Dar wcielonego i paschalnego Jezusa Chrystusa

Abstract

The birth of Jesus is not simply the emergence of a great man, a prophet, a religious genius; it marks the moment when eternity crossed into time, when divinity intersected humanity, when the Light shone in the darkness. The Incarnation - the belief that the eternal Son of God assumed human nature - exposes that intuition as false. The true God does not cling to Himself but gives Himself away in love, rejoicing to share completely the life of His creatures. In turn, these creatures discover who they truly are not in opposition to God but through a radical self-surrender to God’s generosity. We are not rivals of God but friends. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, not only because we depend upon Him for our existence but, more radically, because of the Incarnation. The eternal Son of God’s enfleshment in Jesus is the ground for respect for the dignity of each individual human being. Any other ground can become a slippery slope, shifting with political decisions about who is a human being. If God’s eternal Word become one of us in order to offer eternal life teach of us, then no human being is dispensable. When “history” or the state or “the will of the people” become absolute, then human beigs, even millions of them, become expendable. Or to turn the critical light of faith more directly upon our own culture, when comfort or convenience or economic security or individual autonomy are paramount, the lives of those not yet bom, of the unfit and the elderly, are in danger. The lives of those who suffer and the historical meaning of death itself change when seen in the shadow of Christ’s cross. St. Paul called the cross a folly and a stumbling block, and it has been that for 60 generations. The cross purges of all sentimentalism the belief that God is love. The Father sent his only begotten Son into flesh, into history, into the agony of being human and finally into death itself in an attempt to gather back all those who have wandered from the divine love. This is tough love and hardheaded hope. Whenever Christians look through the lens of Christ’s cross, they see a world that, left to its own devices, will crucify the Son of God. Whenever ideologues of any stripe propose a utopian solution to our problems, whenever a scheme of economic, political, cultural or psychological reform is put forward as a panacea, Christians ought to be the first to raise their voices in protest. That we have not always done so tells us who we remain: Christians not yet fully marked with the sign of the cross. When the disciples of Jesus 2000 years ago first spoke of Him, they proclaimed His resurrection from the dead. Their focus was not on His teaching nor His miracles, His manner of life or personality. They preached a Jesus crucified and risen from the dead. The same body bom of the Virgin Mary suffered death and then rose, transformed forever, no longer bound by the limitations of space and time because it had passed through the last barrier, death itself. Jesus is the Christ, perfectly free because he freely accepted death for our salvation. All the musings about the difference between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith make a distinction the first disciples would not have recognized. Jesus never wrote a book; it is the community which is His visible body that is every age’s link to Him. The community of faith, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote the Gospels years after the Gospel was first preached; and the written witbess of the Gospel text is interpreted within that living community in continuity across the ages. Outside the life of that community of faith, Jesus is just a figment of someone’s imagination, often a projection of someone’s desires, the subject of an intelectual parlor game. The history of Jesus’ disciples over the past 2000 years is a history of God’s grace and their cooperation with His grace. It is a history of a world radically changed by Jesus’ incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection from the dead. It is also a history of Christians’ sinning and of their being sinned against. Every people and human group has its martyrs.