Tuesday, August 16, 2011

A Oneness Created by a Giving of One's Self

Šĕmaʿ Yisĕrāʾel Ădōnāy Ĕlōhênû Ădōnāy eḥād.  Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one (Deuteronomy 6:4). The One, the Holy One, the object of this sacred text is the Creator of the entire  universe according to the story in Genesis.  When it  says that God made us in his image and likeness (Genesis 1:27) we had a share in that attribute, that oneness with God that was paradise.  It was fractured by sinfulness  only to be regained in that new covenant of  Jesus, the Christ.  This covenant is a consecrated, physical, "bodily" covenant.   Christ says, Take and eat,  this is my body, which will be given up for you and for all that sins might be forgiven. Do this in memory of me.  In receiving the body of Jesus into their bodies Christians pledge to give their bodies in chastity, poverty and obedience to the Church's spouse who is one with his Father.  This is the oneness spoken of in the Shema Israel.  We call the Church  "catholic" which denotes the universal oneness of God in the requited love of His kingdom within and among us. 

Friday, August 5, 2011

Further reflections on the body given



The revelation of God in Jesus Christ is a very bodily revelation. Jesus, conceived by the Holy Spirit over two millenia ago, is the revelation of God. In his words and what he did, and in his very bodily presence among us, Christ revealed God and God's will for us.  “For this I came into the world, to bear witness to the Truth,”   he told Pilot. 

Jesus, the revelation of God, is also, the kingdom of God -- our sharing in God's life. The effect of the revelation of God on those who live their faith in him, is to bring about the kingdom within them and among them-- a sharing in the very life of God (what Catholics have traditionally called "sanctifying grace") in the Mystical Body of Christ. This body conceived, as was the  physical body and soul of Christ of Nazareth, by the Holy Spirit -- IS  the kingdom of the God who shares his very life with those who give their life to him.  "Those who seek to save their life, will lose it, but those who lose their life for my sake will have eternal life."