In the early Church, there were many debates about Jesus Christ. Some denied his true divinity, others his true humanity. These debates were decided by the great Councils of Bishops such as Nicea, Chalcedon and Constantinople.

Much of the creed we recite every Sunday comes from those Councils and through their teaching we reach right back to the Jesus who actually lived in biblical times.

This is all well and good – necessary, even. But it should not be enough for us. While we should certainly try and learn everything that there is to know about Jesus, the time will come “when knowledge will fail”, as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13.

When this life is over, all our concepts and words will give way to the reality of Christ. In other words, our cerebral knowledge of Jesus is not an end in itself. We are not armchair Christians.

Knowledge is supposed to lead us to the real, living and loving Lord. For what is the use of knowing all there is to know about Jesus if the very roots of our being are not firmly implanted in the reality of Jesus?

What, indeed, is the use of prayer if it is not embedded in a deep desire to see His face and to feel Him present with us and within us?

The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that prayer was just a soliloquy with oneself. Maybe that’s not so wrong for many. Is not our prayer often a fantasy in which we imagine a God whom we can manipulate to suit ourselves? We might call that God “Jesus” or “Father”, but he no more resembles the real God than Zeus or Apollos.

I can know fully the catechism as regards Jesus but then, in my actual attitudes, relate to a different Jesus.

For example, I can profess he is true man, but in fact think he does not truly understand my human experience.

I can profess he is true God, but in fact think that he is not able to make me a saint.

I can profess that “he died for the forgiveness of sins”, yet in fact not allow him to forgive me or forgive someone else whom I do not like.

The Jesus of the catechism ought to be the same Jesus to whom I in fact relate to in prayer, and the Jesus of prayer must in fact be the real, living Jesus who stands at the right hand of the Father and is yet present on the altar under the appearances of bread and wine.

Knowledge of Jesus is given that we might move out of our heads to encounter the real Jesus alive in our hearts, in the hearts of others and in the experience and reality of life.

No heart will be healed or filled by the words of a book alone. If we reduce Jesus to a doctrine we have killed the real Jesus. Jesus is not a dead concept, but a real live person; indeed he is Life itself, the Resurrection and the Life.

We believe the doctrine about Jesus only because we believe in Jesus.

No lover is ever satisfied with news about their beloved: any real lover wishes to bask in their beloved’s presence, in the deep bliss of being with them, holding them, gazing upon them in silent adoration, ready to do their every wish, respond to their every movement, give all of who they are to them even to the point of death.

Such is how Jesus has loved and does love us. He did not remain in heaven and send his angels to bring back definitions about humanity. He did not speak to us in a heavenly vacuum, nor did he love us with self-centered emotion.

He emptied himself of his condition of being God and became one of us, so greatly did he love us. He does not love the definition of man, the abstract or ideal man, but the real and concrete man, ugly and stinking though he may be because of sin.

In some inscrutable way, we became the love of his divine life and he took on our reality in its deepest roots that we might plant those roots in the life of the true God.

Being a Christian, then, is not a matter of embracing a religious ideology or theological theory, even less of being conservative or progressive (whatever that means).

It means living in intimate union and communion with the real and living Jesus Christ.

This oneness is not abstract, but so real that it involves even our bodies. We are actually made one with the living body of Jesus, first through baptism but above all in the Eucharist.

This is the core meaning of the Church: it is the mystical body of Christ, united to him in baptism and fed by him in the Eucharist. The Church as institution and organization is only the outward face of this inner reality which is both spiritual and physical. One day that institution, necessary while this life lasts, will fall away and reveal the true face of the Church.

That is why St. Paul can say with such passion in our second reading: “Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me life is Christ, and death gain ... I am caught between the two. I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better.”

These words show that, for St. Paul (himself no mean theologian), Christ was much more than a concept, creed or benign, distant do-gooder. Christ is his life! So united with Christ is he that this union is more important than either life or death!

So, as Catholics, we do not offer the world a theory about God: we offer it the life of the living Christ. The Church is not held together by dogma, but by the real life, power and glory of Jesus Christ.

When I hear his name, my soul should leap with joy. When I sense his presence, my heart should tremble with love. When I understand something of his pain, tears should well up from my depths. When I anticipate something of his divine glory, I should, like St. Paul, wish to die and be gone and be hidden in that glory.

Christ is not a literary hero: he lives, he comes to each of us as any other person comes into our lives, indeed, more truly and more completely than any other.

The martyrs did not die for a concept or a theology, but for One whom they loved with a passion stronger than death itself. The world needs such passion from us because it needs the living Christ.

How can I be a witness to Christ if he is not alive to me? How can I witness to Christ if he is not my Lord and my all? Teaching can be had from books and pupils can then become teachers. But if Christ only remains in books and classrooms, we make him a vicious circle of dead words.

We may certainly counter the arguments of the atheists, the materialists and the hedonists with eloquent words, but neither their arguments nor ours reach the heart of the matter: the truth is that their hearts are somehow devoid of Christ and they are likely to be filled only if they are drawn to the Christ alive and active in our hearts and lives.

Witness, not words, will conquer hearts, unless our words proceed from a heart filled with the attractive perfume of Christ’s presence.

“Seek the Lord while he may be found”, cries the Prophet Isaiah. St. Paul might add, “and do it with passion, determination and the invincible hope of a lover.”

Each one of us must search him out in the story, in the fabric and in the most intimate core of our lives. We must make a home for him there where we are most truly who we are.

Let that Christ be at home in you as he was at home in Mary of Nazareth and as he is at home in the heart of the Father.

We must let the truth of Jesus come alive in us and among us. Otherwise, how will we be able to recognize him when he comes to greet us at the hour of death?

Msgr. Peter Magee

Sunday, September 18^th, 2005

Annunciation, DC: 7.00 am and 1.00 pm