have any problem.” What he said was true. He said we should bring our own food as well and that he would open the port of Wonsan for us, so that we could bring all we needed by boat. (239-42, 1992.11.23)

Richard: It was not North Korea that blocked this plan, but South Korea. That is a huge historical failure on the part of South Korea.

Obedience and Submission

OBEDIENCE IS NECESSARY AS LONG AS secular goals and worldly lifestyles continue to deviate from God’s will and God’s standards of conduct. Ever since God commanded Adam not to eat the fruit in the Garden of Eden, God has repeatedly set forth commandments that conflict with self-centered and humanistic desires. Therefore, relating with God requires submitting to God’s will and denying self-will. This is an especially prominent theme in Islam, whose name, islam, means “submission.”
Obedience requires sacrifice. When Jesus prayed, “Not my will, but Thy will be done,” he was practicing the way of obedience even to the point of giving his life. Obedience is not about doing God’s will when it is convenient or agreeable to our one’s way of thinking. As Abraham found out when God ordered him to sacrifice his son, obedience can require doing something inconceivably difficult.
Nevertheless, the hardships of obedience and submission are ultimately for our good. God lays out commands to guide humankind on the path of growing to perfection; don’t all parents require their children to follow rules so that they might grow up to be mature and well-adjusted adults? God had that loving purpose in mind when He gave the commandment to Adam and Eve, and that same loving purpose lies within His commandments to us today.

  1. Obedience to God’s Will and God’s Commandments

Whosoever submits his will to God, while doing good, his wage is with his Lord, and no fear shall be upon them, neither shall they sorrow.
    Qur’an 2.112

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I [Moses] command you this day for your good?
    Deuteronomy 10.12-13 Continue reading “Obedience to God’s Will Is Necessary”

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

Cheon Seong Gyeong 2156

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.”

Cheon Seong Gyeong 1383

    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.

  1. 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”