As has already been stated this Sacred Way is a way of obedience, spiritual poverty and purity. This truth is marked out by the ten first cubits from the entrance into the courtyard to the first great tool of this Sanctuary of our Living God: the altar of burnt offerings. The obedience is due to the revelation of our Trinitarian faith and its ten commandments, foremost the two fundamental commandments of love towards our God and neighbors. Let us thus pay heed of the the truth which the three foundation stones of the Celestial City shed light upon: the jasper, sapphire and chalcedony.

 

The first jewel in the spiritual breastplate is the jasper – the jewel of the heavenly Father – which is green. From this jewel the holiness or catharsis (purity) of the faith shines forth in its dazzling beauty. If the soul ignores the existence of this jewel it will always be blindfolded in the live of grace (cf. Lv 21. 16-24). Thus God has to cure the soul of this disease. This is actually what the Hebrew word yas-peh (jasper) sheds light upon:  to polish, grind, govern or strengthen. The jasper is translucent and radiant and thus the spiritual sight of the soul will be translucent in the live of grace and when God has grinded and polished the jasper of the breastplate in the prayer nothing can darken this jewel anymore. Thus the soul can in full clarity witness the birth of the eternal Word within. The ancient Hebrews believed that the jasper had influence on the health of women and thus it became a symbol of delivery, a fact which was based on the jasper's nature when shattered: its womb gave birth to other stones. It refers thus directly to the Blessed Virgin and the incarnation of her Son in human flesh on earth as revealed by the illumination of the sparkling jewels of the Celestial City.

This is indeed what actually takes place in the live of grace. The jasper is the mother of the other foundation stones of the Celestial City. This is the reason why God chose the jasper as the first stone in the spiritual breastplate: it is a symbol of the eternal birth of the Word and renewal of the live of grace within when the soul begins to walk the way of repentance. In the Book of Revelation St. John saw the One sitting on the throne,

The jasper refers to the Father, the sardius to the sacrificial death of the Son on the Hill of the Cross and the dark green emerald reveals how the Spirit sheds light upon His human nature in His incarnation as a sibling in a cradle. The green hue of the jasper refers thus to the birth of live in grace which has its origin in the Father and thus Dionysus the Areopagite saw the jasper as a symbol of new beginning and youth and a token of the Creator of the Universe.

The jasper sheds light upon the fact, that when the spiritual sight of our Royal Image – the contemplative intellect – has been cured it will be transformed into pure faith in the Christification of the soul when she has attained full participation in the stature of Christ as a theological being. This means to be endowed fully by grace which is the fullness of the love of the charity.




The second jewel in the spiritual breastplate is the sapphire. Its  color is blue and in the mind of the ancient Hebrews it was inseparable from the almond tree or luz as they named it in Hebrew. It referred also to the eternal city Luz, or the “Blue city,” the city of eternal life: Zion. The village of Luz was not far from the place where Jacob saw the ladder to heaven which he called Beith-el or “House of God”.

Later this place was named Beth-le-hem or the “House of the bread”, the house of the heavenly manna who came from heaven to nourish the children of light. The sapphire refers thus to our Redeemer who became “house of God and gate to heaven” for us in the virtue of His obedience, this glorious virtue which is central among the virtues as a reflection of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity,


The obedience is a heavenly and infused virtue interwoven with the virtues of poverty and purity which is the same thing as perfect love. It was this perfect fear of humility which was the inspiration of Jesus, “his inspiration will lie in fearing Yahweh” (Is 11. 2). By such a fear the soul avoids everything which casts a shadow on the immanence of God within just as members of a loving family avoids everything that can cool the love in their hearts for each others.

That is why the holy fathers said that the obedience was the mother of the humility, the humility of a sound judgment, sound judgment of spiritual discrimination and it the source of divine contemplation . It is this fear of God which will enkindle the love (agape) of the charity which will become the Jacob's Ladder of the soul to heaven. If we lack the virtue of obedience we have infirmity and suffer of lameness in the live of grace – are “crippled” as mother Teresa  emphasized referring to souls not giving heed to the prayer life – and can not serve as priests of the living God in the Sanctuary of their living God, rather than the priests of the Old Covenant (Lv 21. 16-24).

In the gospels we see clearly how Jesus was continuously in union with His heavenly Father: He was neither paralyzed or crippled in the live of grace. The blue color is also the color of the Blessed Virgin and represents thus her innocence which cuts the fetters of our fleshly disposition in order to make us able to ascend to God and become united to Him in love. This is the true nature of this blue color
   If we paint a house in blue it so to say is merged with heaven, becomes invisible. This will take place when this blue color of the sapphire has become an indistinguishable part in the painting of our Royal Image: we become one with God – the Son of God. The sapphire is also well known for its hardness: it is sharp like a sword. It cuts asunder the fetters of the lower ego and thus the soul will be transformed in the mystery of the sapphire in the Christification of the self into pure hope in faith. Thus we will “see the hope his call holds for you” (Ep 1. 18).




The third jewel in the spiritual breastplate is the chalcedony or agate. It is astounding to see how purposefully God uses His pictorial gallery of holy images in the Scriptures. Agate is a form of chalcedony  characterized by bands or zones differing in color. The dominant color is milky white but the bands can be shades of red, green, blue and skin colored base hue.
   In Hebrew this jewel is called shebo, a word meaning to be radiant or burning, to be like a lightning. It sheds light on the eternal birth of the Word within as  Meister Eckhart emphasized, “We find in lightning an analogy for this.” On the Chaplet of the Sparkling Jewels which will be discussed later below (Appendix A) the chalcedony is represented by two beds on the chaplet: red and and white! The first bed – the red – refers to the love of the Holy Spirit, the second to the Light of Glory which the Holy Spirit infuses into the darkness of human hearts in order to enlighten them and Saint Paul emphasized so much,




When the soul begins to bath herself in this dazzling light, turns herself to this Seven days sun within, she becomes like one who looks long at the sun, her face becomes marked by this radiant illumination of the Light of Glory. A lack of this characterizing mark is listed among the infirmities of the priests  of the Old Covenant as a disfigured face (Lv 21. 16-24).
 
The Holy Spirit – this most mystical person of the Holy Trinity – appears always in glory and thus we see the splendor of His glory radiating from Moses' face when he came down from the mountain and its brightness so strong, that the Israelites did not dare to look on his face (Ex 34. 30). It was this glory which was revealed to the disciples on Mount Tabor when Jesus' face became shining like the sun (Mt 17. 3) and shone from the face of Stephan the Martyr and the members of the sanhedrin witnessed (Ac 7. 56), the same Light of Glory which overwhelmed Soul, the pharisee. This did probably take place in the year 36 A. D.,


It is this same Light of Glory which will shine in the jewels of the spiritual breastplate if the soul follows the divine precepts  in obedience, poverty and purity as the Blessed Virgin did and attained thus full knowledge of our Lord and Redeemer.
   If the chalcedony does not radiate in its glory in the spiritual breastplate the face of the soul is disfigured, but not a shining face of Easter. The chalcedony reveals also another and profound truth. In the Divine Order of March in the Old Covenant the chalcedony was the stone of the tribe of Mannasse, but in Hebrew it means literary to forget. The chalcedony refers thus to the eternal straining forward in love in faith when the soul leaves everything behind because God has enchanted her contemplative intellect (nous, the heart) and will by the  splendor of His beauty,


By its message the chalcedony is a worthy symbol of the Holy Spirit and all souls who bear it in their breastplate in the live of grace will be transformed into pure love of the charity in the mystery of the illumination of the chalcedony.