Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, but we are not. We, at least currently, find ourselves to be temporal beings, always changing, with who and what we have become constantly changing with the flow of time. As we change, our relationships with others, including Christ, will change. This does not mean Christ changes, for he does not, but how we approach Christ, how we relate to Christ, what we apprehend of him, what, indeed, we are capable of receiving from Christ will change, and with each change, our experience of Christ changes. This is why it will often seem Christ is changing, not because he is, but because we are; for Christ, all time and space is one, and he interacts with and encounters all that happens in time and space in one eternal interaction with creation, an interaction which we only experience in temporal-spatial parts.
Hopefully, over time, our relationship with Christ, with God, will become better and better; that is, we should hope that we will become more and more the person God intends us to be, the person Christ knows in eternity. For that to happen, we must make sure the change which happens in each and every moment is one of growth instead of decline. The requires us to open ourselves to the work of grace, the work of Christ, in our lives, so that with each acceptance of grace, we will find Christ not only at work with us, making us better, we will see him liberating us from the pain and destruction which sin has caused us (and the world around us). If we unite ourselves to Christ and his work, we will begin to see the fruits of that transforming power in our lives, and in the world at large, allowing us to look to the future with hope that the work which has begun will come to its completion, as James Cones wisely tells us:
The meaning of Jesus Christ for us today is not limited to his past and present existence. Jesus Christ is who he will be. He is not only the Crucified and Risen One but also the Lord of the future who is coming again to fully consummate the liberation already happening in our present.[1]
Just as we should not let ourselves become stuck by looking to the past, trying to live in it, or in the present, trying to hold onto the present moment as if we can make it eternal, that is, just as we should work with Christ to make for a better future, we must also not only look to the future, getting so lost in our hope we forget to do our part to help bring about that future. Similarly, we must make time to explore the past, to learn its lessons, so that we do not have to repeat its mistakes. We must bring the past, present, and future together as one, realizing that we can do so because they are one in Christ. We are to distinguish all three due to our temporal existence, but we must remember they are one, and if we do not, we, personally as well as communally, we likely will not be able to do that which God wants us to do: “The Church is alive, and its life is equally endangered if one cuts the roots of the past or if one refuses to recognize the responsibilities of the present.” [2]
We are to embrace life, to live in it, to enjoy the good which we have been given, doing so with appropriate consideration to the future so that we do what we can to make it better. We are to trust in Christ, trust that if we work together with Christ, following what Christ has shown us to do, following the way of love, we will be given the grace we need to promote positive change. We are to use our hope concerning the liberating work of Christ to sustain us when we find things difficult for us, and we are to do that by looking to the consummation of that work in the eschaton, where, in the eschatological kingdom of God, the liberation from sin will be complete. Christ surrounds us with various graces, various ways we can join in with his liberating work; each grace has its way of working for our good, and through us, for the good of the whole world. Thus, if we follow Christ, and the way of love which he has shown us, will find our temporal, changeable nature, allows for our personal improvement, and the more we change for the better, the more we will begin to know our true nature, our true character, our true persona:
We are always in the process of becoming more and more our true selves in God’s creative Word and His Spirit of love. Our nature can never be outside of God’s loving activities. Grace is God’s primary and constant presence in His creative activities in our lives, in our history. These activities cannot be separated from His nature as love.[3]
The way of love includes sharing that grace we have been given; the more we do so, the more we will find it flows into and then through us, but the more we try to subvert that flow by keeping all the graces to ourselves, the more we will find that our selfishness will have slowly undermining our connection to grace, until, at last, we will be so caught up by our narcissism, we will find our connection to grace will become so marginal, it will seem as if it is not there at all. To understand this, all we need to do is visualize what happens in connection between a human hand and sand: an open hand, with the palm face up will find it will be able to hold more sand than a hand which tries to seize it and hold it all in unto itself by becoming a closed fist.
Let us then engage God in accordance to the modality of being we find ourselves in; let us work with Christ, being not only open to grace in our lives, but being open to becoming a vessel of grace which shares grace with the world around us. Let us develop ourselves, becoming the person Christ intends us to be.
[1] James H. Cone, God Of The Oppressed (New York: Seabury Press 1975), 126.
[2] John Meyendorff, Vision of Unity (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987). 44.
[3] George Maloney, SJ, God’s Exploding Love (New York: Alba House. 1987), 125-6.
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