First of all, we see Him in other people, at first perhaps in our Christian friends and Christian community. That’s the importance of Church. We reflect Jesus to each other; we share with each other what we have experienced of Jesus. We begin to build up a picture that this isn’t just my little Jesus who I’ve got in my pocket, but that this personal relationship with Jesus is a community relationship too. This might be a little bit challenging to us because we tend to be possessive about love. We want to be loved exclusively. We think that if anyone loves us, then they shouldn’t love anyone else. And if they love me and somebody else, that means they’re not giving me all their love. So we get jealous and possessive. But as we grow up, we learn what love means. The nature of love is that it is completely personal. We can be loved completely and uniquely, but not exclusively.
So we begin to see that this love we have with Jesus is also a cosmic thing, and it isn’t restricted to the church either. We can’t be possessive about Jesus and say that He only works in the Church. He works in different ways in different places. We begin to recognize that the Holy Spirit doesn’t work just in the Church or among Christians.
In other words, our hearts and minds begin to expand. We begin to grow. Usually the heart grows first and the mind has to stretch afterwards. This is what we are facing today; a great challenge to the Church as we enter into dialogue with other religions. This is a new, historical moment because Christians have never been in this kind of relationship with other religions before.
Most of us can remember the days when we used to think that if you weren’t Christian you were damned, more or less. Maybe this did not make total sense to people, but it was the mind-set of the time.
That is no longer the teaching of the Church. The Church, according to the 2nd Vatican Council, rejects nothing that is true and holy in other religions. The present Pope has urged Christians to enter into dialogue, and deep spiritual dialogue, with other faiths. But that poses lots of questions. What is the uniqueness of Jesus? Is Jesus the only way to salvation? These are the questions that we will now have to listen to. We have to work out new theological language, new ways of thinking. Our encounter with the religions of the East do not threaten our Christian faith, but it challenges us to grow and to find new ways of expressing the mystery of Christ. This is the great new era we’re moving into. This is where the cosmic Christ begins to emerge.
Also, in the past, this cosmic Christ was often thought of as an emperor sitting on his throne, reducing everybody else, putting everybody else down. But this is not the meaning of the cosmic Christ. The Cosmic Christ is not an imperialist Christ. But often on the past, Christianity became an imperialist religion; not very true to the teaching and humility of Jesus.
The cosmic Christ does not mean an emperor. The cosmic Christ means as St Paul says in Cor. , “The secret is this: Christ within you, the hope of your glory to come.” The cosmic Christ is the inner Christ, recognized as being present in everyone else as well as yourself. When I see the Christ in me, in you, then I’m beginning to see the cosmic Christ.
In the Upanishads, there’s a beautiful description of the heart, the symbol of the inner temple. And it says:
“At the centre of the castle of Brahman, the human body, is
the heart; and in the deepest place of the heart, there is a
flame, the size of a thumb; and in that tiny space, are all the
worlds, the whole universe, everything that is.”
So the Christ who dwells in us, in the deepest part of our
being, is our way into communion with everything that is; with
everyone and everything.
The Cosmic Christ - Fr. Laurence Freeman Spiritual Director for World Community of Christian Meditation
No comments:
Post a Comment