He is known and loved by many. A man others are drawn to because they feel welcome and loved around him. He is wise and witty, joyful and just, honest and unpretentious; a strong, steady, peaceful presence. A great storyteller and a great listener. A hardworking craftsman who both builds and repairs. He’s faithful and devout, hating no one, a lover of God’s word and a believer in the Resurrection. He is the reason that we are all gathered here today. The man I speak of is Jesus Christ.
One of the things I love most about “The Chosen,” an excellent mini-series (now through its second season) about Christ and his disciples, is its wonderful depiction of Jesus. What sort of person’s three-year public ministry could so transform the world ever after? What kind of person would people leave everything behind to follow? Someone engaging and winsome, who can see into your soul and still loves you. “The Chosen” is currently free to watch online, and I urge you see it because it is truly well done, but you can always read the books that the series is based on instead and encounter Jesus Christ in the four Gospels.
Regardless, it is essential that each of us get to know and love him. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI once observed, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” As Jesus says in St. John’s Gospel today, this is the will of God the Father: that everyone who sees God the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and be raised up on the last day.
Even though my opening description lists praiseworthy traits of Jesus Christ also found in Edward Boehm, those who know and love him and report such things about him acknowledge that Ed was not perfect. (This, by the way, is why the Church offers prayers for the dead, to help those who die as friends of God be sanctified through and through, to be completely healed and purged of any obvious or hidden flaw, since Revelation teaches us nothing impure can enter the heavenly Jerusalem, the holy city, where God’s unveiled glory dwells.) Ed was not perfect, but where did his Christ-like traits come from? Our world is not perfect, but where does its beauty come from? These things come from Jesus Christ, through whom all things were made, through whom all good things come.
We are finite creatures who desire the infinite. This longing for ever greater and unending goodness, beauty, truth, life, happiness, and love is to be fulfilled in God who, though we are dust, has placed these longings within us from the beginning. Though many do not realize it, our ultimate longing is for communion with God himself. There is a God-shaped hole in every human heart. And we meet the divine in human form in the person of Jesus Christ. Realize that the goodness you love in Edward Boehm reflects something of God’s goodness. Jesus Christ is the one on whom rests all our joyful hope, for Ed and for ourselves. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
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July 25, 2021 at 1:06 pm |
Wow! Masterful turn of concept to make your point :)!