Lord,
Keep us true in the faith,
proclaiming that
Christ is you Son,
who is one with you in eternal glory,
became man and was born to a virgin mother.
Free us from all evil
and lead us to the joy of eternal life.
From the book of
CHRISTIAN PRAYER:
The Liturgy of the Hours
Christ left eternity and
entered time so we could leave time to enter eternity with Him. The Incarnation
is the Creator's expression of perfect love for imperfect creatures endowed
with the Creator's image and likeness.[1] He desires that we cultivate and develop
that divine Image within us to become more like Him. Who is the Creator? Well,
if the Bible is true and God-inspired (which it is), He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.[2] The triune God of the Bible: Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.[3] Who is the Son? The Son is Jesus
Christ; He was preexistent to his birth in Bethlehem. We read in the gospel of John: "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."[4]
From my time governed, 3-dimensional physical world, it's hard to understand
what the Apostle was referring to in this divinely inspired passage.
I have such a pea-sized,
cloudy mind but let this layman go out on theological limp. I think of God as a
Being rather like a divine eternal Thought; Christ is the Word that expresses
that divine Thought.[5] The
Spirit animates the Divine Thought. We find the Spirit of God animating
the Thought of God in the creation account.
"In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the
earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the
deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the
waters." (Genesis 1.1-2, NIV, [emphasis added.])
Although some Bible translations use the word wind, other translations such as the New International Version above and the New King James Version use the word Spirit. The word Spirit of God is more appropriate to my analogy of trying to understand more about the Trinity.
Although some Bible translations use the word wind, other translations such as the New International Version above and the New King James Version use the word Spirit. The word Spirit of God is more appropriate to my analogy of trying to understand more about the Trinity.
If God can be liken to a being that is a Thought, what is the Thought? PERFECT
DIVINE LOVE.[6] Jesus Christ is the exact
representation, the perfect imprint of God.[7] Even
in human form He was Deity.[8] This is why Christ identified the
greatest Commandment: "You shall the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind. And the second is like it; You
shall love your neighour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the
Law and the prophets"[9] Later he expanded this Law of love by
saying: "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I
have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you
are my disciples, if you have love for one another."[10] Divine love is expansive! Didn't the
Saviour say this "For God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal
life.”?[11] Yes, that’s exactly what Jesus said. It
is the very definition of expansive love!
God's love desires that we draw near Him and be conformed to the image of His
Son. God longs jealously for the spirit he planted in us.[12] The Apostle Paul said: "For whom He
foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He
might be the firstborn among many brethren."[13] In another place the Apostle said of
those who believe and follow Christ:
"Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of
the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just
as by the Spirit of the Lord."[14]
It is the expansive, transforming
love of God that gradually conforms us to the image of Christ. Divine love
permeates the
Spirit of the Lord, and believers who are being conformed to
Christ's image discover the liberty of Divine love; that which was temporal and
worldly gradually transforms to that which is spiritual and eternal. That
is the reason for the Christian's pilgrimage toward the Celestial City.[15]
The crux of God's
yearning is that we spend eternity with Him. God does not want any to be lost.[16]
He wants to be loved just as we are loved by Him. The point of human existence
is to love God and others who bear His image. But God will not force humanity
to love Him and spend with Him. He is the Divine lover not a divine jailer.
While it is true that God will accept a person in their broken and imperfect
state, it is also true that He will not leave them that way. C.S. Lewis put it
this way.
"We were made not
primarily that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God
may love us, that we may become objects in which the Divine love may rest ‘well
pleased’. To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask
that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His love must, in
the nature of things, be impeded and repelled by certain stains in our present
character, and because He already loves us He must labour to make us lovable."[17]
A person who says "I
can be a good person without being a
Christian" does not understand the
point of life. God does not want us to be merely good, he wants us to be
perfect. (When I use the word ‘perfect’, I mean ‘holy.’) Jesus said, "Be
perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."[18]
Our way to perfection is
through Christ and continually being conformed to be more and more like Him. In
Him we do not lose ourselves, we discover more fully who we are and why we were
created. The image of God within ourselves becomes ever more evident and
radiant The more we die to self, the more we become alive in Christ.
Have you ever noticed the
dichotomies of Christianity? The first here on earth will be last in heaven:
The last here will be first there.[19]
In life we find death, in death we find life.[20]
In spiritual rebellion we find spiritual bondage, in surrender to Christ we find
freedom in Christ.[21]
We live in a world that is upside down to the reality of heaven and spiritual
truth. There is something in these dichotomies for you and me to grasp, but
must we search ourselves to understand.
My example is this. I
have been sick with incurable neurological disease and disability for more than
33 years – more than half my lifetime. What am I to make of it? I could have
bitterly concluded that most of my life has been wasted, that there is no God
or a cruel God. But I know there is a God -- I have met His Son. He is not
cruel nor have I been abandoned. I took my queue to understanding my situation
from the Bible: “We know that in everything God works for good with those who
love him.”[22] I have come to understand
that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with
the Glory which shall be revealed in us.”[23]
I can let my situation be a tool to bitterness and defeat or a vehicle toward
holiness and spiritual victory. Even disabled and sick, I am called to a
Christian life, the perfection of love through a mystical, intimate union with
Christ and the mystery of the Trinity. In myself I am nothing. Christ is my strength,
justification and salvation. I must wholeheartedly devote myself to do the will
of God and to love and serve my neighbour.
“The way of perfection
passes by way of the cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and
spiritual battle. Spiritual progress entails the ascesis and mortification that
gradually lead to living in the peace and joy of the Beatitudes.”[24]
By surrendering my life in
trust to Christ, prayer, immersing myself in Scriptures, the sacraments, a daily
taking up of my cross to follow Christ, uniting my suffering with Christ’s
Salvific suffering – these are some ways that lay a path to holiness. Everything is
animated by the Holy Spirit. Any holiness a wretch like me merits, comes solely
from Jesus Christ. He is the Word that expresses the perfect and holy Divine thought
of God. He is the Divine Word that is God.
MDP
[1] Genesis 1.26-27 & 5.1
[2] Exodus 3.6.
[3] I have heard critics of Christianity say that the Bible doesn’t
refer to the Trinity. Not true. See Matthew 28.19. Cf. 2Corinthians 13.14, 2Corinthians 3.17, 1John 5.7.
[4] John 1.2, 17.5 & 24. Revelation
22.13. Cf. Micah 5.2b, Colossians
1.14-17.
[7] Hebrews 1.3.
[8] John 10.30, Colossians 1.15, 2Corinthians 4.4.
[11] John 3.16.
[12] James 4.5
[13] Romans 8.29.
[14] 2Corinthians 3.17-18.
[15] John
Bunyan's book Pilgrim's Progress From
This World to That Which Is to Come" was written in 1678 as Christian
Allegory. The term Celestial City was a synonym for the heavenly Jerusalem.
Heaven.
[16] 2Peter 3.9.
[18] Matthew
5.48, cf. 2 Corinthians 13.11; Leviticus 11.44;
Psalm18.30. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (2012-2029) deals at length
with Christian holiness.
[19] Matthew 19.30 & 20.16, Mark 10.31, Luke 13.29-30.
[20] Matthew 10.39, 16.25, Luke 9.24, 17.33, Romans 6.4.
[21] See Romans 8.1-13.
[22] Romans 8.28.
[23] Romans 8.18
[24] Catechism of the Catholic
Church, No. 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment