Course II - Teaching 1: Mysteries of the Sacrifice

Even if we wished to flee from sorrow, sorrow is ever present in human life despite every effort of the civilization and despite modern breakthroughs for a more bearable living.
Now, as two thousand years ago, Apostle Paul’s words can be used, since not only the inner situation but also the outer situation of Being did not change at all: “Fight and sorrow is the life of man upon the Earth”.
Religions, and particularly Christian religion, have heightened the concept of sorrow to make it more bearable. In order to overcome sorrow, certain mentally-conditioned philosophers said sorrow is illusion, a mirage of the human mind. But sorrow goes on to reign constantly in the world.
According to religions, sorrow should be acceptable and welcome, and we should resign to it; otherwise, sorrow must be forcefully overcome, defeated and uprooted from the human soul.
In the old temple of the Sacred Order of the Knights of Fire, on one of its stones, an axiom is engraved which elucidates this dilemma, “Overcome sorrow sinking yourself in it”.
Sacrifice is the virtue that grants to students the gift of overcoming sorrow by self-knowledge. Sacrifice transforms into sweet nectar the crudest hardships and longest diseases, and even the innermost, fiercest disorientation.
As a bee transforms the bitter juice of a flower into honey, so the soul, through Sacrifice, transforms human suffering into happiness and glory. Perchance is not this what the Rosy Cross wants to symbolize?
The soul is transformed by suffering; the wonderful flower sprouts from thorns. Perchance is not this the symbol of Christ’s resurrection after suffering on the Cross?
Certain rites knew this fundamental secret, and with mantram and oral prayer tried to stimulate the devotee to acquire strength and stand sorrows of life. Even today, in India the sannyasis hang around their necks chains made of little seeds that they pass through the fingers to pray; and Christians practice something like that with their Rosaries.
Sacrifice has diverse nuances, diverse forms. It is necessary for diverse reasons and at certain moments.
In the Order, these nuances are also characterized by a mental Rosary, divided into fifteen mysteries of understanding. We are told “mysteries” because the root of sorrow is as large as the root of Eternity; to know the reason of sorrow by means of unitive Sacrifice is to know the very Eternity.