How do we live our life with Christ?

THE gospel of Friday of the 4th Week of Easter has that interesting passage where Christ tells in no unclear terms: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (Jn 14,6) 

 What should immediately come to mind is the thought of how we can be with Christ such that he and us can just be one, he in us and we in him, and thus, enabling us to be with our Father God who wants us to be with him, since we are his image and likeness, children of his, sharers of his divine life. 

 It’s a tough challenge, of course, but we are assured by Christ himself that all the means for this purpose have been given to us. If we would just use our Christian faith to the hilt, we know that we are not only given things as means to reach God. We are given Christ himself. 

 Perhaps, the problem we have is that we allow our faith to go in a passive, mute and remote mode. We need to activate it and put it in its loudest and most immediate condition in our life. 

 In this regard, we should realize that we would need to pray, giving it always priority such that all our activities are somehow turned into prayer, even while we are working or resting and going through all sorts of situations and predicaments in life. In other words, that we should make ourselves authentic contemplative souls who not only are aware of Christ’s presence everywhere but also are actively following him. 

 We have to understand that we will always need him, like a child will always need his father, except that in our relation with Christ, we can never outgrow that dependence on him, while a child can outgrow his dependence on his father, and will in fact, after a time, be the one to take care of his father. 

 Not so with us with respect to our dependence on Christ. In fact, the older we get and the more knowledge and experience we gain, the more dependent we ought to be on Christ. And that’s simply because our growth in stature, knowledge and experience will always lead us to more complicated situations that would need more guidance from Christ. 

 We cannot deny that we tend to lose our innocence, our goodness the more knowledge and experience we gain. We tend to fall into pride and vanity, to be self-seeking and self-absorbed the more we progress in life. 

 We have to remember that Christ has always something to say about anything in our life, be it good or bad, a victory or a defeat, a cause for joy or for sadness. Yes, even in the most mundane and technical things, and in the most social and political issues, Christ has something to say. Let’s never think that there is something in our life where Christ is irrelevant or is not needed. 

 It’s important that we be with him always. We may not understand or catch everything that he is showing us, but as long as we are with him, things will just turn out right. As St. Paul would put it: 

 “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8,28)

A call to be a faithful servant

“AMEN, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him….Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” (cfr. Jn 13-16-20) 

 These are words of Christ as narrated in the gospel for Thursday of the 4th Week of Easter that for this year falls on May 12. These words are Christ’s call for us to be his most faithful servant and messengers. 

 We have to understand that only with him and in him can we be so faithful a servant and messenger that anyone who would receive us automatically receive Christ and the one who sent Christ to us, God the Father. 

 As a consequence, we can only be faithful to Christ if we continually look for him and trust in the working of divine providence. This looking for Christ should be like an instinct, a constant behavior of ours. We have to look for him, so we can find him, and in finding him, we can start to love and serve him which is what we are expected to do to be ‘another Christ.’ 

 This has basis on what Christ himself said: “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you…” (Mt 7,7) We need to do our part in a relationship that is actually initiated by Christ himself. He loves us first before we can love him in return. (cfr. 1 Jn 4,19) 

 If we don’t yet have this habit of looking for Christ, then it’s time that we start cultivating it and making it a guiding, directing principle of our daily life. We have to exercise our faith, overcome the usual initial awkwardness that we experience, and continue finding ways and means to look for Christ in every moment of the day, especially in our work, and even in our rest. 

 “Come to me,” “Follow me,” are some of the open invitations Christ is giving us. He continues to issue such invitations. We should not be afraid to go to him and follow him. We have to discover the most wonderful reality that only in Christ can we have our true joy, our genuine peace, our ultimate solution to whatever problem we have. 

 To be faithful servants and messengers of Christ, we just have to be ready for wherever divine providence would take us. We have to be open to it all the time. Even as we make our plans and pursue them truly as our own, we should not forget that nothing in our life is actually outside the providence of God who can adapt himself to us, even in our worst situations and predicaments, and still lead us to himself. 

 The only thing to remember is that God is always around and is actually intervening and directing our life to him. That is part of his omnipotence which he exercises both from all eternity and in time since our creation and all the way to the end of time. 

 We should see to it that whatever we think, say or do, it is Christ who should be the principle, the substance and the end. That’s how true fidelity looks! Christ should the be-all and end-all of everything in our life. He should be the one that others see and hear from us!

Can we truly be “another Christ”?

INCREDIBLE as it may sound, we truly have been created by God to be like him, patterned after his son who became man, Christ, so that we would have “the way, the truth and the life” to attain our ultimate goal of sharing the very life of God. 

 That’s how God wants us to be and we, on our part, should also want it for ourselves. And the means to attain that goal have been given to us abundantly. That, in fact, is the gist of the readings of these days of Easter where Christ acts as if trying his best to convince us that we should not only go to him but rather to be like him. 

 “Whoever believes in me believes not only in me but also in the one who sent me, and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me,” he said. “I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.” (Jn 12,44-46) 

 We need to realize that we are meant to assume the identity of Christ. And that is not a gratuitous, baseless assertion, much less, a fiction or a fantasy. It is founded on a fundamental truth of our faith that we have been created by God in his own image and likeness. 

 And this truth of faith has been vividly shown to us, since it is acted out in the whole history and economy of salvation that culminated in Christ offering his life and his very own self as the Bread of Life so we can have the eternal life with him, and so that he and us can be one even while we are still on earth, though in an ongoing and not in definitive state yet. 

 But we have to arrive at that point where we can make St. Paul’s words as our own too: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.” (Gal 2,20) 

 We just have to learn to set aside whatever difficulty or awkwardness we may have in dealing with this basic truth of faith about ourselves. We have to try our best to know Christ and to adapt his very own mind and will, his own ways, behavior and reactions to whatever situation we may find ourselves in. 

 What is also clear is that Christ is actually already living with us. He is in us as the pattern and perfecter of our humanity, and the savior of our damaged humanity. We just have to learn to live with Christ. He is never far or indifferent to us. Even in our miserable and wounded condition, he continues to be with us, helping us with greater solicitude. It’s rather us who tend to ignore and contradict him. 

 And Christ gave us a concrete way of how we can be with him, or how he and us can be one. And that is simply to follow the new commandment that he gave us: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another, that as I have loved you, you also love one another.” (Jn 13,34) It is that simple, albeit also quite challenging. 

 But with God’s grace, we can hack it. We just have to persist in following that commandment no matter what it takes!