Lent day fifteen: Christ shows us who we are

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From the the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes*:

The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.

A common mistake among Christians, including myself, is to think that Christ is very different from ourselves. That He is distant. That to be anything like Him is unachievable under any circumstances whatsoever. Not so.

Yes, I know, He is God. And Yes, I know, He is sinless. And we are certainly not God and we are certainly sinful. The question though is whether sin is a defining characteristic of humanity.

If it is, then Adam was not human until he sinned. Neither was Eve. And neither Mary nor Jesus were ever, for even one second of their lives, human.

It is more accurate to say that until Adam sinned, he was not fallen. It is also more accurate to say that Adam was more human before he fell than afterwards. It is also more accurate to say that you and I are more human when we do good and avoid evil, than when we strike and reverse that. It is most accurate to say that Jesus was the most human human ever to walk the earth.

And by walking the earth, so fully human, he reveals to us what humanity really is, and by necessity who we really are.

Christ shows me who I am.

Reread that sentence and repeat it to yourself. More than once if you have to or want to.

Christ shows me who I am. Not some abstraction or fantasy -- who I really am deep down. He shows me how I am meant to live. He shows me that I am a good person. And by doing that, He shows me that when I sin, I am not being true to myself. He shows me that my heart is strong and capable of loving and giving to others in a way that can transform lives. He shows me that I can suffer no violence so terrible as to force me to hate those who perpetrate it. He shows me that as long as I focus on my Father in Heaven, no matter what hardships befall me, I will be a force for good in the world.

Christ shows that to me by being who He is. He is a mirror into the hearts of all of us. If we want to know who we are, we must get to know Him.






*the Church's constitution on the Church in the modern world, published in the late 1960s.

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This page contains a single entry by Mark published on March 5, 2010 3:06 AM.

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