FAUSTO GOMEZ OP
We are Christians, that is, disciples of Christ, followers of Jesus. Without Christ, “Christian” means nothing, just three letters: I a n, which some love to give them a meaning: I am nothing. Indeed, without Christ, I am nothing!
Let us reflect on following Jesus today. What is the place of Christ in our life? In trying to answer this essential question, we shall face two sub-questions: first – who is Christ? And second – what does it really mean to follow Christ? The first column attempts at answering the first question.
All Christians are called to a progressive union with God through Jesus in the Spirit (Vatican II, LG 40-41). Jacques Ellul writes: “The revelation of Christ is primarily Trinitarian.” Our God is the Christian God. Jesus alone reveals to us who God is – the Trinity: “Creation by the Father, the incarnation by the Son, and transfiguration by the Spirit are the architecture of revelation” (Essential Spiritual Writings).
Jesus is alive today. As Karl Barth says, “We believe that Jesus is our contemporary.” Hence, the radical question of Jesus to his disciples is also addressed to each one of us: “Who am I for you?” (See Mt 16:13-17). We may answer the question in two ways, objectively and subjectively.
Theobjective, orthodox answer is not difficult. The disciples of Jesus generally knew the right answer. Christ is the prophet who denounced evil and injustice and announced the Good News of the Kingdom of God, the Beatitudes. He is the Teacher who taught with authority, the Suffering Servant who died for the sins of humanity.
Jesus is the Son of God and the Son of Mary, the Way and the Truth and the Life, and the Light of the World (Jn 14:6, 8:12, 9:5), the Good Shepherd (Jn 10:11, 14), the Good Samaritan, the Bread of Life (Jn 6:35-48, 51), the vine (Jn 15:5), the resurrection and the life (Jn 11:25). Through the Holy Spirit, we know Jesus: God-Man, a God who is born like us, who smiles, who cries, who works, who gets tired, who has friends, who is the loving face of God, who dies on the Cross and rises up to new glorious life. Jesus Christ is the Crucified and Risen Lord.
The objective answer in itself is cold, external, and bookish perhaps. It may be non-committal, not challenging. We answer objectively when we discuss about the question “Who is Christ?” in a detached, scholarly, scientific, professional manner. We give an objective response when we preach without fire, without personal commitment, when we believers talk about Christ but have not encountered Him personally.
“CHRIST IS THE ANSWER”
What is the question?
We believe that Jesus is looking for our subjective or personal answer. A big poster pasted on the wall of a subway station in New York shouted out to me with its huge red letters under a painting of Jesus: CHRIST IS THE ANSWER! Someone added in small blue letters: What is the question?
Jesus’ question for each one of us Christians is: Who am I to you? Our Christian faith, to be sure, does not mean principally “reciting a creed; it means, knowing a person,” and “showing him” to people. It “does not mean knowing about Christ, it means knowing Christ” (W. Barclay, In Lk 9:18-22 and 10:21-24; In Mt 9:35). Do we really know Him? Are we ready to say, like St. Paul, “I know in whom I have believed” (2 Tim 1:12). This is the continuing task of our Christian lives: to know the Lordin an ever ascending manner (cf. Phil 3:10-11).
For the believers in Him, Christ is the priority of priorities. “Jesus is everything for us: through His death, He is our savior; through His resurrection, He is our hope” (J. Ellul). For a Christian, Jesus is the ultimate meaning of his/her existence.
Our Father keeps telling us: “This is my beloved Son, my Chosen; listen to him” (Lk 9:35; Mk 9:7). “Fix your eyes on him alone,” St. John of the Cross tells us, “For in him [God the Father says] I have revealed all and in him you will find more than you could ever ask for or desire.” Hence, continues the mystic from Fontiveros, “We do not have to seek new visions or revelations; by giving us his Son, his only Word, he has said everything in the one Word.”
Certainly, the subjective or personal answer is grounded and fed by the objective answer. Without the true objective, doctrinal answer, my personal answer may be a wrong or unorthodox answer; it may be “my truth” but not – as it should be – the Truth.
Truly, Christ is the same yesterday, today and always: the total Christ. We believe in the total, complete Christ: the Christ who was born like us, lived, died and rose from the dead. It appears that some among us believe in a partial Christ made according to their wishes: the Santo Niño, the Christ who walked on the sea, the Nazarene, the Risen Christ…We believe truly in the Crucified and Risen Lord, Son of God and Mary; Jesus, God and Man.
Once a person believes in Christ, she or he will inevitably face this question: “What should I do?” (cf. Acts 2:37). Undoubtedly, Christian faith is not a morality but radically an experience of the paschal mystery, that is, an encounter with the Risen Lord who lives. However, Christian faith implies necessarily a morality, a way of being and acting, of being and becoming continually more and more what we are: creatures, “images” and children of God, disciples of Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters of one another – of all!
All the saints point to Christ, the only absolute model of our life. Consequently, we ought to practice his teachings, essentially his fundamental Sermon on the Mount, our Magna Carta: “The Sermon on the Mount is the most faithful portrait of Christ we possess, and by the same token the most perfect life model we could be given” (Servais Pinckaers).
In reality, knowing the Lord entails following him. What does it mean to follow Jesus? In our next column, we shall try to answer this question.
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