A tremendous event has taken place in your life. It happened on the day of your baptism. Christ entered into you as king into His kingdom. His divine life, His very spirit, signified by the baptismal water, was, through the action of baptizing, planted in your soul, "poured" into it. It is God's Word that tells us so. "As many as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying "Abba Father!" "It is no longer I who live then, but Christ who lives in me." - Gal. 3:27, 4:6, 2:20 -

This life of Jesus in your soul is called by many names. It is called 'Christian' life because it is Christ's life in the soul; it is called 'spiritual' life because it is the life of Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Blessed Trinity; it is the life shared in common by the three Divine Persons; it is also called 'supernatural' life because it is not natural, not born of flesh and blood; and 'divine' life because it is the life of God; it is called 'interior' life too, so as to distinguish it from life lived on natural impulses. It is finally, called the New Life as opposed to the 'old life' of sinfulness originating in the sin of our first parents.

How is this life nourished? This divine or Christian life in us is nourished by the Sacraments, - that is why it is called 'sacramental life' - chiefly by the Sacrament of the Sacred Eucharist Meal: it is resurrected, when killed or healed, when wounded, by the Sacrament of Reconciliation. What kills this mysterious Christ-life and what wounds it, how the Sacraments and the Word of God nourish it, how it is mediated to all through the living Body of the Church, how through the mutual mediation and sharing of this Christ-life the whole Family of Man is gradually 'becoming Christ' how the hidden activities of this life come to surface, as it were, and are perceived by that delicate radar of the soul; the Voice of Conscience - all these are amazing facts of the ever on-going history of God's saving action in his world. Here your immediate concern is to LEARN CHRIST, to taste and to experience and to love and to live the NEW SPIRIT which Christ brought into our world at His Incarnation and gifted to us in our baptism.

But Christ entered into your soul at baptism just as He entered the world at His Incarnation, like a king into enemy territory. He brings His new spirit into a body and soul where another spirit already reigns. That other spirit is totally different from and hostile to the spirit of Christ. We might very appropriately call it the "anti-Christ" in us. It has many names. The spirit of Selfishness is one. Sinfulness is another. It is also called inordinate self-love, self-center, corrupt nature, the Old Man, the Old Adam, the Flesh, Covetousness, Concupiscence, the Power of Darkness, Worldliness. It manifests itself in different forms like pride, vainglory, anger, sensuality, gluttony, avarice, sloth, according to the differing objects it covets.

It is plain to see that from the moment of our baptism we are committed to a war, within us and around us, between the spirit of Christ (the  New Man as it is called) and the spirit of the "anti-Christ" (or the Old Man) which the world and every man coming into it has inherited from Adam. The implication is obvious. I am, my very body and soul is, a theater of war. I must expel - or starve out, 'disaffiliate myself from' or more simply, renounce or mortify - the spirit that is opposed to Christ's and allow Christ, through my generous and willing cooperation, to insert His divine spirit into every part of me, to baptize me with the New spirit in the whole of my being, to penetrate me with it completely just as fire penetrates a piece of iron and makes it red hot through and through.

How does one expel, (renounce, or 'disaffiliate oneself from') the anti-Christian spirit in one's self? How does one put on the spirit of Christ or Become Christ? There are two ways. One way is to 'pursue the enemy' to fight against it directly, to keep saying 'no' to pride in me and sensuality in me and anger in me and so on. The attention is focused on self. This is a negative way; it is useful, even necessary now and again, in times of stress or of violent temptation when a particular foe becomes insolent and strong. But continued too long, it becomes discouraging and oppressive.

There is a better way, one that is more positive and appealing. It is the Christ-centered way. It consists in looking at Christ, in exposing one's self to His humility, to the bracing, inspiring, heavenly spirit that shows through His words and actions. Expose yourself to Christ in the Gospels, to Christ in His saints, to Christ in His Body, the Church, to Christ in your community, to Christ in every happening within you and around you. These are all sacraments; they mediate Christ to you. So doing, you will, by and by, imperceptibly, "become" Christ in your way of thinking and of acting. You will have learnt Christ. You will by a kind of divine sense (faith, we call it) discern the spirit of Christ inspiring you from within and you will unresistingly allow it to draw you by its attraction: you will in the same process instinctively turn your back upon and firmly renounce the prompting of the evil spirit, the "anti-Christ" in you.

Such is the positive way of "becoming" (or learning) Christ; it is both pleasurable and appealing, attractive and simple. One advances towards the light and in doing so recedes from the darkness; one acquires taste for virtue and thereby loses the taste for vice. The constant companionship and contemplation of Christ imperceptibly imbues the soul with Christ's noble thoughts and desires and these make one lose interest in those sprouting from concupiscence.

After tasting the beautiful loving spirit of Christ one forsakes the ugly violent spirit of concupiscence. This positive or Christo-centric way takes away undue preoccupation with one's self, with one's progress in virtue, with one's faults and imperfections and keeps far away the discouragement and spiritual weariness that this kind of fault-finding with one's self can generate. It needs to be emphasized, however, that the positive and the negative ways are both necessary for the Christian life in us to develop well. In fact, they are not two different ways, but one with two facets like a chisel with two edges. It is more wholesome, however, and more rewarding to use its positive edge one.


BY  REV.  FR.  J.  B. FERNANDES.  S. J.
                                                                              Page 1
Faith . Hope . Love - Welcome donation. Thank You. God bless. 

By bank transfer/cheque deposit:
Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah
Bank: Public Bank Berhad account no: 4076577113
Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

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 -