Saturday, April 10, 2010

On being a part of it all…

Henceforward, I hope your belief can be in the Cosmic Christ.  We believe in Jesus Christ.  Did anyone ever tell you those are two distinct faith affirmations?  To believe in Jesus is to trust and love the man who walked on this earth.  To believe in Christ is to include absolutely everything in creation, and most especially our own self, which is the receiver station that HAS to get it right.

If we can receive it within us and believe that we are simultaneously son of God and son of earth, daughter of heaven and daughter of this world, and they don’t cancel one another out, we’ll fall in love with Jesus like never before.  Because we’ll realize that he did human incarnation first; he trusted this mystery first—and was kind enough to include us in the process! (Read Ephesians 1:3-14 and hear it perhaps for the first time!)

That’s what Paul means when he says in various places that Jesus is the "first of many brothers and sisters.”  He is leading “the great triumphal parade.”  He is at the beginning of a universal procession.  But WE’RE the procession!

Richard Rohr, adapted from The Cosmic Christ

We so need to hear this. Well, I do anyway. How can we pray unless we realise this kinship with all creation?—a kinship which exists in and through the living Christ, through whom all things came into being (John 1.3) and in whom all things coinhere (Colossians 1.17). We are not islands, as John Dunne realised: our lives are interwoven in Christ with all that is—and it is in Christ that our prayer encompasses, in his mercy, whether we realise it or not, all that is.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me (and on all that has been made), a sinner…

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