Rev. Park Sang-seon gave the following sermon at CheonWon Church in April 2022
Greetings to all you peace-loving members of the Holy Community. I’m happy to see all of you here in the hall. And welcome to all of you joining us online.
First, I wish to congratulate the newly blessed families, and I’ve decided on the title “The High Priest Protecting Love.”
This title is taken from Cheon Seong Gyeong, p.321 No. 23:
“We must be high priests who guard our love for one another. Husband and wife are the high priests protecting love. Married couples are high priests to inherit and pass on God’s love.”
Now, I pray that the blessed couples will keep the blessing and the love they have received from heaven, and that the blessing and love will be inherited and flourish among their descendants.
Cheon Seong Gyeong uses the term “high priest” to keep the Blessing and guard love. Why did does it call them high priests guarding love? Can’t we just call them priests?
The most dramatic use of the term “high priest” was during the 40-year wilderness journey from Egypt, where the Israelites had been slaves, to Canaan.
During their 40-year sojourn in the wilderness, they could not build a temple to serve God. Instead, they built a movable tabernacle so they could revere Yahweh. The priests were responsible for guarding the tabernacle and offering sacrifices. There were several priests, and one of them was anointed as the high priest.
The tabernacle was divided into the Holy of Holies and the Holy Place. The Holy Place was where priests would offer sacrifices and honor Yahweh each day and on the Sabbath. However, the Holy of Holies was a special place within the Holy Place set apart by a curtain, where the High Priest entered once a year on the Day of Atonement to perform a rite for atonement for the people of Israel. Jehovah God would appear and issue the word directly. It is recorded in Leviticus 16:2 that if anyone so much as peeked into this Most Holy Place at any time, they would die.
Just as the high priest would guard the Most Holy and enter just once a year to offer sacrifices and meet God—it means that husband and wife must be high priests for one another and guard the most holy love. Protecting love is for inheriting God’s love, and if you err in keeping this love, you may die. Guarding love is like that: If you do it wrong, you die. Just as God warned in the Garden of Eden, if you eat the fruit, you will die.
As I was preparing this sermon, I was worried lest there should be some who misunderstood. Since as the high priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year to hold the sacrificial service, they might wrongly understand this and think that’s what is meant by the word “to guard love.” I was worried that some couple would be thinking, “Oh, it’s too difficult to insist that a married couple meet only once a year.” Is anyone thinking I meant that? Please don’t think that way. That’s not what I mean. It does not mean that couples should meet only once a year. If that’s the story, then some couples might meet only once in 2 years and some might join together only once every 3 years!
If you’ve done farming a long time, you’ll know a lot about crops and how to cultivate them well. Those who run restaurants accumulate know-how and cook delicious, popular dishes over the years. Likewise, as a couple lives together for a long time, they get to know each other better and better, and the more they get along, the happier they are. Isn’t that what’s supposed to happen? But does that always happen?
Somehow it’s weird with married couples. It doesn’t seem like we know each other so well and get along marvelously after living together for a long time. On the contrary, there are cases where problems arise.
Just because a couple has lived together for a long time doesn’t mean they know each other well. Especially when there is a pain somewhere in our heart, it seems there are many cases where it doesn’t heal by itself with the passage of time.
So when do you come to realize it? It comes out when a couple argues with each other. Things that were disappointing or irritating 10 or 20 years ago come out. Injuries of the body heal over time and no longer hurt, but wounds of the heart don’t seem to heal well. It hurts at odd times or all the time because of that wound in my heart.
Even if it doesn’t seem like anything important, you should ask. So what should I ask?
“Where do you hurt?” As you ask, “Is there something that you’re not comfortable with?” “How does it bother you? Are you angry? Are you upset? Are you annoyed? Don’t you want to talk about it at all? You don’t want to see that? Do you hate it?” Both spouses should be able to ask such questions at any time. The easiest way is very simple: If I tell you first that it hurts, then it hurts. (Or vice versa.)
But the reality is, even though it’s not difficult at all to ask each other where it hurts or what’s the matter, and it is easier for me to say where it hurts, what troubles me now—yet there are many cases where we don’t ask our spouse and cannot tell them ourselves, either. There are many reasons, but a chief reason is pride.
Saying I’m sick right now hurts my self-esteem and also makes them annoyed. Even more so when we’re fighting. Is it easy for me to tell the person I’m arguing with that I’m sick? If you don’t like something, the more you hate it, the more you force a smile. Even if it hurts, you pretend not to be sick. Because that’s how you get the upper hand.
If you don’t like something the other person does, you’re not about to ask where it hurts. On the contrary, it feels good that the other person is sick. At such a time, the one party sees that their partner is in pain and without hesitation drives a nail into their chest. After pounding a nail into my opponent’s chest and hurting their heart, finally their heart is wounded, and eventually the body blocks off the injured part, and that’s where the sickness starts. After my partner loses the healthy wholeness of body and mind, that’s when finally I try to unwind my mind. I say I’m sorry and beg forgiveness, asking you to understand and saying, “I love you,” but you say my heart is insincere.
Before I lost my physical and mental health, I had time and opportunity to relax my mind, but I didn’t. Because of that pride. The effort to mend things starts only after I lost everything. Seeing that, people seem wise, but we are actually really foolish.
The bottom line is that before your body and mind get sick, you can keep your body and mind healthy by doing things that make you feel good without hurting your body and mind. You can keep love. You have to live by speaking normally and frankly: “I’m sorry, thank you, forgive me, I love you, thank you for understanding, you make me strong. Just thinking of you makes life worthwhile.” There are many words that warm the heart without hurting the heart. You can do whatever you want without hurting another person’s heart. Instead of approaching someone lying bedridden after getting sick, stroking their hands, rubbing their legs, or going out to buy some good food, do those nice things when they’re not sick.
How? Before you go up to someone who is lying down sick and saying “I’m sorry, forgive me, understand me, I love you…”—can you do those things while you’re both healthy? All it takes is lowering your self-esteem a notch.
In that respect, I respect Gyeongsang-do husbands. Husbands in Gyeongsang Province say they always ask their wives when they come home from being out: “Is there no work?” They say, “Is there no work? Let’s eat, let’s go to sleep!” Anyway, as a wife, it’s really wonderful that when my hubby gets home he asks if I’m not sick or if I felt bad about anything.
The answer is so simple: Just like you should study and find things that are good for your body before you get sick, rather than looking for things that are good for your body after you get sick—the same is true of our souls and hearts. Instead of trying to heal another’s heart after he or she’s been hurt, we should study and find out what’s good for each other’s soul and mental health before our hearts get hurt.
So, what is good for the well-being of a person’s heart? The answer is too simple: You don’t want your own heart to be hurt. So all you have to do is just find out what your heart likes. No one knows what the heart likes. But while most people care about what my heart likes and is pleased by, will it please my wife or husband? Would they like it? It’s not easy to think about.
It feels good when your wife or husband says “I love you.” However, there are some people who find it difficult to say “I love you” to their spouse. If one person says “I love you” but the other doesn’t respond, as time passes, the person who used to say “I love you” will stop saying it as well. Finally, they end up not saying “I love you” anymore.
So isn’t it better to say: “I’m sorry, I was wrong.”
“Actually it’s my fault. Relax.”
“When I think of you, I feel strengthened.”
“The flowers were really beautiful today. It makes me think of you.”
“Looking at you today, that’s the way I felt when I first saw you and we fell in love.”
It feels good to hear you say that. My mind is freed. But it’s not easy for me to get those words out, is it?
How did you feel when I said you must become a high priest rather than a priest to keep love? I mean, it’s that important. It’s not really that hard, but it can be difficult with very trivial things. We just need to know each other in advance of the pain before we lie down. Before the high priest enters the Most Holy and meets God, he prepares in advance so that God will not be angry. The Bible tells the high priest what to wear and what to do before entering the Most Holy. If you accidentally enter the Holy of Holies and die, you will never have a chance again, so prepare thoroughly before entering.
It also means you must prepare well to safeguard love between husband and wife.
Let’s read a passage from the Cheon Seong Gyeong p. 452, No. 19:
“A person who lives by always discerning what is pleasing and what is sad to God cannot become an evil person, nor can he violate the laws of heaven.”
So think: will Heavenly Parent be happy? If you always think about whether He will be sad, you cannot become an evil person, and you cannot break the laws of heaven. First, we must not violate the laws of heaven. So, will Heavenly Parent be happy? Would He be sad? He will always let you know. If you live life thinking about whether your husband or wife will be happy or sad, at least you cannot become a bad person in front of your husband or wife, and you would not go against the laws of the family.
That’s right. Will husband and wife rejoice in each other at home? Will you be sad? You should always look carefully and pay attention to whether there are any painful or uncomfortable places, physically or mentally. As long as a doctor is trying to cure a patient’s disease, a couple should become each other’s doctors, always paying attention to where the pain is and what the problem is, taking care of each other.
Now, in order for the Blessed Couple to inherit the love and Blessing and prosper through your descendants, you must first keep the Blessing preciously. Just like taking good care of your health.
So what sort of place is Cheon Il Sanctum in Cheon Won Gung? It is not the place where Heavenly Parent appears once a year, but the place where Heavenly Parent always abides to reign in Cheon Il Guk. In other words, the time has come to live the life of heaven on earth attending Heavenly Parent and True Parents.
In Old Testament times, only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies and that only once a year to prepare and offer sacrifices before Jehovah God.
But now that the time has come for all people to live in heaven on earth attending Heavenly Parent and True Mother, does this mean that we no longer have to prepare the High Offering in a holy manner as the high priest did back then? Not at all!
Heavenly Parent’s holiness is eternal. We cannot meet Heavenly Parent without making holy preparations. However, the level of that holy preparation has risen up. Going beyond the holiness of clothes and vestiments, we must prepare the holiness of our heart.
I’ll present True Mother’s words here once more. Mother said, “As the life in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is the life of attending Heavenly Parent, we must display before all mankind the real life of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Because the life in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is reflected in the spirit world, our lives must be with our spirit body clear as crystal. And because such a time has come, we cannot go on harboring doubts and questions and things we do not understand any longer.”
So Mother said the most important thing all leaders of Cheon Il Guk should do this time, one year before consecrating the Cheon Il Guk Temple to Heavenly Parent, all our blessed families, the people of Cheon Il Guk, must pray about True Parents, about Heavenly Parent, and about the church. Because there should not be even one speck of shadow in our heart. She directed that we receive special education to clarify our souls and our lives to be pure and clear as crystal without any shadow before Heavenly Parent and True Parent.
So to repeat, the life in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is the life we live attending our Heavenly Parent. About True Father, about True Mother, and about Heavenly Parent, if there is even a shadow in my heart, then I cannot see Heavenly Parent. Moreover, in such a case it will be impossible to live in attendance to Heavenly Parent.
What was the time of Jesus like 2,000 years ago? What words did Jesus proclaim?
“From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”
What do Jesus’ words mean, that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand? The Kingdom of Heaven is God’s nation. His message is that God’s nation is drawing near and the day we can directly meet God is at hand, so we must repent, namely, to purify ourselves body and mind. God is our Parent, our Heavenly Parent. The clear message is that, as the day to meet our Heavenly Parent in person is near, we are to prepare for the day we will meet our Parents with a holy mind and body.
Many people not only from Korea but also from around the world will be coming to visit Cheon Won Gung. What is the most important thing to tell them? It is the contents that I was speaking about earlier. We need to proclaim: “The time has come to live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth attending Heavenly Parent. Please purify your body and mind and build blessed families attending Heavenly Parent.”
Many people will be asking, “How can we become a Blessed Family receiving the blessing of Heavenly Parent?” Then guide those people to the Training Center so they can participate in 1-day, 2-day, 3-day, or week-long education programs. We hope to be holding the Holy Wine and Blessing Ceremony every day for those who desire to become a Blessed Family.
For how many years have you been longing to cry out, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand! You must receive the Blessing!” Now that time is truly drawing near. We earnestly pray for all our blessed families and family members to be able to confidently declare, “Please receive the Blessing as the Kingdom of Heaven on earth is now at hand, where we can all live in attendance of Heavenly Parent!”