The Founding of the Christian Community

GA 344 — 11 September 1922, Dornach

Sixth Lecture

My dear friends! So, we have prepared ourselves initially with regard to the development of the attitude and disposition for the office of carer for souls. Before we now proceed on the basis of what has been created, we must become quite clear about a number of things, because the whole conception, which you entered into by placing your ego in a direct relationship with the spiritual world yesterday, so to speak, is one that already necessitates a spiritual-scientific foundation in a certain sense.

The point is that, as I said in my first discussions, the concept of the “priest” - we will find the name later - points to something other than what is given in today's Protestant conception. In this, the priest is more of a teacher. Now, the point is that it must appear justified in a certain way to distinguish oneself from the ordinary layman. This justification could not exist at all, that is, what we did yesterday would be an unjustified act if the whole concept of your profession were not placed in a spiritual atmosphere, if I may say so. And here we must ask: Can we make the concept of the “community” or, if we use the old word, the “ecclesia” a real one?

In the communities that have been established in more recent times, even if there was a different intention, this community was essentially an association of individuals, and apart from these individuals, there is actually nothing else of which one is fully aware. Now you must remember – what I am saying now is not meant as a theory, but so that it may permeate your work, because only in this way can your work become a true one – you must remember that everything higher that was realized in human primeval times through individual people leads us back to the concept of a group or species soul. In earlier times, groups of people were bound together by blood ties as tribes or, later, as larger blood communities or communities of relatives. But what was bound together in this way could not be counted as one, two, three, and so on, as so many individual people. Never in the mystery was such a community understood as a mere sum of people, but it was understood that a real community spirit is present, not incarnated on earth, but always present when something is to happen from the community.

Mankind has outgrown this way of being connected to the spiritual. But it is in the sense of what emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha, on a higher level, to lead mankind back to associations that have a real sense of community, so that it develops something through which an entity from higher worlds, in the sense of Christianity a servant of Christ himself, descends. “Servant of Christ” means in this case: a part of Christ, so that the community is not alone, but a part of Christ is there. In the times when blood provided the bond of community, the inclination towards the spiritual was an instinctive one and conditioned by physical basis. In the sense of Christianity, all this must be raised to a spiritual level. People must feel that when they gather in the church of their own free will, it means that in a certain sense they are only members of a common, more delicate body, but one that is truly animated and spiritualized. The one who is the priest then feels himself to be the bearer of this communal spirit. Thus it is not merely a matter of intellectual, theoretical, symbolic speech when the reality of the presence of the spiritual is repeatedly pointed out in the ritual forms, when, as it were, what is living down from spiritual worlds is called into the community of believers, into the “Ecclesia”. Therefore, it is necessary that the stripping of the personal also appears externally in the effectiveness of the priest. The priest actually ceases to have any significance as a personality during the most important acts of worship. He is truly a servant of the word, not a teacher of the word, he is a transmitter of the word from divine heights into earthly existence. And the purpose of donning the cultic vestments is to relinquish one's personality and to appear as a representative of a higher order than the human order on earth.

Therefore, we can say: In the Mass Sacrifice, in the Act of Consecration of Man, when we begin with the relay prayer and then proceed to the reading of the Gospel, we are actually only dealing with the first part of the Mass, with a preparation. And if you recall the first words of the relay prayer given to you, you will immediately find the words: “Let us worthily accomplish the Act of Consecration of Man.” The “worthily” is of the utmost importance for the priest's understanding. Every time he celebrates Mass, the priest must be aware that he must first struggle to achieve the dignity to celebrate the Mass. In this struggle for the worthiness to celebrate the Mass, lies precisely the stripping away of the personal. The priest is clothed in priestly garments and proceeds to the altar in them. That is to say, he completely disregards what is human about him, earthly man, earthly personality in this particular incarnation. He must become the instrument for the Spirit to express itself through him. Therefore, he must try each time anew to struggle for worthiness. And then it says [in the prayer of the Mass]: From the revelation of Christ, in the veneration of Christ, in devotion to Christ's deed. These are words that, in the immediate aftermath of Christ's deed, of the Mystery of Golgotha, are intended to express and support the struggle for an impersonal action.

This is how the service should begin. We must be clear about the fact that the Catholic Church has fostered extensive errors in this regard. It is right that the personality of the priest should not come into consideration, but in many cases it does not take into account the struggle for worthiness and the difficulty of achieving this personality; and so the Roman Catholic view has incorporated the notion that it does not matter if the priest is personally a sinful or even a bad person, because at the moment he celebrates, his personality is not taken into account, because the spiritual power, the spiritual authority, is at work. The Catholic Church has developed this with an extraordinarily great spiritual skill in a one-sided way, and it has been absorbed to a high degree into the consciousness of the faithful. Even the simplest, most primitive Catholics distinguish the spirit-bearer, who stands before the faithful through the symbolic vestments, from the living garment under the vestments, of which many Catholic priests become; he may be a sinful man, but he does not celebrate, the spirit celebrates, for which he is merely the bearer. This kind of Catholic view naturally eliminates the relationship that must exist between the individual personality of the priest and his priestly office. The priestly office is something that comes from the higher worlds. But there is no way around the fact that at least the priest's language is influenced by what he is as an individual human being, that his heart and his mind also influence his language, that he strives for worthiness to be allowed to wear this priestly garment as this one personal human being. Therefore, it is necessary to have a correct understanding of consecration.

What does “consecrate” actually mean? We cannot arrive at an adequate concept in this regard if we simply take a historical view of what has developed over the past few centuries. If we want to proceed historically, we can only do so by considering the acts of consecration as they have existed since the original revelation and as they have been renewed by Christianity, in terms of their spirit. What then do the words 'consecrate' and 'initiate' mean? It means that the spiritual world is lowered over something earthly, so that one beholds this earthly thing as enveloped by the spiritual world. If we want to draw this symbolically, we could do so in the following way (it is drawn on the board). I attach great importance to making this quite clear to you. Let us take for example an ancient Near Eastern mystery. There was, let us say, the sixth degree of the “sun hero”, the seventh degree of the “father”. What does that mean? Well, if this figure represents a person of the sixth degree, his dignity meant that which descended from above and enveloped him from above. He walked around as an earthly man, but for his followers he represented not what was created by the earth, but what is created by the sun, that is, by the spiritual sun. “To consecrate” therefore means to take something away from the earth. The robe worn by the priest, if it is to be regarded as consecrated, envelops, as it were, the earthly personality; the person wearing the robe belongs to the spiritual world. There is only one exception to this, which of course was not yet present when the Persian mysteries were instituted and performed, and that is the following: In the older mysteries you will find everywhere that the act of consecration consists in calling down a heavenly being upon an earthly one. That which is impressed upon the earthly being is not present on earth. The only exception was Jesus Christ, who was present on earth and who, when celebrating Holy Communion, did not say what an old initiated priest would have said: I offer the bread as the body of the heavenly spirit, I offer the wine as the blood of the heavenly spirit. - He would, of course, have clothed it somewhat differently, because he could not have said “body” and “blood”, but “etheric body”, “etheric current” or the like, words that can no longer be heard today, but which were possible at that time in the sacred language. The only exception is what was said by Christ at the institution of the Lord's Supper: “This is my body, this is my blood.

This is radically opposed to all earlier acts of consecration. If you look at the acts of consecration of earlier times, you will have to say to yourself that these acts of consecration were based on the possibility of unearthly events having an effect on earthly events; they were therefore magical. When Christ Jesus came to Earth, He became a human being among humans, and the consequence of this is that the relationship of confession and trust in Christ Jesus now has a power that previously only existed in magical power. Thus, a human consecration ceremony is now possible, which simply begins with the words: “Let us worthily accomplish the human consecration ceremony out of the revelation of Christ, in the veneration of Christ, in devotion to Christ's deed.” An old priest would have had to say: “Let us worthily perform the Act of Consecration of Man in the revelation of extraterrestrial spirituality, in the worship of extraterrestrial spirituality, in devotion to extraterrestrial spirituality.” One must be aware of this; then one comes to feel and experience the Trinity correctly, in the Christian sense, and this is to be expressed in the relay prayer, which is then the continuation in the worthy preparation. You will see from each sentence that there is a struggle for a correct understanding of the Trinity.

I have already pointed out to you that the Gospel of John is basically not understood correctly by most theologians, because the Father God is called the “Creator” and Christ, the Logos, merely the “Savior”. But the Gospel of John expressly states: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. — The active, productive, actual Creator in the world is the Son of God, not the Father, so that the Trinity formula must express the confession of the Son of God as the Creator. God the Father must be felt as the underlying substance of all, as the underlying being of all; he must be felt in the sentence “God the Father be in us,” as the Son of God, who came to earth through Christ, is correctly understood by: “The Son of God creates in us”. This is simply the correct understanding in the sense of the Gospel of John, and such a correct understanding of the Trinity must be striven for at the beginning of every reading of the Mass.

In the consciousness of our humanity, we feel the divine Father.

There is an immediate indication of the sense of being with this “we feel the divine Father”.

He is in all that we are.

He is the underlying substance of everything.

Our substance is his substance. Our being is his being. He walks in us through all existence.

Thus, the Being in the Father is that which must be brought to consciousness. Then one proceeds to the confession of the Son-God:

In the experience of Christ in our humanity, we feel the divine Son. He reigns as the Spirit-Word through the world. He creates in everything we create. Our being is His creation.

Therefore, in so far as there is creation in us, we have come into being through the Word just as everything else has, for apart from the Word nothing of what has come into being has been created.

Our life is his creative life. He creates through us in all spiritual endeavors.

Once you have properly absorbed this into your consciousness, you can develop the right relationship with the Spirit God, the third aspect of the Godhead.

In the grasping of the spirit by our humanity, we feel the healing God. May He shine as the spirit-light through the world. May He shine in everything we behold. May our beholding be imbued with His spirit-light. May our recognition accept Him into His spirit-shining life in a pleasing way. He spiritualizes everything in our human soul.

We have seen, by first bringing the Act of Consecration of Man before our soul as a test, that the words “Christ in you” are often repeated, whereupon the acolyte says: “And fill your spirit, O Lord”. The priest turns to the congregation, and it is immediately understandable what is to be done with the pronouncing of the word “Christ in you”. As the altar server stands before the priest as the representative of the congregation, he is, so to speak, the one who indicates where the earthly plan, the earthly level begins. He speaks for the community, and the words “And may your spirit be filled” are not an order from the community, nor a wish of the community; when the words are spoken in the subjunctive, they signify that which actually comes from the community. Do you now understand the whole context and the subjunctive? What does the priest represent? The priest is only the one who represents the spirit of community within himself. In what does this spirit of community prevail in his body? In the believers who are there, in the participants of the Ecclesia. So what the community says through the altar boy is: Christ fill your spirit, the spirit of the community. Thus it is a matter of the community spirit of the congregation; it is diverted from the human and directed to the spiritual. “And may He fill your spirit.” You just have to understand this word in its subjunctive mood in the right way. Such things are quite important, and there must be an awareness of them.

When this preparation is over, the reading of the Gospel can begin in the manner indicated. The reading of the Gospel is, after all, the proclamation of the word of God by the Priest. The Catholic Church also inserts the so-called “Gloria” before the Gospel on feast days. It is entirely in the right spirit of spiritual intention that you take as little account as possible – in fact none at all – of what has only come about over time from the Roman Catholic Mass sacrifice. The progression over the course of the year must also be marked by the fact that the most important sections of the Gospel are read to the community during the year, so that, in a sense, the Gospel is divided up and the whole process from the birth of Christ to the Ascension is developed through the reading of the Gospel over the course of the year, although it is certainly possible to use one or the other Gospel. The most correct thing to do is to start at the Feast of the Nativity, at Christmas, by reading the first chapter of the Gospel of John, and then, by Christmas, to have progressed so far that, during the year, the Gospel has been covered by reading the Mass.

Regarding the further progress of the Mass, it should be noted that after transubstantiation has taken place and Communion is still to come, then the right place in the Mass is to interrupt the ritual that we read three days ago on a trial basis and insert the Lord's Prayer. Indeed, in recent times there has been a great deal of laxity in all denominations with regard to the Lord's Prayer. Originally, the Lord's Prayer is actually a compendium of the most important truths in the world, reflected through human feeling. In the Protestant confession, the Lord's Prayer is said in a way that is, I would say, not always sufficiently prepared. Just think of the solemnity of saying the Lord's Prayer when transubstantiation has preceded and the Lord's Prayer is inserted at this point. I am not saying that the Lord's Prayer should not be recited by the faithful as often as possible. But even the simplest individual prayer, such as the Lord's Prayer, is recited more reverently by the faithful - despite all the errors of the Roman Catholic Church - by the fact that the Roman Catholic hears the Lord's Prayer at an important point in the mass. This gives the whole mood in which the Lord's Prayer is prayed a certain solemn nuance. However, the Catholic Church has thoroughly dispelled this solemn nuance among the faithful by telling the penitent during confession, when a penitent has confessed his sins to the confessor, to say five Our Fathers every day as penance. This bartering of sin for the recitation of the Lord's Prayer is, of course, a terrible thing and desecrates the sacred character that the Lord's Prayer takes on during Mass and which helps it always retain its solemn tone. What the Catholic Church achieves in this respect, by speaking in Latin, a language that is incomprehensible to the faithful, can be replaced by the force with which the Lord's Prayer is spoken, because merely reciting the Lord's Prayer does not actually correspond to the grandeur of the Lord's Prayer. Although there should not be the slightest tendency to create a sense that something bordering on magic is being done – the Catholic Church has achieved this through the Latin language – it should be said that the Latin language, in a certain respect, also proves to be non-magical when it comes to nuancing the profound truths of the Lord's Prayer, which should never become trivial. It is true that there is a certain justification for the continued use of the Latin language for certain purposes that were intended to steer humanity away from the personal. But today, what could be given by the Latin language in the Lord's Prayer must be replaced by the power of speaking when praying the Lord's Prayer in front of the community. The believer must hear the Lord's Prayer during the cultic action, precisely because it is his daily prayer, in a way that goes beyond the ordinary measure of language. The Latin language has, after all, recreated the Lord's Prayer in such a way that it is, in a certain sense, a mantram:

Oremus. Praeceptis salutaribus moniti et divina institutione formati, audemus dicere: Pater noster, qui es in coelis:
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also forgive those who owe us debts.
And lead us not into temptation.
But deliver us from evil.

Something must be transferred back from the Latin Lord's Prayer, which already exists in a mantric way, to the Lord's Prayer when it is prayed at the point between transubstantiation and communion during Mass. We will include these things in the Mass at the next Mass rehearsal.

Each of you will read the mass. This expresses what makes each of the priests the same as the other priest before the spiritual world. It is the highest form of democracy in spirit. Thus, what takes place in the spiritual through the formation of the community is fulfilled with the offering of the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the sense of Christianity, the ordination of a priest is actually the only form of initiation. The other religious communities that are not directly Christian, especially the old religious communities, had the degrees, the degrees within the spiritual hierarchy. In a certain sense, such degree initiations can still be introduced today; they have a good purpose. However, they cannot be introduced within a Christian community led by a Christian priesthood. Therefore, what are higher levels in the Christian priesthood are to be understood differently than as higher degrees. As priests, all stand equal. But what must enter into the church are human conditions. Within human conditions, we need a hierarchy of offices; so that where a Christian community is based on properly understood worship, “leadership” and “senior leadership” and so on relate to the order of communities on earth. This must be very carefully distinguished. The Catholic Church has not understood how to make this distinction in the right way, otherwise it should not have regarded, for example, the confirmation as a monopoly of the episcopal dignity. Every priest should be able to administer confirmation. Strict views must prevail in these matters. You see the stricter views sometimes peeping through in history, but at the same time you see confusion in history.

Our time is so far advanced in the development of mankind that you, my dear friends, cannot afford to allow confusion in this direction. For example, you will have to be very strict about the following: If we do things in such a way that a priest appears among us first as an ordained priest and he ordains the others, then in terms of ordination they all become equal to him. If he is also a superior, there is nothing superior in his conferring the ordination on the others. He confers the ordination on the others because he has already become a priest. But what is added is that with the ordination the priest is at the same time installed in office, and that is an earthly act; it is, if I may use a profane word, an administrative act; that must be added. Thus, for example, one can say: Since the one who is appointed as the highest arbiter also has an overview of how the individual priests who are to be ordained are used, it is simplest if he performs the ordinations at the same time, but as a priest he performs the ordination to the priesthood, and as the highest arbiter he establishes the office. This is reflected in history in the famous Investiture Controversy, where the way historians talk about it reveals something terribly confusing, while the distinction between secular office, secular office and incorporation into a spiritual order must be observed. It was simply not possible to properly distinguish between the conferral of the priestly dignity and the conferral of the office. You will see that if the correct understanding of these things takes hold among you from the very beginning, then you will have created a kind of cement for all your connections that would otherwise be lacking.

What I would still like to say today with regard to the reading of the Mass is that the simplicity of the four main parts should be maintained and that insertions should only be made on the most important annual feasts and on certain other occasions, which we will discuss in the next few days. So, of course, a Christmas mass must contain something special in the parts that are not the main parts, as must a Easter mass, a Pentecost mass and a mass that is said for a dead person or a mass that is seen as a somehow otherwise intended celebration.

That is what I wanted to tell you today.