What Are We Here To Do?

What Are We

Here To Do?

Perhaps one of the best places to start looking for an answer to that question is the Three Great Principles of Freemasonry, Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth. Then the question is, “How do we apply them?”

Well, we are already pretty good at implementing the Principle of “Brotherly Love”. Our Lodge meetings and the dinners/refreshments that generally follow them are excellent examples of good fellowship; and they are also a lot of fun. We do very well at encouraging Brotherly Love and congeniality among our brethren. We do pretty well at “Relief”, too. Masonic Charities are perhaps the characteristic of the Freemasonry that is best known to those outside the Fraternity. In the United States, alone, Masonry contributes two million Dollars every day to charities. And that is only the beginning. Masonic Charities exist around the world and include medical and dental care, scholarships, learning assistance, companionship, etc. as well as the distribution of funds to the needy. A depiction of the Solomon’s Temple “Truth” presents a more complex question. We don’t seem to spend a lot of time there, but I think it would be of great benefit for us to do so. It is my understanding that the founders of our order, in Britain in the late 1600’s, were looking at the philosophy of the renaissance which included the idea that by practicing one’s religion seriously one could experience the divine presence here and now. Since operative masonry was the major intellectual

W. Kirk MacNulty

Grand Orator

activity of the time, I think the founders sought to relate the two. I suspect they came across the passage in the Great Light that says, “Know ye not that ye are the Temple?”, and with that in mind they chose Solomon’s Temple as a point of focus.

Let us look at this in a little detail. Everything in the degrees happens in Solomon’s Temple. The First Degree happens on the ground floor, and it relates to our activities in the world. If you practice the teachings, you lead a well respected, stable, mature life that can result in the individuation of the “Self”.

The Second Degree happens in the middle chamber; and if

“you are the temple”, the middle chamber can be thought to represent your soul, the seat of your morality.

The working tools certainly seem to relate to our morality, as do the lessons in the middle chamber.

The Third Degree happens in the Holy of Holies, the place in the temple where the Deity resides. When one arrives at that place in the “Temple that one is” there can be a problem. building of King The Deity is without limit. When one becomes aware of such a presence one’s “Self” cannot exist; it dies. This interpretation of the ritual suggests that with the death of the “Self” one is raised to a new level of consciousness, at which one is able to perceive the Divine Presence.

Just think what our ritual can mean to you when you realize that, “…you are the Temple”. n