We Are All Part of God’s Family
This is the day that the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and be glad! Christians believe that words are incapable of expressing what Easter Mystery is.. It is more than just the vindication and victory of Christ Jesus after His horrific death on Good Friday. Easter is all about each of us and all of us because of Christ Jesus. If we believe Jesus, this day is the most critical in your entire life. Each day is Easter when you believe that Christ died and rose and lives.
Quantum theologians tell us that every person in our lives rubs off upon us. We rub off on every person with whom we have contact. Christ Jesus is like us in all things but sin. He still rubs off on us! Why should it be any different for Him?
In the Hebrew tradition, “son of man” meant “everyone”, a generic name for “humanity”. (In Hebrew, the words are ben adam; in Aramaic, the words are bar nasha.) Lately, it has even been translated as the “human one”. However, in the later Hebrew Bible book of Daniel, the term starts to refer “One like a Son of Man (a human one) coming on the clouds of heaven to whom dominion has been handed”.
St Paul teaches us “Christ Jesus is both the image of the invisible God and the archetype of creation”. Our Creed celebrates Him truly divine, truly human.
Christ Jesus, therefore, becomes for us the archetype, the paradigm and the exemplar of what it means to be both truly divine and truly human. He rubs off on us 1) through the Jesus Movement, 2) through the Word of God, 3) through the Sacraments, particularly Baptism and the Eucharist, and 4) in myriad other ways that only He knows.
Christ Jesus is the archetype of creation (St Paul’s very words!!). We can say in faith that Christ Jesus is in our deepest DNA and our deepest DNA is in Christ Jesus. As St Paul says in other places, we are the Body of Christ. Therefore, is it not correct to say that each of us is a cell in the Body of Christ?
Still, as we live our lives in Christ Jesus, we experience the reality of human living. We experience God’s many blessings, the right hand of God. Still, all of us, no matter how long we kid ourselves, we experience the painful mysteries of life, the left hand of God.
Pope Francis reminds us that the mission of the Church is to be “a poor church of the poor.” He urges us to follow the strongest cultural, economic, racial, gender guidelines which appears in Mtt 25, viz., the parable of the Last Judgment. “Whatever you did (or did not do) for the least of these brothers and sisters, you did (or did not do) to me? Gulp! Pope Francis borrows criteria adopted by the USA Catholic bishops before the Presidential Election of 2008. Christ is concerned (and so should His followers) to be concerned about the least, the lost, the lowest, the left out, the last!! They were talking about those considered the most marginal, the widow, the orphan, the alien. We are all one human family. We all share the DNA of Christ Jesus. Our belief in that reality is reflected in our everyday lives.
Still, the message that got Jesus crucified, was seen as a threat to the powers that be, the system. Christ Jesus in us teaches us that all humanity,and all human institutions, as part of creation, needs at some point to surrender, let go and trust the Holy Mystery at work within us and within the universe.
In St Luke’s account of the arrival of the women at the tomb, the women hear that it was necessary for the son of man to die and rise again. The announcement clearly refers to the Crucified One. However, might the announcement also refer to the necessity of the Paschal Mystery in all human experience. In Christ Jesus, we die and rise and live again, again and again. True, we experience both the right and left hand of God during our earthly life. Still, we live in a New Reality, a New World Order, a New Universe, when we grasp the Paschal Mystery. We rub off on each other!
Our vocations as New York Catholics is to proclaim both in actions and words and attitudes our belief in the Paschal Mystery of Christ Jesus. Through Him, with Him and in Him, Jesus wants us to live the Easter or Paschal Mystery.
Four hundred years ago, St Teresa of Avila said, “Christ has no hands but ours; no feet but ours, no lips but ours.” The Crucified and Risen One expects us, New York Catholics, to be “change agents”, “critical mass”, “core groups”, catalysts, channels, instruments of God’s Peace”. If we rub off on each other in Christ Jesus, we change everything, most especially ourselves.
Sadly, our world seems to continue to implode through violence against people and nature. Several say that our nation has lost our sense of justice, fairness, compassion and civility. We have forgotten to ask the question, “Is it fair in our national dialogue?” Today, the Human One asks us to be human by living His Easter Reality with all its implications every day of our life through, with and in Christ Jesus. God knows each of us (know, in the biblical sense); loves (love in the biblical sense); forgives us (forgives, in the biblical sense, like the prodigal son and the woman taken in adultery recently and His executioners (Palm Sunday’s Gospel)). Let us ask for the Spirit of a New Vision of our place in the world as we recommit ourselves today as we renew our baptismal commitment to His and our (in Him) Paschal Mystery. Christ crucified and risen lives in me; I live in Christ crucified and risen. (and so does everyone else!!) 033113AD jfq
