Wherever you are sitting this
morning know that 10, 20, 50, 100
years ago a former student or teacher
with his/her classmates also sat there
before you.
Whose seat are you in?
You’re in your own seat, because
the Lord has called you this morning
to sit there. But who has sat there
before you?
The freshman boy, sophomore
girl of today, becomes the college
student a few years and rows later.
After 10, 40 or 60 years they find
themselves scattered further back on Charter Day. Eventually the former
students and faculty don’t gather in this temple but in ones like the Nunc Licet
Temple mentioned in our reading, in heaven.
Now it is permitted for them to enter. And we join with them. We call
upon the spirit, which is the spirit we see to be a heavenly spirit, to be with us.
We will all gather, and a door will be set before all of us. This will come to pass
and from here we will go to the next life’s celebration, a gathering of the saints
– a door will be opened which no one can shut.
Of course, all the original Charter members of the Academy (from 140
years ago) passed through that opened door set before them. When those old,
now made young and freshman-faced students of a former Academy were here,
they labored to bring together and establish what we enjoy today – the paths
we tread to bring us here. People speak about vision, and what can be seen and
achieved if we but stand upon the shoulders of giants, our past heroes?
A central vision gathered them originally, seeing the pages written by
Emanuel Swedenborg, which they actually saw as pages of the Word of God
written by the Hand of the Divine Human and not by a mortal hand.
This elevated vision was so powerful that they built this church. And they
put a copy of the Word – that has the Old Testament, the New Testament and
the Third, The Word to the New Church – upon their altar. That’s what gathers
us here today. It is the vision and the dedication to a belief which those of the
early Academy saw.
This is the higher education, the higher vision which becomes an open
door through which an even higher, more interior education can be received.
We honor that vision here in the house created by that vision, by that door
which was opened.
Just before we entered those back doors we stood at a threshold and could
This elevated vision
was so powerful that
they built this church.
. . . It is the vision and
the dedication to a
belief which those of
the early Academy saw.
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