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March 5

A Vision of the Christ

Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, is central to the Christian faith. Truly God, he is also truly one of us and took upon himself the sin and suffering of all humanity.

The mystery of God is not cleared up or resolved in the person of Jesus Christ. It is only deepened. For he too is bathed in mystery as the eternal Son of the Father, who in time becomes one of us and shows us the love of the Father in his life, death, and resurrection.

The early church father St. Ignatius puts this mystery in dialectical terms. He writes, “There is only one physician, who is both flesh and spirit, born and unborn, God in man, true life in death, both from Mary and God, first subject to suffering and then beyond it, Jesus Christ our Lord.”64 To talk about Christ in this way only deepens the mystery of the Savior of the world.

While in our modern world we may be enamored with rational

clarity and precision, the Christian faith is as much an invitation to

mystery as it is a passion for a faith seeking understanding.

Jesus of Nazareth so clearly portrayed in the Gospel narratives, and further revealed in the Pauline and Johannine reflections, is a man of

mystery as much as he is the healer and redeemer of humanity. Thus we are invited to embrace him in faith in his radical otherness as well as in our supposed familiarity.

Thought

Jesus is the God-man. This is already profoundly paradoxical. Thus Christ is both other and one of us.