Saints: The Holy Immortal Ones in Christ

Christ is Himself the Medicine of Immortality

None of us is alone in Christ the Eternal Tao. We who live in Christ are branches of one Vine, members of one Body, participants and sharers in one Life. Those who have gone before us in the Eternal Tao, the saints or "holy ones," are our "immortals" and "bodhisattvas." Our terms are perhaps not identical in meaning, but there is a certain analogy between the meanings.

Immortals: Our immortals have attained Eternal Life, free from death, in the Eternal Tao. They have shed all selfish and unnatural actions, desires, and attachments. They are pervaded with a new life energy, the Divine Life, which wells up within them by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The holy immortals are a very diverse communion of people. From the beginning of humanity to the present, they are men, women, and children from numerous countries on every inhabited continent around the world, married and single, Jew and Gentile, people living in society and hermits, rich and poor, people engaged in every kind of work: doctors, teachers and scholars, lawyers, philosophers, roma (gypsies), politicians, social activists and reformers, mystics and contemplatives, farmers and fishermen, scientists, poets and musicians, soldiers, entertainers, holy fools, householders and homemakers and the homeless, monks and nuns, craftsmen and artists, priests, servants and slaves, parents, seafarers, writers, orators, students, nature lovers and sportsmen, cooks, and nearly everything else you can imagine.

Most have received the holy Mysteries (sacraments), including the Medicine of Immortality (Eucharist), and spent years cultivating the new life they received in Christ the Tao. Yet some, like immortal Saint Dismas, received the gift of new life in Christ at the very end of their earthly lives. All of them have been re-integrated, transformed from the inside out, and deified in Christ the Tao, and they live forever in the glorious uncreated Light of God.

Perfect Compassion in Christ

Bodhisattvas: Our bodhisattvas have attained Enlightenment yet continue to be present to this world for the benefit of others, to rescue and help others attain their glorious end in Christ. Moved by perfect love and compassion, they share their own merits and glory with others. The Buddhist Santideva wished “For as long as space endures and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world.” Likewise, the holy Therese of Lisieux promised, “I will spend my Heaven doing good upon earth.” Because of their compassionate commitment, we can ask the holy ones in Christ for their help.

Bottomless Compassion: transfigured in Christ's Love

"Jesus made himself Bread of Life to satisfy our hunger for God's love because we have been created to love and to be loved." --Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Who does not know the work of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta? She fed the hungry, clothed and sheltered the naked, tended and healed the sick and suffering, meditated and received the holy Mysteries daily, prayed continually, and radiated the pure, compassionate love of Christ, who is her Light, Life, and Love. When she died in September 1997 she was mourned by millions of people all over the world, people of every land and religion.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta is alive and present to the world even now. She is a holy immortal in Christ the Eternal Tao. Wholly transfigured in his Love, she still reaches out to the poor so that we might also live in the uncreated Light with her. There is no one she will refuse to help, by the power of Christ's Holy Spirit, and she will withhold nothing of herself to be a gift to us.

The same is true of every holy immortal in Christ. Each wants to share everything he or she has with each one of us, to cooperate in our enlightenment, re-integration, and theosis in Christ the Eternal Tao.

icon representing the eternal communion of Father, Son, & Spirit: God is Love

Double Paradox: the realization of supreme bliss in Christ

Each and every human person is made by and for Love, to become a holy immortal in Christ the Tao. Our very nature desires a fulfillment beyond our own ability and efforts to attain it. Our nature yearns for the supreme bliss of communion with the eternal divine Love, but we cannot effect this communion alone, by our own human power. It is difficult even to identify the yearning, and we experience it as a profound restlessness. In Christ the Tao's personal call we recognize the restlessness for the yearning it is, and only in Christ the Tao --by the power of his Love poured out in his Spirit-- can we realize our purpose and fulfillment. This is a paradox: our very nature desires a fulfillment we cannot attain by our own efforts alone --we attain our goal only as a gift.

The fulfillment of our nature's inmost desire, furthermore, is only realized in self-emptying, in making ourselves a gift to others in Christ the Tao. We find ourselves by giving ourselves away in a pure, unreserved gift of love to others. This is a second paradox within the first: the realization of our fulfillment is attained only in self-emptying gift to others. Only in giving ourselves away in love, by the power of Christ the Tao's Spirit living within us, can we share in the divine communion of Love. This is blessedness, supremest bliss.

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John Augustine
Catholic Taoist