Who is Christ?

One may begin on this Road which I call “the spiritual life” and it is the Road which all Creation seeks out. It is the Road from which all roads have branched off. Aquinas once wrote “gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit..” which roughly translates to “grace does not take away nature but perfects it”. God,  in His first distribution of Grace, created Creation. By Grace we were created and by grace we are sustained. In our "Valley of Tears", nearly a hundred years prior to Brennan Manning’s Ragamuffin Gospel, the Little Flower, St. Therese of Lisieux had proclaimed, “All is Grace”. That statement should it be explicated in its fullness would require a Fifth Gospel, which would require a statement as that of St. John’s, “But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.”. Grace is unfathomably rich. If we truly viewed the world and our lives as they ought to be seen we would be bowled over. 

The same description has already been laid out in Sacred Scripture regarding the question “Who is Christ?” The Old and New Testaments are that answer. The Church, One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, its Communion of Saints and Sinners are that answer. The Universe in all its breadth and depth, knowability and unknowability, its beauty and grandeur, its specificity and generality are that answer. 

Rahner was not completely in the wrong to suggest that all Creation was reaching for Jesus’ Incarnation, that “in the fullness of time”, because in our very “Fact of Being” as human beings we long for another Human Being, one close and yet distant to save us from our very selves. That Person is Jesus Christ and His is the Love of which St. Benedict wrote: “Prefer nothing to the Love of Christ”. Nothing. Absolutely Nothing. Taken literally you could suggest that it means just that, to prefer a void as opposed to the Love of Christ. Benedict was writing to sane people at the End of an age, the Fall of the Roman Empire. We in fact are the ones who are insane. We are so bias to the truth which conservative thinkers have labeled “objective” that we have objectified it and have enslaved the truth as “objects” from our subjective mind. On the contrary liberal thinkers have deemed truth malleable to our mental constructs. There is no truth. The Truth is relative. Rather, the subject is a servant of the Truth and if he or she seeks to find it must render an account worthy of its name. Benedict’s will was that we find the source of that Truth and hang onto it and leave all else behind. That nothing else is worth living for and that Truth is Jesus Christ. 

But the question remains: “Who is Christ?” and that Question is the question that has lingered on through the ages and the one we by grace are able to ask with a fides quaerens intellectum (Faith seeking out Understanding). As the Faith is propagated best in a one-to-one relationship I suggest that if you are asking the same question, that you ask the source of the question and the answer to that question, Jesus Christ. So if you find yourself asking “Who is Christ?" Then trust me you already have the seed of Faith in your heart. Perhaps you deny it but it is true. It is by Christ’s Grace that we ask the question. 

Jesus Christ, who are you, Lord? Are you just an intellectual knowledge or are you a Person whom I can get to know? Why do you want me to know you? Where can I find you? If you are a Person, where can I get to know you? How can I spend time with you? I hope that you truly are the answer to all my questions. And I believe that we will find that he is.