You can only become human His way; never so long as you make your humanity the ultimate goal; only by losing our lives is life given to us. Come now to Christ giving to you. Come with all your hopes and aspirations, your piecemeal humanity, your uncertainties and your fears, your sin. Come to be totally embraced in His forgiveness, His accepting and enlivening you, so that means may never be mistaken for ends, becoming idols that enslave and destroy. Come to be made free and to receive the resources for living out your lives as Christ's men and women in the world. "If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed." -- Dr. Norman Nagel, CTM, XLII, No. 8, p. 552.
"piecemeal humanity" implies that we
ReplyDeleteare patched together rather than a
new person in Christ by virtue of our
Baptism and the power of the Holy
Spirit.
I put it in the context of him saying (I've heard it more than once): None of us know what it is to be fully human yet. He alone knows. He alone is.
ReplyDeleteSo, rather in the sense of: "He's not done with any of us yet."
"The glory of God is the human person fully alive" - St. Iraneus
ReplyDeleteEnslaved by sin we struggle to fulfill our humanity. The persons of the Holy Trinity love eachother perfectly; sin poisons every relationship we have with eachother.
Our incarnate Lord is the very glory of God: He is the human person fully alive!
By His death and resurrection we are swept into the life of our Holy God. God Himself dashes our old man to pieces and has created a new man, a man no longer turned in on himself.
Christ is the first fruits of those who will rise again to everlasting life - then we, too, will live a fulfilled humanity!