What does a 21st century, American expression of Christ look like? It looks like each of us, especially when we activate the grace of Christ that lives within us — in creativity, healing and peace-making, and self-giving, world-transforming love.
St. Thomas said that if we don’t understand creation well, we won’t understand God or ourselves well. So, to understand how we are expressions of Christ requires us to start by taking a quick look at a 21st century, Christian version of the Creation story.
Some 13.7 billion years ago, God created a tiny dot of energy that flared forth into a chaotic mass of energy particles. God then entered the newborn universe. The ancient Hebrews would have poetically said that God “anointed” the universe with his presence. In Hebrew, the word for “the anointed one” is messiah. In Latin, Christus; in English, Christ. The God-anointed universe became the Christ-ed universe, the universal Christ reality. (cf. John 1:1-5)
The Christ-ed universe began acting like Christ. It calmed and began to take peaceful form. Cosmologist Brian Swimme says that the energy particles, in the universe’s first discovery of love, discovered they were attracted to one another and began to reunite to form atoms and molecules — all the way to galaxies. The chaos of creativity was transformed by Christ-ed healing and love into cosmos, which means “orderly,” “beautiful.” Later, the Psalmist would look up at the beauty of the night sky and sing, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). We would add, “and of Christ.”
Five billion years ago, in an evolving expression of Christ, a star exploded and died, sending its energy particles out into space. Once again, chaotic creativity begot Christ-ed healing and love. The particles reunited to form a new sun and the planets of our solar system. Every minute our sun turns 600 million tons of hydrogen into 596 tons of helium. This creates 4 million tons of light and heat, which keep the earth and us alive. Our sun is literally dying to keep us alive.
God fills the whole earth (Ps. 139:7-10). As God-created children of earth, our spiritual history, initiated by the ancient Hebrews, tells us of God’s ever evolving, loving closeness to us. From the stern “shall not’s” of the Ten Commandments, to our “grown up” ability to bargain with God, as Abraham did over Sodom and Gomorrah, (Gen. 19:22-33); to our more mature relationship with God as our spouse, in the Song of Songs, we became ever more filled with God until the blessed day when God’s loving closeness overflowed into visibility, and Jesus was born, our human brother who was God.
When Jesus was born, the universal Christ reality was already almost 14 billion years old. Jesus is the loving union of divinity and the entire universe, from its beginning to end. When he rose from the dead, the entire universe, the world and all humanity rose from their old level and way of living, to the possibility of a new, transcendent level and way of living.
At Pentecost, Christ sent his Spirit into the whole world. Those of us who receive his Spirit at baptism and beyond, live at this new level of possibility, as expressions of Christ, spiritually empowered and responsible to move God’s often chaotic creation and Christ’s healing, reconciling salvation forward in the ever-evolving, world-transforming love of the Spirit.
For most of us, living at this new level requires more education concerning our experience of God, and of ourselves as expressions of Christ. We can begin by knowing that within our one Catholic faith, God is revealing himself to each of us personally, telling us who we are, what gifts and talents he has given us, and what possibilities and opportunities he is presenting us. Each of us understands, interprets and applies God’s revelation, i.e., each of us experiences God, and ourselves as expressions of Christ, according to our age, gender, race, social situations, culture, psychological type and personal history.
For example, young people experience God and exemplify Christ in their youthful dreams of careers and love, and in their desire to grow and evolve into meaningful adults. Many of us reflect the immigrant experiences of present and recently past generations. The experience of slavery and the struggle for civil rights beats in the hearts of African-Americans. Women’s struggle for equality colors their way of being expressions of Christ. The poor, sick and outcast are poignant expressions of Christ. All express the beautiful, sometimes glorious, sometimes sad, features of the 21st century American Christ.
Anthony T. Massimini of Woolwich holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. He can be reached at massimini7@gmail.com
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