Advent Retreat With(out) the Sacraments

1:06 PM Thursday.

Greetings, Duffy! 

I pray this note finds you well. The Creator in his wisdom and mercy has a much shorter entry for us this week than last week. 

There are basically two things I want to pray with you about in our trialogue with the Creator as we move toward Thanksgiving and the end of liturgical year 2025.

First, on your side of the ledger, I want to pray that you meet with all success on the purgative, illuminative and unitive way of the Catholic contemplative. I want to pray that you meet with success in everything you are hoping and needing to accomplish during this Advent and Christmas retreat. I am not a Catholic, and I may not even be a Christian, but I have enormous respect for the devout lay Catholic path. I believe that unspeakable closeness to God is possible on the lay Catholic path. This treasure is not reserved exclusively for the consecrated and the ordained. And even if you eventually become ordained as a deacon, then coffee, wine, wool and a flexitarian diet are still allowed. So are healthy incomes and joyful family lives. May you be blessed in all regards. 

On my side of the ledger, I am praying that the Creator will let me know by the end of this retreat whether I should call myself only a born-again believer in a Jewish Jesus, and leave it at that, or whether I should profess faith in the Nicene Creed, and seek baptism as a Christian. Retired Methodist pastor and vegan teetotaler Frank Hoffman - my mentor in Wisconsin - thinks I should call myself a Christian even now, but I disagree with him on this one. I don't want to call myself a Christian unless I subscribe to the Nicene Creed and get baptized. In the meantime, and maybe from here on out, I am positioning myself on the Red Road of the interfaith American contemplative. Is that the course I should take? Send insight, Creator.

Now for a closing question: How far can an interfaith American contemplative get on the purgative, illuminative, and unitive way without participating in the sacraments of the Catholic Church?

Here is what Google Gemini has to say about this:

https://share.google/aimode/1nqOxD6Ox9iVmSKJM

There is some wiggle room for extraordinary grace in Gemini's answer, but I don't know what the Church's official position is, and I don't want to be too presumptuous about it.

Maybe as an accommodation for my disability?

Let's leave it there this week.

Shalom my brother!

End 1:53 PM.