If that truth can get us to say something constructive to our partner, to
push away those excuses for being cruel, then we’ve done the right thing. But
the moment might not shine with affection; we might not be able to keep all
the resentment out of our voice. Even so, it’s a s tep in the right direction.
But the purpose of acquiring these truths – this clothing – is to express the
love that moves within them. And as we learn and live the truth more willingly,
more diligently, that love comes more and more into its own, and shows on the
surface. Think of people you know who have lived their whole lives in service
to the Lord and to the Church, who are able to show you, even when they do
the simplest things, even when they communicate a hard truth, that they love
you. In these people, love has revealed itself within the truth. We are told:
[A]ll truths are the recipient vessels of good; and therefore the more genuine the
truths are and the more they are multiplied, the more abundantly is good able to
accept them as vessels, to bring them into a state of order, and only then to reveal
itself, doing so in the end in such a way that the truths are not seen, except insofar
as good shines through them. (Arcana Coelestia 2063.3)
In other words, when the truths we know are being used the way they are
meant to be used, it’s as though they fade to the background. They become a
translucent vessel for love. When we learn what the Lord teaches, and purify
that truth by living it, and bring it together with other truths because we’re
living all of those truths, then we make ourselves an ever more and more
complete home for the Lord’s love, and that love shines in us. And when even
the most basic things that we know and do have become wholly devoted to
living the Lord’s truth, then our outermost layer serves only to reveal His love,
and we are clothed with the sun.
So when we become a part of the woman clothed with the sun we are
clothed with the truth, but it is truth that has made one with love to the Lord
– the sphere of truth enveloping us has been suffused with the fire of love, and
that is what we show to the world around us. This is what the Lord wants the
people of His New Church to be: people who live His truth so completely that
their whole life shines with that intention, that willingness to do as He has
commanded.
Think back to the dragon, to that spirit of finding ways around the Lord’s
teachings – that willingness to twist the truth for the sake of finding an excuse
for a selfish hunger. That is truly the mortal enemy of the woman clothed with
the sun. Every decision we make to twist the truth so that we can do evil instead
serves to blind us to the fact that the truth exists to reveal the Lord’s love. And,
conversely, every time we refuse to make excuses, refuse to play intellectual
games with the truth, but choose instead to say, “If I love the Lord, I will keep
His commandments,” then we are letting ourselves see how the only purpose
of those commandments is to reveal something good, and bring us blessings.
Seen this way, the vision of the woman clothed with the sun is incredibly
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