Monday, April 20, 2015

Christian Life is "Real Life"

The rest of the world often views Christianity as a collection of external rules that more or less interfere with real life, that is, with the part of life that interests and engages me as a person.

What a grim business! No wonder people are not attracted to it.

But how easy it can be to allow this kind of moralism to become my own view of Christianity. I must remember that Christianity is a new life, a supernatural life, a life of communion with God.

Through baptism, I have been given a participation in the Divine life, and through grace this life grows within me and transforms me.

God gives Himself to me; He draws me into a personal relationship with Himself; He leads me to my destiny which is to share forever in His glory, to behold and to love forever the One who is the fullness of all goodness, to belong to Him forever.

Eternal glory has already begun, secretly, in the very heart of this ordinary life, because Jesus has embraced all human life and defined it according to the measure of His love. Through Jesus and in the Holy Spirit, the Father pours out this love in the depths of my heart, empowering me to exist and act in a new way.

God dwells in me, engendering within me a new life through the death and resurrection of Jesus. He calls me to cooperate with His extraordinary, transforming grace right now, whether I am praying or eating chicken, listening to a friend or watching a baseball game, teaching Josefina about the Eucharist or drawing doodles with her.

The Risen Jesus is shaping my whole humanity: my eating and drinking, waking and sleeping, living and dying.

Christianity is not external to the real concerns of my life. Rather, it illuminates them and opens me up to their true meaning.