The Blessing has six steps. Through them we fulfill, or pledge before God and each other to fulfill, Adam and Eve’s three essential responsibilities and religion’s three indemnity conditions. Let’s begin with our conditions to receive the Blessing.
The first condition is obedience to the Commandment. Paul wrote, “I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.” In recognizing the Messiah, the old saying applies: it takes one to know one. The messiah in us recognizes the Messiah in the world. Purity in us recognizes purity in the Messiah.
“Purity in us recognizes purity in the Messiah.“
Of course some of us weren’t virgins. Many of us were the women caught in adultery. This made us even more grateful to the one who took the hit on our behalf and liberated us to sin no more. Our reborn virginity comes by the grace in True Parents
The second condition is mother-child cooperation. Who is our mother? In 1960, True Father lifted up the Bride, our True Mother. He called her the representative woman. As our representative she is the model of love for him. By cooperation with her, we partake of her oneness with True Father.
This is life-and-death difficult. His ways are no man’s ways, his schedule is no man’s schedule. As Jesus often taught, the Bridegroom does not arrive on time; the master shows up when we don’t expect. The Lord follows God’s schedule, not ours. He is attending to his Father’s business, bearing the cross, absorbing the stones, speaking to the multitudes, multiplying the loaves and fish, healing the sick, forbearing the lawyers, praying until dawn.
“His Bride, our True Mother, is his helper.“
We fall asleep, but his Bride, our True Mother, stays with him. By cooperation with her, we engraft into them and stand with her in the bride’s position. As we read in Exposition of Divine Principle, “Today, there must appear on earth faithful brides—pure-hearted believers.”
Brides multiply children. The third condition is to multiply spiritual children and care for them with an Abel-like parental heart.
In summary, we qualify for the Blessing by sexual abstinence, mother-child cooperation and raising spiritual children. This is the oil for the lamps of the waiting virgins. This is the oil with which the weeping woman anointed the Messiah.
Now we are ready for the Holy Marriage Blessing.
[References: 2 Cor 11:2; Exposition of Divine Principle p. 122; Mt 25:1-13, cf. Luke 12:35-48. The illustration is a composite of Michelangelo’s La Pieta and Alejandro de Sousa’s photograph of True Parents on the Amazon River.]
-TH
