Our founders and True Parents, Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han, like to celebrate! They taught us to appreciate anniversaries and Holy Days. Eight Holy Days were established after their wedding in 1960; they commemorate internal breakthroughs among True Parents, their family, and our community as they return to God’s original ideal.
This weekend, we celebrate the 64th Day of all True Things and the 72nd Anniversary of the Founding of HSA-UWC.
Day of all True Things
In a heartfelt Prayer on June 4, 1970, the 7th Day of all Things (the adjective ‘true’ was added later), True Father asked God to grant us a better understanding of the Holy Day.
“Please grant that the understanding of the Day of All Things among the sons and daughters gathered here today not be limited to its literal meaning. Please enable us to realise that the things of creation are not the problem, but that the person whom the things of creation are meant to serve is the problem, and that whether that person can follow You is the problem. Please allow us to realise that the things of creation want to be cared for and governed by a true person. Please allow us to become Your sons and daughters who love the world and all the things of creation. We earnestly hope and pray that You allow us to become Your sons and daughters who can be more deeply aware than anyone else of the value of the things of creation and who can care for them.”
In this sense, this Holy Day is a great opportunity to reflect on how we perceive the many things that surround us in our homes and in nature, and how we treat the things we use in daily life. Our relationships with the everyday objects, as well as with plants and animals, can tell us something about who we are.
Core Idea: Our relationship to all things has two dimensions: perception and use. Both can be done with love.
If you have kids, it is a great opportunity to reflect with them on their relationship with their clothes, toys and all their things. You may ask them what their favourite is and why. How do you want to handle your favourite things? Are other, more ordinary, less favourite things less valuable?
Activity Idea: Clear a shelf and make it a space to display your favourite things.
For teenagers, it can be valuable to reflect on which brands you like and why. What do these brands stand for? Do you hope to gain a quality or achieve something by buying, owning and wearing this or that brand? What other things matter to you? Are there clothes, items, utensils, or plants and animals that you should or could care for more or better?
Activity Idea: Look at or remember things that you used to like as a child.
About the Anniversary
HSA-UWC, or Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, was founded in 1954. Informally, HSA-UWC was often referred to as the Unification Church. In 1994, on the 40th Anniversary, Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Dr Hak Ja Han Moon, launched the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification as the next stage of HSA-UWC. Its mission broadened to include working for the unification of all religions and all nations. They said:
“Our purpose for founding the Unification Church was not only to benefit our church. On this anniversary of the founding of the church, we have to broaden our scope. We need to make this day the day for guiding our nation to God’s Will, and we need to make this day the day we guide the entire world to build the kingdom of heaven on earth that God hopes to see.”
By celebrating anniversaries, we appreciate what happened and what was accomplished in the past, especially our momentous 40 years from 1954 to 1994. In doing so, we find new inspiration and resources to do great things.
Reflection Question: What are you proud of or grateful for over this period? How does it inform and inspire you as you look ahead?
Happy 64th Day of all True Things and the 72nd Anniversary of the Founding of HSA-UWC! Make it a good one.
True Mother’s Prayer on June 12, 2010:
“As we mark the fifty-sixth anniversary of the founding of HSA-UWC and the forty-eighth Day of All True Things, we remember that at the first Day of All True Things, You gave the blessing of Heaven, and it was Your desire that all humanity respond to this in harmony and be part of it. You have undertaken numerous courses during the providence, enduring, embracing, waiting and educating.
On this forty-eighth Day of All True Things, may the fruits of all Your effort extend beyond the family to the levels of clan or tribe, race and nation, so that at the world level we may attend our Parents in Heaven. Together with the True Parents of Heaven, Earth and Humankind, all creation was meant to respond to the ideal that God held at the time of Creation. We have remembered that day and have worked with great effort through many different courses to resolve all the situations of humanity and create the situation in which all things can be blessed.
Please establish us as proud, blessed families of the Unification Church who do our best to fulfil our responsibilities as true children and true families in the presence of the family, tribe, people, nation, state and world at this time, when the True Parents’ efforts and Jeong Seong make a great offering to heaven through the maritime businesses and when all material things must bear fruit.
As You have shown us everything, please remember us in this time, so that all members of the Unification Church family everywhere may become children who can make the final decoration beautiful and live according to what You have shown us. We believe You will watch over us in this time of rebirth and make this a day when You bless and embrace us. As children who can respond to the heart that has long sought to speak and to give us as much as possible for our lives, let us remember this and remain steadfast. We fervently, fervently ask all this and have reported all this to You in the name of the Parents. Aju.”
