CHRIST ON MY WALL

+

After writing last week's post about icons, I took down the one I painted in 1986 and re-hung it where I

Icon I painted in 1986

 can see it all the time, especially when I'm sitting in my chair reading or praying. I'm very glad I did --The image of the Universal Christ keeps revealing more and more about who he is and who I am. You may want to read the previous post, entitled "Icons" before continuing.

The reflections about Christ that I've been sharing in the past few weeks are based for the most part on the thoughts of the Franciscan Fr. Richard Rohr. This week I'm going to let him speak for himself through a few quotations from his book "The Universal Christ."   Page references below are from this book.

[Rohr quotes a long excerpt from Carryll Houselander, a 20th Century mystic, in which she describes an experience she had while riding in a crowded subway. She suddenly saw Christ present in each of her fellow passengers in the most vivid and way, "living in them, dying in them." And not only in them but in every person who ever lived. Then Rohr comments on the long passage.]

The question for me -- and for us -- is, Who is this "Christ" that Caryll Houselander saw permeating and radiating from all her fellow passengers? Christ for her was clearly not just Jesus of Nazareth but something much more immense, even cosmic, in significance. How that is so, and why it matters, is the subject of this book. Once encountered, I believe this vision has the power to radically alter what we believe, how we see others and relate to them, our sense of how big God might be, and our understanding of of what the Creator is doing in our world. (pp 2-3) 

... The revelation of the risen Christ as ubiquitous and eternal was clearly affirmed by the Scriptures (Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, John 1, Hebrews 1) and in the early church, when the euphoria of the Christian faith was still creative and expanding. In our time, however, this deep mode of seeing must be approached as something of a reclamation project. When the Western church separated from the East in the Great Schism of 1054, we gradually lost this profound understanding of how God has been liberating and loving all that is. Instead, we gradually limited the Divine Presence to the single body of Jesus, when perhaps it is as ubiquitous as light itself -- and uncircumscribable by human boundaries. 

We might say that the door of faith closed on the broadest and most beautiful understanding of what

early Christians called the "Manifestation," the Epiphany, or most famously, the "Incarnation" -- and also its final and full form, which we still call the "Resurrection." But the Eastern and Orthodox churches originally had a much broader understanding of both of these, an insight that we in the Western churches, both Catholic and Protestant, are now only beginning to recognize. (p.4)

... 

We cannot overestimate the damage that was done to our Gospel message when the Eastern ("Greek") and Western ("Latin") churches split, beginning with their mutual excommunication of each other's patriarchs in 1054. We have not known the "one, holy, undivided" church for over a thousand years.

But you and I can reopen that ancient door of faith with a key, and that key is the proper understanding of a word that many of us use often, but often too glibly. That word is Christ.

What if Christ is a name for the transcendent within every "thing in the universe

What if Christ is a name for the immense spaciousness of all true Love?

What if Christ refers to an infinite horizon that pulls us from within and pulls us forward too?

What if Christ is another name for everything -- in its fullness? (p.5)

These paragraphs are a sample of the kind of thinking that has been shaping my meditations and reflections since at least April, as you may have noticed if you've been following my recent posts.

So, the icon that's speaking silently and eloquently to me from its new place on the wall has helped me to get some perspective on Covid, racial polarization, presidential tweets and all manner of things. 

May the risen Christ bless all of us and keep us safe!