A third fact separating Him from all others is this: every other person ever came into this world came into it to live. He came into it to die. Death was a stumbling block to Socrates - it interrupted his teaching. But to Christ, death was the goal and fulfillment of His life, the gold He was seeking. Few of His words or actions are intelligible without reference to His Cross. He presented Himself as a Savior rather than merely as a Teacher. It meant nothing to teach men to be good unless He also gave them the power to be good, after rescuing them from the frustration of guilt.
The story of every human life begins with birth and end with death. In the Person of Christ, however, it was His death that was first and His life that was last. The Scripture describes Him as "the Lamb slain as it were, from the beginning of the world." He was slain in intention by the first sin and rebellion against God. It was not so much that His birth cast a shadow on His Life and thus led to His death; it was rather that the Cross was first, and cast its shadow back to His birth. He has been the only life in the world that was ever lived backward. As the flower in the crannied wall tells the poet of nature, and as the atom is the miniature of the solar system, so too, His birth tells the mystery of the gibbet. He went from the known to the known, from the reason of His coming manifested by His name "Jesus" or Savior" to the fulfillment of His coming, namely, His death on the Cross.
John gives us His eternal prehistory; Matthew, His temporal prehistory, by the way of His genealogy. It is significant how much His temporal ancestry was connected with sinners and foreigners! These blots on the escutcheon of His human lineage suggest a pity for the sinful and for the strangers to the Covenant. Both these aspects of His compassion would later on be hurled against Him as accusations: "He is a friend of sinners"; "He is a Samaritan." But the shadow of a stained past foretells His future love for the stained. Born of a woman. He was a man and could be one with all humanity; born of a Virgin, who was overshadowed by the Spirit and "full of grace," He would also be outside that current of sin which infected all men.
A fourth distinguishing fact is that He does not fit, as the other world teachers do, into the established category of a good man. Good man do not lie. But if Christ was not all that He said He was namely, the Son of the living God, the Word of God in the flesh, then He was not "just a good man"; then He was knave, a liar, a charlatan and the greatest deceiver who ever lived. If He was not what He said He was, Christ, the Son of God, He was the anti-Christ! If He was only a man, then He was not even a "good" man.
But He was not only a man. He would have us either worship Him or despise Him - despise Him as a mere man, or worship Him as true God and true man. That is the alternative He presents. It may very well be that the Communists, who are so anti-Christ, are closer to Him that those who see Him as a sentimentalist and a vague moral reformer. The Communists have at least decided that if He wins, they lose; the others are afraid to consider Him either as winning or losing because they are not prepared to meet the moral demands which this victory would make on their souls.
If He is what He claimed to be, a Savior, a Redeemer, then we have a virile Christ and a leader worth following in these terrible times; One Who will step into the breach of death, crushing sin, gloom and despair; a leader to Whom we can make totalitarian sacrifice without losing, but gaining freedom and Whom we can love even unto death. We need a Christ today Who will make cords and drive the buyers and sellers from our new temples; Who will blast the unfruitful fig tree; Who will talk of crosses and sacrifices and Whose voice will be like the voice of the ragging sea. But He will not allow us to pick and choose among His words, discarding the hard ones and accepting the ones that please our fancy. We need a Christ Who will restore moral indignation, Who will make us hate evil with a passionate intensity, and love goodness to a point where we can drink death like water.
BY ARCHBISHOP FULTON J. SHEEN (1895-1979)
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!
I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.
HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -
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