Masonic Articles and Essays
God Needs Our Help
Exc. Bro. Aksel Suvari 18o
Date Published: 9/11/2024
Freemasonry is an Ancient Tradition, one that stands in opposition to many facets of the modern world. What, precisiely is it teaching us about our purpose in life and to what ends does it lead its Initiates?
We have been told that humanity is a cosmic insignificance. That all we represent is a chemical accident, random chance run amok. That the universe itself means nothing other than dark, empty, silence. That our voice is the only lonely spasm of a cursed consciousness doomed to be consumed in time.
This has regrettably created a considerably low state of consciousness among the peoples of the Earth. We wonder at our inability to achieve as we once did-to build like we use to, to write like we use to, to live as we once did- and yet we do not see the condition we have created for ourselves. It used to be that every human being had at their core an idea of the Divine. In the ancestral stories that Masonry uses to instruct her students, principally the Old Testament, the thought of human existence uninformed by the presence, activity and will of the Most High was an unthinkable one. For very nearly the entirety of human existence this has been so. Our ancestors lived, breathed, and had their being in God.
It was this orientation of thought that made them great. Brute strength was not the sole author of human history. We are cursed by modernity to gaze upon history with Machiavellian eyes and miss its more subtle notes of faith, belief and indomitable spirit. Christianity did not come to dominate Rome because of some plot hatched in the dark corners of Nicaea but because Constantine Magnus saw a flaming cross above the Milvian Bridge at the hour of his greatest need. The onslaught of Islam was not a question of logistics but rather that of an idea whose time had come. Persia did not submit to Greece on the basis of geographical coincidence but rather surrendered to a boy-king who carried the very fire of heaven in his right hand.
The transcendent, the sublime, the mysterious - these are the true motivations for those heroic acts that drive the evolution of the human race. In rejecting our unique position in the Universe as emissaries of the will of God and our role as His working hands we have scorned our birthright. Is it really so remarkable that in such a state as this we now find ourselves stumbling through a world of material abundance plagued by an inner darkness that cannot be overcome by all the treasures we have created?
For, in truth, it was not we who created them. Greater men than we have created order out of primeval chaos, in service always to the Divine, and have left it to us, ungrateful inheritors of traditions we routinely fail to understand. We are not insignificant in the Grand Scheme of our Architect, we are vital. Our existence holds aloft the pillars of heaven and earth for we are the pillars which reach between the realms and hold the Temple together.
Religion is the method by which these pillars are constructed and it is religion that is humanity’s special privilege to carry out on Earth. The greatest secret of all religions is this: God needs our help. Thus are religious rites and rituals created. God bears a particular burden, one that no one else can shoulder and one for which He alone is responsible. It is by His breath that Creation is created and by His continuous effort that Creation is sustained. Universal Life is a great millstone which cannot cease its operations for one single instant without bringing utter destruction to His labors. The legends of our Craft teach us that we are descended from great Initiates–Master Builders–whose work it was to build “the foundations, walls, and buttresses of religion for the sheltering of men.” These are those Great Men who stand shoulder to shoulder with God at the grindstone, assisting the Great One with his inconquerable task. What greater loneliness could one imagine than that of being responsible for the very operation of Creation?
This is the true nature of Masonic duty. We are to assist the ignorant, to lift up our fellow men but to what must they be lifted? Of what are they ignorant? They are ignorant of their Father’s work and His need of them in accomplishing His labor. This is why the religions of today have become so hollow, so sterile. They, like all of our decrepit institutions have forgotten the very basis and reason of human life. We drift about aimless, crying out for purpose and direction in what seems to be a meaningless world while underfoot we tread upon a great Tradition that tells us exactly what it is we should be doing. We strive for purpose and yet in the same breath reject the revelations of our place in the Divine Hierarchy. Because we think of ourselves as entitled to rights and not subject to Duties we forget our station and in our arrogance we are cursed to wander unsatisfied.
"Liturgy" descends from the Greek leitourgia and means "public work". In the ancient world this was understood in its most literal sense. Religious service was performed for the sake of the city, the living embodied of a divinely established order. Religion, in the ancient world, was a matter so unquestionably real that its exact obedience was necessary not only for the fortune but for the very function of human life. Human beings were essential to the operation of Natural Law as instruments of the gods and as conductors of His Spirit into this world.
This has never changed. We have only forgotten our duty. It, however, has not forgotten us. For those of us who, however briefly and imperfectly, have peered beyond the veil of Initiation nothing could be a simpler statement of the Truth. At our Initiation we are taught not the simple manners which make a polite society. We are not taught self-refinement nor self-improvement nor self-anything at all! The Mysteries are laid at our feet not to be trampled over along our path towards our own personal progress but as an opportunity to participate in the never-ending labors of God.
The world around us has begun to awaken to a serious crisis. Bewitched by the promises of rapacious materialism, hypnotized like Bronze Age cave dwellers by flickering lights and the play of shadows humanity has anesthetized itself with excess and leisure. A great awakening is just beginning and will be exacerbated by the coming social chaos that is inevitably attendant with the changing of the great Zodiacal Ages. Freemasonry, as the preserver of the Ancient Mysteries, has a sacred Obligation to stand forth at the center of such historical storms and guide the people back to the path of the righteous, to be a voice crying out in the wilderness, to prepare the way for the return of the King. What shape He will take, where his Avatar shall return and what shall be the hour of his coming no man of this Earth yet knows. But we may be assured that He shall return, as is his wonted custom at such times, and that He shall be in need of helpers once more. The Initiates have always borne this duty, it is our solemn obligation to prepare the Way, to open the door for his return that the whole world may once more rejoice in the sublime serenity of His divine Presence.
