Christ is the full expression of the Father. Jesus, the humanity of Christ, is the full manifestation of all that the Father is, insofar as this can be expressed in human nature. Jesus is the living symbol of God's love, mercy, and incredible tenderness toward his creatures. He is also the way that God communicates divine life to us. The actions that Christ performed during his earthly life expressed his inner dispositions, and none more completely than his passion, death, and resurrection, toward which the whole of his life was oriented. By knowing the historical Jesus, by listening to his Word in the Gospel and in the events of his life, we learn, little by little, to interiorize his teaching and his actions and begin to understand them. This is what we might call deep listening.

But like Mary of Bethany at the feet of Jesus, it is not enough just to listen to his words with our ears and to reflect on them with our reason. This is only an essential preliminary to getting acquainted with him, as in getting acquainted with any new friend. If we are really interested in making this friendship grow, we will find out all we can about him, spend time in prayer, and put his teaching into practice. As we reflect on the Word of God and the humanity of Jesus, we begin to listen with the ears of our hearts. Just as we can converse with someone on the level of words, so we can commune with someone on the level of silence. If we are quite closely acquainted, we can do it just by sitting together and communing without words. Anyone who has a close friend knows this experience.

But there is an even deeper level of conversation than communion, and that is unity. It is to this level that the Word of God is ultimately addressed. This is the capacity to listen with our whole being. Total response to Christ is only possible when we hear his word on every level of our being, including the deepest level, which is that of interior silence. It is at this level that his Word is most powerful and most creative; action that emerges from that silence is effective. And it is from this level that the apostle Paul speaks to us. Paul speaks frequently about participation in the life, passion and resurrection of Christ. His words are of special interest in that he is the one apostle who never knew the historical Jesus. Yet he was able to say, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).

As we have seen, there is a special view of time in the Christian perspective. The eternal, once it has fully entered into chronological time, as it did with the resurrection of Christ, has brought us what the scriptures call "the last times," or "the eighth day," which signifies the day after earthly time. Thus, a new kind of time has begun, one that includes both heaven and earth, the absolute and the relative, the eternal and the temporal. The kingdom of God is now reigning; that is, the values of eternal life, together with a real participation in them, are now present in those who believe in Jesus. These values are preserved in the Church, especially in the sacraments. The fact that the Church exists in a visible way is the sign that the grace of Christ is in the world, available to everyone at every moment of time. Our participation in the life of Christ is in direct proportion to our own growth in the eternal values which Jesus brought into the world and made permanently available through the sacraments, prayer, and fidelity to our conscience.

Paul says, "While we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh" (2 Cor. 4:11). Thus, according to his view, the passion and resurrection of Christ are going on all the time. They are always present and not limited to an historical moment. It was rather an historical moment which introduced the eternal values of the cross and resurrection into the whole of time. We participate in Christ's divine life through baptism and the other sacraments. As a consequence, we must learn how to express the risen life of Jesus rather than our false selves in our conduct and relationships. To attain this union involves the transformation of our inmost being and all our faculties into the mind of Christ. This is the very fullness of salvation.

The chief expression of the mind of Christ is found in the classical text of Philippians: "Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:5-8).

God's great love recommends itself to us in this, that Christ gave up being God, so to speak, in order to become human. This is the "marvelous exchange" that the liturgy sings about at Christmastime. The Son of God regarded being God as secondary to the salvation of the human family. His purpose was not only to atone for our sins, but to take the whole human family with its incredible potential and its pathetic limitations to himself. He wants to flood the human family with the maximum degree of divine life that each of us is capable of receiving, and to gather us back into himself for the glory of the Father.

Today each of us has a unique capacity to express Christ to the people we meet. Each of us is called by God to be an incarnation of Christ, not in the sense that we become God through an absolute identity, but by becoming united to his Son, Jesus Christ. Christ, the Son of the Father, extends to each of us the same love which he has for his own human nature. The Father also extends to us, as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ and members of his mystical body, the same infinite love which he has for his only-begotten Son.

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Excerpted from The Heart of the World by Fr. Thomas Keating

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