{"id":17562,"date":"2018-12-03T09:37:43","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T14:37:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17562"},"modified":"2018-12-03T09:43:46","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T14:43:46","slug":"who-is-christ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=17562","title":{"rendered":"Who Is Christ"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/91KliTa1ksY\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Who Is Christ<\/strong><br \/>\nSunday, December 2, 2018<br \/>\nFirst Sunday of Advent<\/p>\n<p>What if we\u2019ve missed the point of who Christ is, what Christ is, and where Christ is? I believe that a Christian is simply one who has learned to see Christ everywhere. Understanding the Universal or Cosmic Christ can change the way we relate to creation, to other religions, to other people, to ourselves, and to God. Knowing and experiencing this Christ can bring about a major shift in consciousness. Like Saul\u2019s experience on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9), we won\u2019t be the same after encountering the Risen Christ.<\/p>\n<p>The Universal Christ is present in both Scripture and Tradition, and the concept has been understood by many mystics, though not as a focus of mainline Christianity. (See John 1:1-5, Colossians 1:15-20, Ephesians 1:9-12 if you think this is some new idea.) We just didn\u2019t have the eyes to see it.<\/p>\n<p>The Universal Christ is Divine Presence pervading all of creation since the very beginning. My father Francis of Assisi (1181\u20131226) intuited this presence and lived his life in awareness of it. Later, John Duns Scotus (1266\u20131308) put this intuition into philosophical form. For Duns Scotus, the Christ Mystery was the blueprint of reality from the very start (John 1:1). Teilhard de Chardin (1881\u20131955) brought this insight into our modern world.<\/p>\n<p>God\u2019s first \u201cidea\u201d was to become manifest\u2014to pour out divine, infinite love into finite, visible forms. The \u201cBig Bang\u201d is now our scientific name for that first idea; and \u201cChrist\u201d is our Christian theological name. Both are about love and beauty exploding outward in all directions. Creation is indeed the Body of God!<\/p>\n<p>In Jesus, this eternal omnipresence had a precise, concrete, and personal referent. God\u2019s presence became more obvious and believable in the world. The formless took on form in someone we could \u201chear, see, and touch\u201d (1 John 1:1), making God easier to love.<\/p>\n<p>But it seems we so fell in love with this personal interface in Jesus that we forgot about the eternal Christ, the Body of God, which is all of creation, which is really the \u201cFirst Bible.\u201d Jesus and Christ are not exactly the same. In the early Christian era, only a few Eastern Fathers (such as Origen of Alexandria and Maximus the Confessor) noticed that the Christ was clearly historically older, larger, and different than Jesus himself. They mystically saw that Jesus is the union of human and divine in space and time; Christ is the eternal union of matter and Spirit from the beginning of time.<\/p>\n<p>When we believe in Jesus Christ, we\u2019re believing in something much bigger than the historical incarnation that we call Jesus. Jesus is the visible map. The entire sweep of the meaning of the Anointed One, the Christ, includes us and includes all of creation since the beginning of time (see Romans 1:20). This Advent, let us wait in anticipation for the eternally coming Christ.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;-<\/p>\n<p><strong>From the Beginning of Time<\/strong><br \/>\nMonday, December 3, 2018<\/p>\n<p>Christ is the radiant light of God\u2019s glory and the perfect copy of God\u2019s nature, sustaining the universe by God\u2019s powerful command. \u2014Hebrews 1:3, Jerusalem Bible<\/p>\n<p>Christ is not Jesus\u2019 last name. The word Christ is a title, meaning the Anointed One, which many Christians so consistently applied to Jesus that to us it became like a name. But a study of Scripture, Tradition, and the experience of many mystics reveals a much larger, broader, and deeper meaning to \u201cthe Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The above passage from Hebrews says that Christ \u201csustains the universe.\u201d The concept of Christ can be used to describe reality in an archetypal, symbolic, and profound way. But it names the shape of the universe before it names the individual who typifies that shape, the one we call Jesus Christ. All of creation first holds God\u2019s anointing (\u201cbeloved\u201d status), and then Jesus brings the message home in a personal way over thirteen billion years later!<\/p>\n<p>This is a different way of thinking for so many Christians. The three synoptic Gospels are largely talking about Jesus, the historical figure who healed and taught and lived in human history. John\u2019s Gospel presents the trans-historical \u201cChrist\u201d (which is why so very few stories in John coincide with Matthew, Mark, and Luke). This Christ frequently makes universal \u201cI AM\u201d statements and claims (see John 6:35, 48; 8:12, 24, 58; 10:9, 11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1), mirroring the unspeakable name of the Holy One (Exodus 3:14).<\/p>\n<p>Many people don\u2019t realize that the Apostle Paul never met the historical Jesus and hardly ever quotes Jesus directly. In almost all of Paul\u2019s preaching and writing, he refers to the Eternal Christ Mystery or the Risen Christ rather than Jesus of Nazareth before his death and resurrection. The Risen Christ is the only Jesus that Paul ever knew! This makes Paul a fitting mediator for the rest of us, since the Omnipresent Risen Christ is the only Jesus we will ever know as well (see 2 Corinthians 5:16-17).<\/p>\n<p>Jesus\u2019 historical transformation (\u201cresurrected flesh\u201d) allows us to more easily experience the Presence that has always been available since the beginning of time, a Presence unlimited by space or time, the promise and \u201cguarantee\u201d of our own transformation (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-58). In Jesus, the Timeless Christ became time bound so we could enjoy the personal divine gaze (see 1 John 1-2).<\/p>\n<p>Whenever the material and the spiritual coincide, there is the Christ. Jesus fully accepted that human-divine identity and walked it into history. Henceforth, the Christ \u201ccomes again\u201d whenever we are able to see the spiritual and the material coexisting, in any moment, in any event, and in any person. All matter reveals Spirit, and Spirit needs matter to \u201cshow itself\u201d! I believe \u201cthe Second Coming of Christ\u201d happens whenever and wherever we allow this to be utterly true for us. This is how God continually breaks into history\u2014even before the first homo sapiens stood in awe and wonder, gazing at the stars.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/PastedGraphic-5-500x243.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"243\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-17563\" srcset=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/PastedGraphic-5-500x243.png 500w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/PastedGraphic-5-300x146.png 300w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/PastedGraphic-5-768x374.png 768w, http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/PastedGraphic-5.png 881w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who Is Christ Sunday, December 2, 2018 First Sunday of Advent What if we\u2019ve missed the point of who Christ is, what Christ is, and where Christ is? I believe that a Christian is simply one who has learned to see Christ everywhere. Understanding the Universal or Cosmic Christ can change the way we relate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17562"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17562"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17566,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17562\/revisions\/17566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}