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1The Blessing is not just for people. Nor is it just for heaven and earth. God bestowed the Blessing by investing everything from the foundation of His internal heart. If that Blessing had been realized exactly as He had planned, the glory of victory would have filled heaven and earth. Amid such a world, God would have rejoiced in the families of people who embodied Him and fully inherited His heart. Upon establishment of that family-level foundation, humanity would have accepted the holy enterprise of Heaven as its own holy enterprise, and people would have built the eternal and infinite blessed land of happiness. This was God's ideal and desire.
2You need to know how amazing blessed families are. The Blessing is to perfect the individual, to perfect goodness, and to multiply children. It is to perfect people as individuals, perfect their relationships as husband and wife, and multiply goodness through their children. It is the core, fundamental requisite for all people.
3If Adam and Eve had not fallen, they would have reached the focal point, the ideal intersection of vertical and horizontal love. Through their union, they would have attained total oneness and harmony. Besides instituting the love of the true ancestors of humanity, they would have been the starting point of true life and true lineage. Their wedding ceremony was to have been not just for themselves as human beings; it was also to have been the wedding ceremony for God. God would have entered their hearts, and the external God and internal God would have united as one. That was to have been the original wedding ceremony, having nothing to do with the Fall. What I am saying here is revolutionary in the world of religion.
4What is the Blessing? If you consider man as the East and woman as the West, then the Blessing is the union of East and West at a central point on a horizontal plane. What is the power that unites them? It is love. Man and woman were created to unite as one through love. That is why, after they reach maturity, a man and a woman find their way to the place where they can attain union. That place is their central point. That central point is where God can vertically descend and dwell. When a man and a woman place God's love at their center, where His vertical line joins their horizontal line to form a 90- degree angle, they become one at the center of a 360-degree circle. If our first ancestors had become one based on God's love, they would have become God's bodies. Who are Adam and Eve? They are the substantial bodies of God. That is why, in the biblical book of First Corinthians it is written, "Do you not know that you are God's temple...?" (1 Cor. 3:16) Our bodies are God's temples. If even fallen human beings can be His temples, then the original substantiation of God's duality, the unfallen Adam and Eve, would naturally have become the original temple, the dwelling place of God in the human world.
5God has the dual characteristics of plus and minus. When God's dual characteristics are divided, the plus characteristic is manifested as a man, Adam, and the minus characteristic is manifested as a woman, Eve. When Adam and Eve unite together to embody God's oneness, their union is substantiated in their children. In this manner, the first, second and third generations are formed with God at their center. Within these three generations, problems arose in the second generation, that is, the generation of Adam and Eve. They failed to become one under God's love. If Adam and Eve had united in God's love, they would have established the bond by which God could have come to dwell with them. Then their children as well would have been connected to the standard of love, and formed their own relationship with God. This is called the Blessing.
6The marriage Blessing was instituted as God's Blessing for the liquidation of debts. Through the Blessing instituted in this age, all debts are liquidated for the first time in history. In other words, although formerly we were destined to die, all our debts are remitted through the Blessing as a condition. You should, therefore, feel that the Blessing of the Unification Church is more precious than all the good things that have been done since the beginning of history, piled up in one big heap. You should feel that the connection of love, life and lineage you have acquired through your bond with the True Parents is so precious that it cannot be exchanged for anything else. That is why you should invest everything you own -- your mind, your body, even if you have to sell your property -- for the Blessing.
7The Blessing of the Unification Church is performed so that God's incorporeal life, love and ideal can be manifested in form. To put it another way, the Blessing is to connect us to God's life, love and ideal. That being the case, where does God rejoice? He rejoices at the place of the Blessing. When God rejoices, His life, love and ideal all have a livelier bounce.
8At the Engagement Ceremony for the Blessing, I raised my hands and pronounced a benediction. With that benediction, I could incorporate the women of the world into Adam's family, in the place of Eve who had been separated from that family. I could thereby form a conditional bond of blood with them. That is the change of lineage. Henceforth, each woman of the world who has gone to the spirit world should attend me as her elder brother, husband and father, centered on True Mother.
9If the God-centered True Parents had emerged in the Garden of Eden, they would have bequeathed the Blessing on behalf of God to their descendants for generations to come. If only they had believed in God, those True Parents would have inherited the Blessing from Him, and you, in turn, would have inherited it from them. Accordingly, I am bestowing this Blessing on you. By inheriting it, your sons and daughters will be born in the new eternal realm of victory, not the fallen realm. They can become sons and daughters who go up instead of going down.
10What are the conditions to receive the Blessing? To reach perfection, you cannot pass through the formation, growth and completion stages all at once. That is the Principle. You receive the Blessing at the completion level of the growth stage. Afterwards, you still need to follow the seven-year courses: a sevenyear course before marriage, a seven-year course after marriage, and another seven-year course centered on your family. You need to go through these three seven-year periods for a total of twenty-one years. Upon the foundation you make by going through this twenty-one-year course, I should be able to achieve the foundation for a nation. I must reach that level. Now we have to conduct some ceremonies. First comes the Engagement Ceremony, next comes the Ceremony for the Restoration of Eve and then the Ceremony for the Restoration of Adam. These ceremonies are to restore the heart and change the lineage.
11The Holy Wine Ceremony is the ritual of infusing God's body into your body with new love. Since you have only one body, you need to transform it with God's love. This is the meaning of the Holy Wine Ceremony. The Bible records that at the Last Supper, Jesus blessed bread and wine and gave them to his disciples. He referred to the bread as "my body" and the wine as "my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Matt. 26:26-28) Likewise, it is only by inheriting the new lineage originating from God's substantial self that you can be cleansed of the original sin. You cannot participate in the Blessing without going through this ceremony. The Holy Wine Ceremony is the ceremony to change your lineage.
12You inherited a lineage defiled by the Fall; therefore, you need to change your lineage. Without doing that you cannot rid yourself of original sin, and without ridding yourself of original sin you cannot rise to the level where you can receive the Blessing and become true children. That is how the Principle operates. The Holy Wine Ceremony is the ceremony to change your lineage, and it thereby removes the original sin that occurred at the Fall. In other words, it is a ceremony to transform your flesh and blood.
13The fact that you participated in the Holy Wine Ceremony means that you received the blood of the Blessing. It means that you are joined in a relationship with True Parents through their love, life and lineage. Consequently, you have become True Parents' kin. It is a ceremony of Blessing when my blood is infused into a person who otherwise would be destined to die. In other words, my blood is transfused into that person so that that person carries my blood. It is only when you drink the holy wine that I can bless you. In distributing the blood of the True Parents, the order of the Holy Wine Ceremony is that the woman drinks the holy wine first. Likewise, when receiving the Blessing, the woman precedes the man. The woman drinks half the cup of holy wine first.
14The Holy Wine Ceremony is a ceremony of restoration through indemnity. For this ceremony, you men begin in the position of the archangel. That is why you are supposed to offer your lineage and everything else. Only then can it be a condition for restoration. I then conduct the ceremony through Mother. You are in the same situation. By going through the Holy Wine Ceremony, you assume a restored position that is the same as that of the Parents. The woman receives the holy wine first. She bows to True Father, receives the holy wine, and drinks half the contents of the cup. Then the man bows to the woman. While the woman is drinking her half, the man keeps his head bowed. At that time, the woman is in the position of mother. Her position is the same as that of True Mother. So when the woman drinks her half of the wine and hands the remaining half to her husband-to-be, and he drinks it, they are bonded. Thus the man can rise to an equal footing with the woman.
15Since Eve fell because of the archangel, in the course of restoration Eve needs to stand before Heaven through Adam and then restore the archangel. This is the purpose of going through the Holy Wine Ceremony. When the ceremony is conducted, I offer the holy wine first to the woman. That part of the ceremony is to restore the lost Eve. Through the Holy Wine Ceremony, she becomes one with me in spirit, heart and body. It is an absolute, internal covenant.
16Holy wine is not easily made. I am saying that wine cannot become holy wine just as it is. Holy wine is made in the presence of God, Satan and numerous angels in the spirit world. It contains twentyone elements that you are unaware of. The wine contains every element necessary for the process of restoring humankind and the world of creation. When I made the holy wine, spirits came from the spirit world and begged to be allowed to drink a cup. They knew that by drinking the holy wine they could be restored, so they came to me as a group and asked if they too could be given the same benefit. They knew that I could do such a thing. However, I am not here for the spirit world; I am here for the physical world. That is why I told those spirits, "You need to wait," and I first gave the wine to you who worked hard for the Will.
17The holy wine needs to contain ingredients that symbolize the love of the Parents. It should also contain something that symbolizes the blood of the Parents. Hence when you drink it, you become one with the love and blood of the Parents. These are what constitute the holy wine. The holy wine is made with ingredients that symbolize everything -- the land, the sea and the sky. It contains three kinds of wine. It also contains other elements symbolizing all things of creation. Drinking the wine signifies being born anew spiritually and physically. Without this ceremony you cannot remove the original sin or change your lineage. And without changing your lineage, you cannot reach the standard of perfection and become one with God's love. The Holy Wine Ceremony indemnifies all this.
18At the time you received the Blessing, you participated in a ceremony to change your lineage. Twenty-one consecrated elements were required to make the holy wine. They included airborne fruit, fruit borne on trees, fruit on the ground and fruit underground, plus the most precious elements from the mineral kingdom, plant kingdom and animal kingdom. All these elements had to be free of any conditions for Satan's accusation. After the holy wine was thus made, it had to be stored for seven months, without any problems occurring during that time period. It was not simple to make this wine.
19In Eden, God was unable to conduct the wedding ceremony of Adam and Eve. They married of their own accord and thus connected to Satan's lineage instead of God's lineage. The Blessing Ceremony uproots this and reconnects Adam and Eve to God's lineage. That is why through the Blessing Ceremony we receive the citizenship that enables us to live in our original homeland, the liberated kingdom of heaven in heaven where there is no Fall, and to attend God as our Father.
20After the Engagement Ceremony comes the Holy Wine Ceremony and then the Holy Wedding Ceremony. The Engagement Ceremony and Holy Wine Ceremony are not performed according to any precedents. They are required ceremonies that symbolically reenact all the details of the Fall and indemnify them. At what stage did Adam and Eve fall? They fell at the engagement stage. In other words, they fell in the process of growing up, on the way to the goal of perfection. The purpose of their engagement was marriage. However, when they were still engaged, Adam and Eve wrongfully married; that was the Fall. Therefore, to indemnify that, we need to deny that marriage, rectify it and go beyond it centered on God. In denying it, we cannot do it in just any way. We cannot do it unless we follow a course that is the reverse of the Fall.
21The Holy Water Ceremony is also a ritual of the Blessing. It is the same as baptism. Although Jesus was baptized, he had no Holy Wedding Ceremony. He passed away without being able to marry. He had neither a wife nor children. He had no family of his own. However, I have labored for this day, risking my life in the process.
22Blessed members of the Unification Church participate in the Holy Wedding Ceremony, but it is a wedding only within the church. It is not a ceremony recognized by the nation, world or cosmos. That is why we should have not only a church-level Blessing but also a national-level Blessing. Furthermore, we will go through a world-level Blessing and then participate in the Ceremony of Eternal Blessing in the kingdom of heaven. Only then can we finally return to the original world. If you participate in the Blessing of the Unification Church simply for your own convenience, and secretly without my knowledge, it is not effective. You need to go through the national-level Blessing, for which you should disclose all of your personal history. Next you have to go through the world-level Blessing. Then, after going to the spirit world, you need to go through a great admission ceremony and the registration ceremony. Next we have to complete the organization of the twelve tribes. Finally, after True Parents have settled in the other world, with God as the center, all of the world's people will take their places and sit down in order.
23When True Parents and their sons and daughters are united as one, that family will have established the four-position foundation. Completion of the four-position foundation means that God will be able to realize the ideal of creation that He has desired for six thousand years. Once that foundation is established, there will be a realm where God recognizes those who have fulfilled it and promises to make them citizens of the kingdom of heaven and members of the family of that kingdom. What the Unification Church focuses on the most is the Blessing. The Blessing is for the family. What is the kingdom of heaven like? It is the family in heaven. We need to realize such a family; that is the kingdom of heaven. Thus, those who are unable to create that kingdom in their own family cannot enter the kingdom of heaven in heaven.
24What is the Indemnity Stick Ceremony for? Adam and Eve fell by misusing their lower parts. During the Indemnity Stick Ceremony, both wife and husband strike each other's buttocks as hard as they can, saying they will never fall again. We do this so that they will never again misuse that part of the body. Likewise, when the Israelites made a pledge, they placed a hand under their thigh. They also conducted circumcision. When a son was born, his male part was bled on the eighth day after birth. This ritual was instituted because the male reproductive organ had been misused. Because the seed had been damaged, the ritual of circumcision was established to change the seed. All these are conditions to determine ownership.
25Tamar risked her life to continue God's heavenly way. Also, Jacob wrestled with the angel at the risk of his life. Although the angel struck his hip and dislocated it, he did not let go of the angel all through the night. The hip had to be struck. The Fall was brought about by wrong use of the hips. That is why the Unification Church conducts the Indemnity Stick Ceremony after the Blessing. In that ceremony, the hips are struck because they were misused. Our ancestors representing the three ages engaged in improper love and became entangled in it, and we need to clear that up.
26Why do we have the Indemnity Stick Ceremony? When we read the Bible, we learn about circumcision, which is a condition of indemnity. Adam's family broke apart because of wrongly directed love. What is baptism? It refers to the time of Noah. The reproductive organs had been defiled, and Noah's time was when they were indemnified. At the time of Noah, these organs were subjected to judgment by water. In short, they were washed. However, the washing was incomplete. They had to be "baptized," but that was only a condition. Once those defiled bodies were washed and the defiled spot indemnified, the time of Jacob was to have been the time of settlement. For this purpose, Jacob had to live a life that would restore love. He had to begin the change of lineage, change of ownership, and change of the realm of heart. The chosen people got their start when their lineage was transformed.
27Blessed members of the Unification Church go through the ceremony to change their lineage, followed by the Indemnity Stick Ceremony and the Three-Day Ceremony. Satan cannot intrude in those ceremonies. Now that the True Parents opened the gates of the kingdom of heaven by the law of God and proclaimed the liberation of humanity, Satan, who exercised his power at the completion level of the growth stage, can no longer interfere. That is why blessed families need to go through the ceremony to convert their lineage.
28If you do not go through the Three-Day Ceremony, you will have nothing to do with True Parents' lineage. You will be nothing but a spectator who has come within the fenced area. Only after you complete the Three-Day Ceremony can you dress in holy robes and be included in True Parents' lineage. Otherwise, although you may have eaten a piece of the wedding cake, watched the celebration from beginning to end and enjoyed yourself with your friends, you will end up being apart. You will not become one with True Parents' lineage. Once you are apart from it, you will remain apart for all eternity. Lineage is such a fearful thing.
29Until now, we have thought ill of erotic love stories because love organs became palaces of wickedness. They became like weapons causing threefold destruction: they became a palace in which love, life and lineage were destroyed. Because they became the palaces that plunge everything in heaven and earth into a world of total darkness, they are called by the worst of all bad words and the most vulgar of all vulgar words. Nevertheless, in Korean, the term ssang in ssangsori (a vulgar word) is not a bad word. In fact, it is the very word ssang that is in ssangssang, or pair. "Pair" is what the word implies. The word ssangsori refers to two people making love, and that should not be something bad. Originally it was a holy word. Millions of generations of your ancestors lived by clinging to the love organs; likewise, Adam and Eve also lived by clinging to them. Woman lived by clinging to the reproductive organ of man, and man lived by clinging to that of woman. Despite this, they did not know the preciousness of those love organs. The woman's love organ is the subject partner of all subject partners, for it controls the life of the man.
30When we study the structure of our bodies, we can see that the male and female reproductive organs are set in the most protected area of the body. That is because these organs are the most precious. The wind may blow or something may attack us, but they cannot invade that part of the body. What is more, the woman's organ is less prone to invasion than the man's. The words I use when speaking about these organs are not vulgar; rather, they are sacred words. If you contend that the words for what was considered most precious from the time of our ancestors are vulgar words, then you are implying that our ancestors up to now have all been bad. You are saying that even the first ancestors, Adam and Eve, were bad. Because our first ancestors formed a ssang (a pair), such words are termed ssangsori (a vulgar word). If they had originally placed true love at the center of their relationship, our ancestors would have set down their roots there and grown into a sacred tree. Then the words about love organs would have been considered good words and good sounds, and they would not have been given coarse treatment. Instead, we would have attended them with care. Therefore, before we make love, we need to offer a bow before our ancestors and say, "Thank you for giving us this day, which is a very special day." That is why, when we perform the three-day ceremony, we begin by offering a bow. We offer that bow as a simple ritual representing all bows. After completing the Three-Day Ceremony, we are free to love. We can make love as often as we desire and in any way we please.
31Since the Blessing is now available for everyone, we should give the Blessing to as many people as possible. We need to bless everyone, without missing even one person. Before I depart this earth, you have to make sure that there is no one left unblessed in the spirit world. The Blessing did not exist in the past, but now it has become a reality. Before I pass on, both earth and heaven should be filled with people who are blessed. Otherwise, all the fallen bloodlines that were sown by fallen Adam will not be eradicated.
32On the eighth day after the birth of our child, we offer the Dedication Ceremony. We say that the number eight is a central number. Since it is a central number, it needs to be fulfilled by the man and woman, and also the grandfather and grandmother. In short, there should be the four directions in three stages: grandfather and grandmother, man and woman, and the son or daughter to be dedicated. These three stages cannot be without a center. Yet not just anyone can stand in the central position and be part of the three stages.
33Jesus passed away at the end of the three-year period of his public ministry, but the Unification Church is continuing his mission of laying the foundation for the kingdom of heaven on earth. At the time of the Dedication Ceremony of my first son, I gave members three kinds of gifts as a condition of three sacrificial offerings, and fed them with seaweed soup, rice and milk. That period of three years was the period to set up the four-position foundation, which Jesus was unable to establish. If Jesus had brought Judaism under him and made Rome submit to him, he would not have died on the cross. I have achieved victory on the first stage. Then, to establish God's citizens and sovereignty, I gave awards to three women and one man in recognition of their contributions.
34This morning we held a ceremony to celebrate God's Day. Before that we performed a Dedication Ceremony. At this time I have mobilized the blessed wives, whom you love the most and who serve as the foundation of heart in your families. Nevertheless, the fact that you did not oppose the mobilization or demonstrate against it is a great honor to me. That is how, with my family at the center, all of you were able to set a victorious foundation to connect all families in unity when you go to the frontline to meet people. Thereby, my family was finally able to establish the victorious condition to be offered to God. That is how we were able to conduct the ceremony to celebrate God's Day on the second floor, and also hold my family's Dedication Ceremony. Therefore, we could bestow blessings even on the infants. However, even when this Dedication Ceremony was done, I had to establish the proper order. Before Heaven's family came to exist, first there was the angelic world. Therefore, when my family was dedicated to God, at the same time I needed to soothe Jesus' bitter sorrow and fulfill the wishes of people on earth.
35Because I have already fought on the individual and family levels, I have reached the standard by which I can work on the national level. But you have yet to reach that standard. You need to be qualified to stand on the national-level foundation. This means you need to have the qualification of a parent standing on the national-level foundation, the qualification of a child standing on the national-level foundation, and the qualification to have dominion over all things while standing on the national-level foundation. On that foundation, you should have dominion over all things. After that, the returning Lord needs to fight to the end according to that standard to establish the world-level standards for parents, for children and for dominion over all things representing the world. At present we are in the process of fighting to reach that goal. That is what you are participating in. Hence, along with the national-level Dedication Ceremony for the family, what other ceremonies should you hold? You should have Dedication Ceremonies for all things and for children. They should be carried out in reverse order. You should have dedication ceremonies for all things, for children, for yourself and for your family. Without carrying these out, you cannot completely indemnify history vertically and horizontally and dedicate it as a victorious sacrificial offering.
1Because Unification Church members know that there is a spirit world, they are not afraid of dying. In the Unification Church, a funeral is called the Seunghwa Ceremony. It means to ascend nobly to heaven. The Seunghwa Ceremony is about ascension. To inaugurate it, I had to rejoice more over the death of my son than I did at the birth of my sons and daughters. I had to experience the joy that God would have felt had His princes and princesses been born to Him. If this did not come to pass, my son could not have crossed over the hill of death. At the place where he died, we, his mother and father, had to offer a prayer to celebrate the victory of love, that is, of his having achieved liberation. That is why, when Heung Jin passed on, I did not shed even a single teardrop. Because he had a long way to go in the next world, I held the Unification Ceremony for him.
2There is a three-year course that had to be established during the forty-year period of the restoration of Canaan on the world level. Through this three-year course we needed to reach the conclusion. The second year was the most dangerous. It was the most difficult time. That is why, at that time, Heung Jin passed on, and I went to prison. As the leader who had been shouldering responsibility for heaven and earth, I was very serious. Satan was the one who caused what happened to Heung Jin. Therefore, I first conducted the Unification Ceremony, then the Seunghwa Ceremony, and then, because I had to send him off as my victorious son, I did not shed any tears until Heung Jin passed on. This is a dreamlike story. However, in this world, things are actually happening just as I prayed and just as I said. Unbelievable events are taking place.
3When Heung Jin went to the spirit world, I held the Unification Ceremony and declared the Day of Victory of Love. The love of the Parents treads on Satan's world and overcomes death. That is why, as I viewed Heung Jin dying the three days before his passing, I could not shed any tears. Even in the presence of our dead sons and daughters, we should be able to share God's love and dedicate our love to Him. For this reason I declared the Day of Victory of Love. Because love triumphed over everything, the ceremony is called the Seunghwa Ceremony.
4In the Unification Church, we call a funeral the Seunghwa Ceremony. Our birth, the Holy Wedding Ceremony and even the end of our life are to be offered to God. The complete fruit of these is the Seunghwa Ceremony. However, you have no idea what an embarrassment it is for a person to be given a Seunghwa Ceremony and honored with many flowers if they lived a careless life and did as they pleased. Therefore, knowing the Principle, we should lay our foundation by living in accordance with it.
5Though Heung Jin passed on alone, I blessed him on earth on the fiftieth day after his passing -- just as on the Pentecost fifty days after the passing of Jesus, the 120 believers gathered in the Upper Room were filled with the Holy Spirit, as recorded in the biblical book of Acts (2:1-4). With that, I made up for all the incomplete work that Heung Jin would have done during his lifetime. I could not shed tears as I sent him off. I also made Mother pledge not to express sadness in front of Heung Jin when he departed for the spirit world. If I had not prepared the way for him at the time, he would have gone to the spirit world in tragedy, like other people. He would then have had no relationship with Jesus or the world of the Blessing amid a spirit world rife with divisions. That is why I named his departure the Seunghwa Ceremony. That ceremony I conducted was the original Seunghwa Ceremony.
6At Heung Jin's Seunghwa Ceremony, no one was allowed to shed tears. This was especially so for True Parents. Later, in the United States, only after they received the report from Korea that the Seunghwa Ceremony had been performed joyously, they shed tears of blessing as they bid him farewell. In this way, the history that had been divided in tears was brought together in harmony with tears. Therefore, no one should shed tears during a Unification Church Seunghwa Ceremony. If tears are shed, the deceased cannot go the way he or she is supposed to go.
7There is no hope without a heart of love. You cannot form bonds with others if you do not have a loving and caring heart. You should even embrace death itself; otherwise you cannot form a relationship with God, who governs the world beyond death. Without transcending death you cannot enter God's world of love. You need to rise above the fallen realm; otherwise you cannot find love no matter how eagerly God awaits your arrival. Where there is hope, there is love. To have hope for the spirit world, you need to love, which will enable you to overcome even death. That is why in the Unification Church, a funeral is called the Seunghwa Ceremony. It signifies breaking through Satan's wall straightaway and ascending to heaven.
8Throughout your life, you should have nothing to be ashamed of before your wife or husband. You should be able to say, "I have kept true to the tradition of safeguarding God's pure lineage, in order to bequeath it to my descendants. I have lived my life according to the tradition of building the kingdom of heaven, where God desires purity, and now I am departing. I am coming to You, my Father, and I entrust myself to You." With that, the commemoration of your death will be called a Seunghwa Ceremony.
9People do not know what it means to die. They think it is a sorrowful occasion, but it is not. Death is a transition from a lower-dimensional world to a higher-dimensional world by crossing the bridge of love. That is why the Unification Church calls death Seunghwa. To die is to ascend to a higher dimension. It is possible only through love.
10A funeral in the Unification Church is called a Seunghwa Ceremony. Since it is a ceremony of Seunghwa (ascension), you should not hold on to the deceased and cry. When the spirit of the dead person sees you cry over him or her, that spirit will lament. He or she will say, "The people's ignorance is a rope that ties me down and prevents me from going on my way." Since we know these things, we in the Unification Church call it a Seunghwa Ceremony. "Seunghwa" means soaring gloriously to heaven. With the power of love, you should lift the deceased up. Instead of pulling the dead person down, you should lift him or her up.
11The Seunghwa Ceremony began with Heung Jin. The meaning of "victory of love" in the Day of Victory of Love is being victorious over death through love. Other people's mothers would be overwhelmed with sorrow, writhing and wailing with deep emotion, but Mother was required not to shed tears. We needed to hold his ceremony within three days of his passing. We had to proclaim victory over death. It is on this basis that we can hold the Seunghwa Ceremony in the Unification Church. It is a ceremony of going beyond death and onward to joy. Those who go through the Seunghwa Ceremony can easily cross over all the valleys in the spirit world.
12The word "death" is sacred. It is not a word that should evoke sadness and anguish. That is why I announced that I changed Seunghwa to Seonghwa. The character seong (聖) means to be sacred or holy. We should no longer use seung, meaning "to ascend." Seonghwa is a term I have coined. The previous word, Seunghwa, did not clearly reflect the sacredness of death, so I rectified it and announced that it is now Seonghwa. The moment of entry into the spirit world is the time when you enter the world of ecstasy and victory. It is the moment, after your life on earth has bloomed and borne fruit, when you embrace the fruit of your life. It is a moment that comes only once. That is why you should rejoice in that moment. In that moment, others should congratulate you as much as they desire and then send you off. In that moment, they should shed tears of joy, not tears of sadness. Every person has eternal life. Compared to the span of eternity, the period of three days after death is shorter than a second. So the question is, "Why should you feel sad about it?" If you lament during that time, your prospects for eternal life will vanish. How dreadful is that? It is so true. It is a time when people should shed tears of joy, not tears of sadness. This Seonghwa refers to laying out the body of the deceased for three days and offering devotions for his or her passage into the spirit world. I have changed the term Seunghwa Ceremony to Seonghwa Ceremony.
13Members of the Unification Church overcome fear of the spirit world. I have no fear of death. The Fall brought about death, so religion should create the realm of resurrection. Based on the Day of Victory of Love, we could begin holding the Seunghwa (ascension) Ceremony. Also on that condition, we could call the burial site the Wonjeon, which means "original palace." It is not about dying but about direct passage to the kingdom of heaven. This palace is a link from the earthly nation to the heavenly nation. That is the meaning of Wonjeon. There is no religion in the world with anything like it other than the Unification Church.
14The place of burial for deceased members of the Unification Church will be known as a Wonjeon. To enter the Wonjeon means to find our way to the original palace within our mother's womb. Where is your Wonjeon? It is the inside of your mother's womb before you were born. From the moment your father's sperm met your mother's ovum, although one was small and the other large, they breathed together, clung to each other and lived in joy. They dwelt together, holding on to each other and giving each other a boost. You need to pass through the ideal of that Wonjeon. In the word Wonjeon, the character jeon (殿) means house. It is the same character as the jeon in goongjeon, meaning palace. You are to find your way to the origin within God's ideal, which existed before your mother's ovum met your father's sperm and you were born on earth.
15Do you know what a mortuary table is? When a person dies, before the body is placed in a coffin, it is washed clean and prepared. Before the body can be moved into a coffin, it is placed on the table and washed clean. Unless someone can unite in heart with the deceased at that place, the body cannot be placed in the coffin. Who is supposed to carry out this task? It should be done by the person who loved the deceased the most. The garments for the deceased should be prepared with care in advance, and the deceased should be dressed in them before being sent off. The cerements are the garments that the body is dressed in when it is placed in the coffin. A representative, loyal friend, or filial son or daughter should receive the fabric for the cerements and sew them. If the deceased is to go to the kingdom of heaven, to a good place in the spirit world, he or she should have upheld the tradition of a loyal patriot and loyal subject. A Korean funeral has this type of meaning. The place where the Unification Church buries its dead is not called a graveyard but a Wonjeon. To liberate heaven and earth, we should desire to be buried in such a place. The Wonjeon refers to the original palace. It is not a place where just anyone can be buried. Only those who have been martyred or whose life was on a comparable level can be buried there.
Fin de Ceremonies and Rituals