A Lenten meditation : Who is Christ for you and for me?

 Let us begin by proclaiming Mt 16:13-15.

 Jesus asked his disciples: “Who am I for you?”  Jesus is alive today and He is asking you and me: “Who am I for you.” 

“Who am I for you?” Jesus questions you and me. How do we answer this question? We may answer it in two ways, objectively and subjectively. The objective answer is easy. We all know it well. We answer: “You are the Son of God and the Son of Mary, our Savior, our Redeemer, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the Light. You are the Good Shepherd, the Good Samaritan, the Santo Niño, Eucharistic Bread and Wine, the Sacred Heart, the Liberator of the oppressed… You are the Prophet who denounces evil and injustice and announces the Good News of the Kingdom, the Beatitudes.” Jesus, “You are the Teacher, the one who teaches with authority.”

We may give an objective answer when we study or discuss the question “Who is Christ?” in a detached, scholarly, scientific, professional manner.  We may give an objective response when we preach without fire, when we live without personal commitment. Hopefully, we do not answer the question in an unscientific, a-historical, fundamentalist or biased manner. Generally, the objective answer in itself is cold, external, perhaps non-committal at all.

I believe that Jesus is looking for our subjective and personal answer, the answer that commits us to Him, the answer that comes not mainly from books, but from our personal life: from a loving encounter with the Lord who lives in us. After all, Christianity does not mean reciting a creed: it means, “Knowing a person” (W. Barclay). St. Paul preached: “I know whom I have believed” (2 Tim 1:12): the Suffering Servant, the Crucified and Risen Lord!

Who is Christ for me? For Peter – and for us -, He is the Christ, the Son of the living God (Mt 16:16). For John – and for us -, Jesus is the Son of God (I Jn 5:10). Who is Christ for me? Do I really know him? Not just with my reason illumined by faith, but, above all, through my love for him: “It is only with the heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye” (The Little Prince).This is the task of our Christian lives:  to know the Lord! (Cf. Phil 3:12-14). Integral knowledge, biblical knowledge implies “a personal encounter with him, intimate experience, loyalty, love, adherence to the person, doing his will” (Francisco M. López Melús).

In reality, knowing Jesus means following him. The mystery of Christ may be partly and progressively unveiled when we follow Him – always in a deeper and deeper way. This is what true faith is all about: the following of Christ.

Following Christ means to go after Him, to imitate his life and virtues, to identify with him, to see Him in the community prayer of the Church, in the Sacraments, in the Word of God, in loving the neighbor, particularly the needy, and in personal contemplative prayer. We feel his presence also in our work of mission and in those we try to evangelize. Following Jesus entails radically to experience the paschal mystery (“I have seen the Lord”), to experience, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, filiation and fraternity, and, therefore, to become and behave as adopted children of God, and brothers/sisters of one another in Christ.

Let me tell you an old story: the story of a poor old man. To be able to eat one meal a day, he had sold, little by little, everything he had, except a violin he loved. A day came when it was time to sell it. So the old man went to an auction. The auctioneer began cautiously with 20 US dollars. After a while, it only reached 50 dollars. But then, the auctioneer asked if anyone in the audience knew how to play the violin. One man came forward. After dusting off the violin and tuning it, he began to play beautiful songs: “Those were the days, my friend,” The Sounds of Silence, “De la saeta al cantar”…, the song of joy of the 9th Symphony of Beethoven…The auction resumed and the bidding of the violin continued with 50 dollars. The violin was sold finally for 800 dollars. The neighbors of the old man – other poor people – asked him: “How much did they give you for your old and dusty violin?” He answered: “800 dollars!” They retorted: “How can that be?” The old man said: “The hand of the master touched it.”

Jesus is our only Master, our only Word, our only Way. Let Him touch us! All believers in Jesus, in a particular way religious men and women are asked by their faith in him to have a passionate love for Jesus, to be his zealous heralds, and his fascinating witnesses (cf. John Paul II, VC, nos.109, 81, and 93).

Like the prophet Jeremiah was seduced by God, let Jesus seduce us Jeremiah said then: “You seduced me, Lord, and I let myself be seduced” (see Jr 20:7). You and I say now: “You seduced us Jesus, and we let ourselves be seduced by You.” However, Lord, “We continue to be sinners in need of your forgiveness and grace.

In this Lenten Communitarian Penitential Rite, we pray: “Dear Jesus, you are our Savior and Redeemer, our brother and friend! We ask You humbly: please forgive us our sins, refresh our hearts, and renew our lives. Amen.”

         

                                     

 FR. FAUSTO GOMEZ, O.P.

                                    St. Dominic’s Priory

“Communitarian Penitential Rite”

  March 30, 2012