Time for God by Philippe Jacques

Author:Philippe, Jacques [Philippe, Jacques]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Religion, Spiritual
ISBN: 9781594170973
Publisher: Scepter Publishers
Published: 2010-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

5. God Gives Himself Through the Humanity of Jesus

After the primacy of God’s action, and the primacy of love, there is a third principle that underpins a Christian’s contemplative life: we find God in the humanity of Jesus.

The reason we do mental prayer is to enter into communion with God. But no one knows God. So what means do we have for finding him? Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is the only mediator. His humanity, the humanity of God the Son, is the medium of our seeking, finding, and being united to God. As St. Paul says, “In him the whole fullness of Deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9). The humanity of Jesus is the primordial sacrament through which the Divinity makes itself accessible to human beings.

As creatures of flesh and blood, we need the support of material things in order to attain to spiritual realities. God knows this, and it is what explains the whole mystery of the Incarnation. We need to see, to touch, to feel. Jesus Christ’s visible, physical humanity is the expression of God’s wonderful condescension toward us. Knowing what we are made of, he gives us the possibility of reaching divine things in a human way, touching what is divine by human means. Spirit has become flesh. Jesus is the way to God for us. St. Philip asked Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied,” and Jesus answered, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:8-9).

There is a great and very beautiful mystery here. The humanity of Jesus in all its aspects, even those that are apparently humblest and least important, is for us an immense space for communion with God. Every aspect of his humanity, each of his characteristics, even the smallest and most hidden, each of his words, deeds, and gestures, every stage of his life from his conception in Mary’s womb to his Ascension, brings us into communion with God the Father if we receive it in faith. By exploring his humanity like a piece of land that belongs to us, going through it like a book written especially for us, making it our own in faith and love, we grow steadily in communion with the inaccessible, unfathomable mystery of God.

A Christian’s mental prayer will, then, always be based on a certain relationship with our Savior’s humanity.3 The different forms of Christian mental prayer, of which we shall give some examples shortly, are alike in finding their theological justification in the fact that they bring us into communion with God by means of the humanity of Jesus. Since Jesus Christ’s humanity is a kind of sacrament—an efficacious sign of man’s union with God—it is enough for us to be linked in faith with that humanity in order to enter into communion with God.

Bérulle4 beautifully expresses the extent to which the mysteries of Jesus’ life, though in the past, remain living and life-giving realities for those who contemplate them in faith.

We must posit the perpetual nature

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