 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Preface: "Christ my brother" Many
Catholics and Christians generally are amazed and surprised when I stress
that Christ is not only Our Lord and Saviour but also our brother by
reason of the incarnation when he assumed our flesh and blood. Such
an inter-personal relationship brings us all so much closer to Christ
in the sacraments and in our prayer life, but without it, our religious
life can be rather routine and devoid of human warmth. I have kept the
reflections on Christ brief as many people today do not read long books
or long articles. Christ was the greatest communicator of all times
and master of the brief, simple statement in his preaching and parables.
Simple, direct preaching, in the language of our times, on the true
humanity and brotherhood of Christ, is surely the most urgent need of
our critical age, to satisfy the spiritual hunger of this generation,
which deep down, and often without realising, yearns for the spiritual
values which only Christ can satisfy. More than fifteen hundred years
ago St Augustine said it so well: 'You have made us for yourself, 0
Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in you'. As Christians,
we are never alone. Sixty years ago the famous German theologian, Fr
Karl Adam, wrote a book, Christ My Brother, highlighting our oneness
with Christ: The
Christian never toils and suffers and dies alone; that word is absent
from his vocabulary. Christianity is a living and dying in full fellowship
with Christ and his members. Because we are thus, through Christ our
brother, drawn out of our isolation and raised to newness of life in
him, therefore all that Christ ... has done for us, from birth to death,
belongs truly and really to us. All is ours; his teaching, his miracles,
his hunger, his thirst and sorrow and passion and death. The whole vast
work which the Incarnate Word achieved from Bethlehem to Calvary ...
belongs in the fullest sense to us Christians. 'The Passion of Christ,'
says St Thomas Aquinas, 'belongs to us as really as though we ourselves
had suffered it. The
uniqueness and depth of Christ's love is so eloquently expressed in
this inspired passage from Cardinal Martini's recent book, Communicating
Christ to the World, There
must be Someone whose love we cannot doubt, who makes an undeniable
gesture of love. That Someone is Jesus on the Cross, All human relationships
need to be invaded by that selflessness that comes in abundance from
on high, from the mystery of the gracious love of God, from the mystery
of Jesus' death for us, suffered for pure love and for no other motive,
from the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus
on the Cross! There he gave all his blood to the very last drop, not
just to revive one patient for the remainder of a declining life - but
to revivify all mankind forever! The
'oneness' with Christ, this most essential personal encounter with Christ,
so essential to give new life and vitality to our spiritual lives, is
being highlighted by so many Church leaders in recent times. The
realisation that many Catholics are gravely impoverished in their faith
by a lack of personal relationship with and loving knowledge of Christ
is now frequently being admitted by Church leaders. When addressing
the need for a new evangelisation of Europe, Cardinal Daneels of Belgium
commented on the tendency to speak of the values of Christianity but
to overlook the living person of Christ: Many of our faithful ... are
strongly attached to the values of the Gospel ... especially justice,
peace, solidarity... But this cult of values is separated from the cult
of the living person of Christ: from prayer ... and sacramental practice...
Such a Christianity, reduced to an ethic, cannot subsist for long. Cardinal
Arinze of Nigeria has stressed the 'supreme value of knowing Jesus Christ...
Evangelisation aims at helping the individual to know Jesus Christ personally...
He should know the Son of God made man personally as the Person whom
he meets in faith, hope and love.' Cardinal
Ratzinger constantly stresses the encounter with the living God as the
heart of our faith and of the Church's life: 'The Christian faith is,
in essence, an encounter with the living God'. Avery
Dulles SJ, the American theologian, has pointed out: 'Too many Catholics
of our day seem never to have encountered Christ. They knew a certain
amount about him from the teaching of the Church but they lack direct
personal familiarity... The first and highest priority is for the Church
to proclaim the good news concerning Jesus Christ as a joyful message
to all the world'. Jesus
Christ, fully divine and fully human, our saviour, our brother, 'like
us in everything, sin alone excepted' (St Paul), the living Christ always
with us in deepest love and understanding - there surely is the good
news. May the reflections of this modest book lead us all ever closer
to him. |
Available from all good book stores throughout Australia for $6.95 Used with permission from St Paul's Publishing © 1999 |
