Keeping Christ alive

OF course, Christ is always alive, whether we are aware of it or not.He is God. But as the Easter Triduum reminded us, he truly died, a victim of all our sins. And on the third day he rose again. He now lives, and forever. "Why seek the living one among the dead?" (Lk 24,5)

We have to be more aware of this truth, and be more consistent to this reality. Our problem is that we are good in professing it--even turgid and pompous in expressing it--but our life many times reflects the opposite.

Christ, for many of us, remains dead, a figure buried in the past, a word, an idea, a psychological crutch, a pious decoration, a political tool, a mere symbol. We mangle him again, use and abuse him, exploit him to suit our will.

The constant challenge we have is how to activate our faith such that Christ is truly alive in us. He should be present in our mind and heart, in our lips and senses. We should continually deal with him, speaking to him, consulting him, asking, begging, etc.

Christ should be in our thoughts and desires. He should be inside us and outside us as well. We should learn to see his face, no matter how disfigured, everywhere and in everyone.

We should look for him, find, love and serve him in all aspects of our lives--personal, family, social, professional, business, political, etc. This is the challenge. But how can we effectively meet this challenge?

Even before consciously activating our faith, our common sense will already tell us that we have to exert the effort to deal with him, trying to get to know him better, to spend time with him, to stay close to him.

From this basic intuition, we will realize through our faith that we need to develop certain indispensable practices and habits, like praying, spiritual reading, having recourse to the sacraments, undertaking a lifelong ascetical struggle, and having other norms of piety truly helpful to us in all our circumstances.

We have to realize that we need to study well the doctrines of Christ, now left with the Church and authoritatively taught by it. These doctrines are not just brilliant ideas. They are the living Christ impacting on our human condition. They have to be taken seriously.

We need to be mature Christians, "unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ," as St. Paul told us (Eph 4,13), Christians who know how to be so both in the Church and in the world, in name and in deeds, actively pursuing God's plan for man through the apostolate.

But, alas, these things can sound Greek to many. The truth is many of us appear helplessly gripped in worldly allurements. We seem completely infatuated with the world, and our taste for the sacred is disappearing.

This situation, of course, makes us prone to worse things. St. Paul talked about us being like "children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive." (Eph 4,14)

Worse, St. Paul also warned us that "there shall be a time when people will not endure sound doctrine, but will heap to themselves teachers according to their own lusts...and will turn away their hearing from the truth, but will turn to fables." (2 Tim 4,3-4)

This, in my view, is what is happening in the phenomenon of the "Da Vinci Code" book and forthcoming film, and the recent issue of the "Gospel of Judas."

The curiosity generated by these things speaks volumes of the kind of Christian life many people are having these days. This is really lamentable, made worse when all sorts of rationalizations are made to prop that curiosity.

Sometimes, I wonder why with all the achievements of modern science and technology, we still appear quite naive with respect to our faith and worldly matters. We cannot seem to outgrow it.

Christ is alive! He is in the Holy Eucharist and in the sacraments and in the Gospels. He is in the Church and also in the world, and in every person, rich or poor. We have to find a way to find him and love him truly with deeds whatever the circumstance!