Mysticism & Gospel of Thomas – No. 52 – The Living One

Verse - The Living One

His disciples said to him, "Twenty-four prophets have spoken in Israel, and they all spoke about you." He said to them, "You have forgotten the only living One who stands before you, and you have spoken only of the dead."

Comment

Jesus calls the disciples ignorant when they ask and desire things that they actually possess. They look to him as the bearer of the divine light and the heir of the kingdom of God - and in doing so they overlook the fact that the light and fullness of God is alive in them in the same way. In the above words of the Lord, Jesus speaks out against this wrong way of looking. The same words can be found in Augustine in the following reading:

When our Lord asked the apostles what they should think of the Jewish prophets who had announced his coming to their ancestors, he replied: 'You have rejected the living one who stands before you and are telling tales about the dead.'

Jesus thus makes it clear that turning their attention to the prophets of the Old Testament as well as to the last herald of Christ, John the Baptist, leads them away from the essential: from the living Christ who stands before them and who is equally in them.

Miracles

The whole world runs after miracle workers. But only the few, the spiritually awakened, know about the most essential miracle that takes place every day: the realizing power of faith. This power achieves greater things than the temporary overcoming of hunger, need or death; it transforms darkness into light, uncertainty into security, suffering into bliss, and fills that which is doomed to perish, despite all efforts to prolong existence, with the divine spirit of immortal life.

But only those who believe with all their heart and allow themselves to be guided by the spirit of the eternal experience this. They grow imperceptibly from the body-bound ego existence into that luminous life from the spirit, which is a living participation in the life of God and is therefore as changeless and timelessly eternal as God himself.