Jesus Christ, The Center of Our Life(2018-12-23)
Introduction
Tomorrow will be the Vigil of Christmas. In the liturgy of the Church, a Vigil is preparation for a special feast, preparation done by prayers, penance and meditation on what will be celebrated on the following day. The purpose of a vigil is to dispose our soul to receive at full graces God wants to bestow upon us during the feast. Today therefore the Church wants to prepare us to the feast of Christmas which is essentially the feast of the Mystery of Incarnation. “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed: and all flesh shall see the salvation of our God” says Isaias in the Communion prayer of the Mass. Today let us look at who is Jesus and how He is the Center of everything in the creation.
The Word of God in the Holy Trinity
We are going to celebrate Christmas, Jesus’ birth. But we cannot appreciate really the event of Christmas if first we don’t remember who is Jesus, namely the Second Person of the Holy Trinity whose life did not start on Christmas day, but before.
St John the Evangelist says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. And saying so, St John reveals that there is a fecundity in God. By reasoning we can reach a certain knowledge of God: His existence, His unicity, His power, wisdom, omnipresence and omniscience; we can know that He is Being itself, the necessary Being subsisting by Himself, possessing the plenitude of all perfections. But we cannot know what God’s intimate life is, unless He reveals it to us. And God has revealed that there is fecundity in Him, that He is Father: “God, being Infinite Intelligence, God perfectly comprehends Himself; in a single act, He sees all that He is, all that is in Him. He comprehends, as it were, in a single glance the plenitude of His perfections, and in one thought, in one word that exhausts all His knowledge, He expresses this infinite knowledge to Himself. This thought conceived by the Eternal Intelligence, this utterance whereby God expresses Himself is the Word”, and He calls the Word “Son”: in the psalm 109 God the Father says “From the bosom of my Divinity, before the creation of the light, I communicated life to Thee” and during Jesus’ baptism, He said: “Thou art my Son, my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Lc 3;22).
When a creature begets another creature, it can only give a nature like to his own: a tree produces a seed for another tree, a dog begets an other dog, a man another man; he can never give his own nature, only a similarity to his own nature. But in God, the Father begets the Word so perfectly that the Word is absolutely equal to the Father, shares in the same Divine Nature. Jesus told his disciples during the Last Supper: “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10;30). The only distinction between the Father and the Son is that the first one “begets” and the second one “is begotten”. The Son dwells permanently in the Father: they can never be separated, and their mutual love is so absolute and perfect that from it proceeds a third Person called the Holy Spirit. This is the Mystery of the Holy Trinity as you know: There are three distinct Persons in One God. Jesus is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word of God, the Son of God.
The Word of God on earth
Having come on earth, Jesus makes it clear that He continues His life inside the Holy Trinity, and that through Him we can accede to this life, we too.
Indeed Jesus proclaims that He receives everything from the Father. In the Gospel, He insists many times on this: “I live by the Father… my doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me… the Son cannot do anything of Himself but what He sees the Father doing; for what things soever He does, these the Son also does in like manner… As I hear so I judge, and my judgment is just because I seek not my own will but the will of Him that sent Me… I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father has taught Me these things I speak” (Jn 6;28 – 7;16 – 8;28).
Receiving everything from the Father, OLJ is a perfect living image of the Father. And therefore when we look at Jesus, we look at God Himself. In knowing Jesus, we know God Himself. The Apostle Philip one day asked Jesus: “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us”, and Jesus replied: “Have I been so long a time with you, and have you not known Me? Philip, he who sees Me, sees the Father also” (Jn14;8-9).
At last receiving everything from the Father, Our Lord Jesus returns lovingly everything to Him out of love: “I do always the things that please Him” (Jn 8;29). He accepts all what His Father requires of Him, even the sufferings of the Passion: “Not my will but Thy will be done”. He died on the Cross so that the world would know that He loves the Father (Jn14;31).
Therefore by knowing Jesus, this little Baby whom we are going to celebrate, we learn to know the Father and the Holy Trinity; by uniting ourselves to Jesus, we enter into the intimate life of the Holy Trinity. Our Lord Jesus is like the translation of the Divinity into a human language, adapted to our human understanding so that we can know it, love it and join it. It is our vocation, extraordinary vocation but real: “Father, I will that where I am, they also whom you have given me, may be with me; that they may see my glory which you have given me, because you have loved me before the creation of the world” (Jn 17;24).
OLJC and us
Our Lord Jesus is our entrance door and our guide into the Holy Trinity. Now the question is: what can we do to unite ourselves to Jesus and through Him join the Divine life? We must follow the example given us by Our Lord.
First, the Word of God receives everything from the Father and He loves acknowledging it. Let us acknowledge as well that all what we have is from God: we have not given ourselves our existence, but we have received it from God; we have not created the goods we use to live, but we have received them from God; we have no right by nature to go to Heaven and to share in God’s happiness, however God calls us to that eternal life. Let us love acknowledging that we receive everything from God. It is the basis of humility. It is a powerful incentive to use our faculties and our time for God’s service.
Then we said the Word on earth is an image of the Father, a human translation of the Divine life. As well let us be images of the Father on earth. By our human nature, we bear the image and likeness of God, that is to say we have an intelligence and a will, a capacity to understand and to love, like God. By sanctifying grace, we receive a real participation in the Divine nature, we are made children of God and the Psalm 81 says in truth: “You are gods and the sons of the Highest”. As Jesus was an image of the Father and people could know the Father through His behavior and teachings, so by living generously our Catholic life we should show something of God’s perfections and people should be able to know something of God by seeing the holiness of our lives. Let us be careful to preserve sanctifying grace in our soul, never to destroy it by a mortal sin.
At last, we said the Word refers Himself and everything to the Father through love. It is what we must do as well: we must return our own self and everything we have to God with love; to make God be the principle and the end of all our deeds, whatever great or small they can be exteriorly, known to men or hidden from sight. If we have this attitude, then God will increase sanctifying grace in our soul and we will formed more and more to the likeness of Christ, we will penetrate more and more in the life of the Holy Trinity, source of all happiness.
Conclusion
Our Lord Jesus is the Word made man in order to make man be God. This is the marvelous Mystery of Incarnation which we celebrate these days. Let us have a strong will to follow Our Lord Jesus so that we may one day all meet in Heaven.
