Saturday, April 14, 2012

The Risen Life: Easter Week Two, April 15 - 21, 2012

We “dumb down” the mystery of our Baptism, and the mystery of Christianity itself, when we say we are called to live “a good life,” or even — with the meaning the words have for us — a “good Christian life.”

We are called to live the “risen life.”

Meaning what?

Meaning we can’t even begin to live an authentic Christian life, or even begin to understand what Christianity is, unless the way we live is mystifying, both to ourselves and others. A life that doesn’t make sense by normal human standards. A life that “normal” members of society would not accept for themselves, desire for their children, or be comfortable with in us. Does that sound ridiculous?

How about “life on the level of God”? The “life of Jesus himself”? A life we can only explain by saying what St. Paul said: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”

Are you comfortable saying that? Is that your normal way of thinking about yourself? Of describing your daily life?

If I am authentically Christian, my life can only be understood or described as a risen life. A life that Jesus Christ himself, risen from the dead, is living in my body. Which is his body; his real body. Living with me, in me and through me. Speaking with me, in me and through me. In everything I do, Jesus acting with me, in me and through me.

A life in partnership. A life of two-in-one. A life I am never living alone, in which I am never acting by myself. St. Paul challenges each one of us: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?”

“To me,” he says, “living is Christ.” Everything this world has to offer is so unimportant for Paul that he adds, “and dying is gain.”

Does this sound extreme? Radical? Far out? If it does, what more proof do you want that the Christianity we were taught was simply false? Its mystery “dumbed down.” Its demands watered down. Its differentness played down. Its rewards relegated to an unreal and remote “hereafter.” A “marked down” Christianity.

All we can hope to do right now is raise a question. A question that should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” If Christianity is so undemanding, if Christianity is compatible with a “normal” life in this world, why did Paul say: "I have been crucified with Christ?” And that, for all of us, “our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved?”

If we have not been “crucified” with Christ, how can we say we have “risen” with him? What are we talking about?

Can we just raise the question? Just think about it?

Paul said, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Do we think he was just talking about sex!

Yes, we are conditioned to think that way. But for Paul — and Jesus — the “flesh” was much more about the really serious sins — desire for riches, prestige and power, desires taken for granted in society and even in the Church — than about the weakness and immaturity of sexual gratification. Preoccupation with sexual sin is deceptive: it distracts us from looking at the sins that are most “deadly.” The lethal ones. Position, prestige, power.

Jesus described the life he offers as being of such value, that those who appreciate it will “sell all they have” to acquire it.

Have you done that? Are we doing that? Were we taught to do that?

Think about it. Can we be living the “risen life” if we have not died? Died to everything in this world?

Think about it. And tune in to "next week's thrilling episode" in the "New Evangelization."


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