The Second Coming of Christ that history is waiting for is not the same as the baby Jesus or even the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus was one man, and Christ is not his last name. The Christ includes the whole sweep of creation and history joined with him—and you too. We call this the Cosmic Christ. We ourselves are a member of the Body of Christ and the Cosmic Christ, even though we are not the historical Jesus. So we very rightly believe in “Jesus Christ,” and both words are essential. The celebration of Christmas is not a sentimental waiting for a baby to be born, but much more an asking for history to be born! (see Romans 8:20–23). We do the Gospel no favor when we make Jesus, the Eternal Christ, into a perpetual baby, a baby able to ask little or no adult response from us. One even wonders what the mind is that would keep Jesus a baby. Maybe it was “baby Christianity.” We might cuddle or coo with a baby, but any spirituality that makes too much of the baby Jesus is perhaps not yet ready for prime-time life. God clearly wants friends, partners and images, if we are to believe the biblical texts. God, it seems, wants adult religion and a mature, free response from us. God loves us as adult partners, with mutual give and take, and you eventually become the God that you love. Take that as an absolute.
—from the book Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent
by Richard Rohr
2 thoughts on “The Cosmic Christ”
What happened to the picture these last few days (missing)?
As Catholic Christians we enter into the mystery of Our LORD’S life, death & resurrection, beginning with His Incarnation in the womb of His Virgin Mother, Mary, including His birth, continuing into His public ministry, preaching, teaching, healing & deliverance, & culminating in the Paschal Mystery of His Passion, death & Resurrection, His Ascension into heaven, & the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that began the Church & the Church age as we await His Second Coming. As we enter into more deeply into celebrating & living these mysteries & applying the GOSPEL to life, we become more & more the Mystical Body of CHRIST in the world.
We remember Our LORD JESUS as a baby, but most of all we celebrate His Incarnation: that the high & holy transcendent GOD, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, humbled Himself to take on our humanity in all things but sin, chose to dwell among us as fully Divine & fully human, & took upon Himself our sins on the Cross, to suffer, die & rise from the dead for our salvation & to restore the relationship of GOD & human beings–a work of restoration that we continue as the Church/Mystical Body of CHRIST/People of GOD. It is in the Incarnation that the TRANSCENDENCE & the IMMANENCE of GOD meet!
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