Responding to Christ

 Jesus revealed himself to me when I was the age you are now. This changed the trajectory of my life so profoundly that I have no idea where I would be if that hadn’t happened. Dorothy Day, an American Catholic who devoted her life to working on behalf of the poor, once said: “If I have accomplished anything in my life, it’s because I wasn’t embarrassed to talk about God.” I wouldn’t know Jesus if it hadn’t been for friends who told me about him.

The Bible says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Ps 34:9a). I tasted, and I saw. Another person can describe a sight to you, though that’s not at all the same as seeing it yourself. Describing a taste is next to impossible: not even a master chef knows how the dish tastes until it touches their tongue. No one can see God, but you might say I tasted him through prayer. I tasted him in the form of bread and wine. I smelled “the fragrance of his perfumes” (Song 1:3a) in the sacred chrism on my forehead. I spoke to him in prayer and he spoke back to me when I read the Scriptures.

Once a person has tasted the Lord, how shall one respond? There are as many answers as there are human beings. Pope Benedict XVI said in 1997, “There are as many ways to God as there are people. […] The one way [of Jesus Christ] is so big that it becomes a personal way for each person” (Peter Seewald and Joseph Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium [1997], 32). I can only share my thoughts about the Christian life based on my experience and theological study.

Firstly, what is it not? Responding to Christ isn’t about having nice, comforting thoughts about going to heaven when you die. It’s about living on earth the way Jesus lived. Eternal life begins immediately, the moment you first believe. He told his disciples, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain” (John 15:16)—What a remarkable thought: I did not choose to believe in Jesus. Before time began, before I even existed, he chose me and created me to be his witness.

Everyone without exception is called to the love of God. Responding to his call means both words and actions and following Jesus’ example: loving our neighbors and even our enemies, working for justice in the world, putting others’ needs before our own comfort, serving the “least” of human beings, his brothers and sisters (Mt 25:40). He tells us exactly how we will be judged by God: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and people in prison. In a word, caring for the poor and marginalized. When we serve them, we serve Christ himself.

The prophet Micah tells us plainly what God wants from us:

You have been told, O mortal, what is good,

    and what the Lord requires of you:

Only to do justice and to love goodness,

    and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

Saint James says: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world” (1:27).

Jesus did all that during his earthly life, and it cost him that life. The powers that be—the religious authorities and the Roman empire—they wanted him silenced because he challenged their power. He threatened their false security (“Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’” Mt 3:9) and their hypocrisy (“They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them,” Mt 23:4). Jesus could have backed down, but he didn’t because he loved us to the end (Jn 13:1). “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13). “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8).

Despite that, the world still doesn’t recognize God, nor will it ever. It offers us false gods: power, money, the lie that we don’t need anyone. Selfishness, ego, pride, greed, envy, vengeance, material pleasures—these don’t lead to joy. They leave us cold in the end. It takes courage and wisdom to turn away from them and choose God instead.

A disciple of Christ practices compassion for all people. St. John writes,

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love […] We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates their brother [or sister], they are a liar; for whoever does not love a brother [or sister] whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. (1 John 4:8, 19-20)

The saints and doctors of the Church teach this, too. The Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, in chapter 3 of the Interior Castle (a book I highly recommend) writes:

We cannot know whether we love God, although there may be strong reasons for thinking so, but there can be no doubt about whether we love our neighbor or not. […] When I see people very anxious to know what sort of prayer they practice, covering their faces and afraid to move or think lest they should lose any slight tenderness and devotion they feel, I know how little they understand how to attain union with God since they think it consists in such things as these. No, sisters, no; our Lord expects works from us. If you see a sick sister whom you can relieve, never fear losing your devotion; show compassion to her; if she is in pain, feel for it as if it were your own and, when there is need, fast so that she may eat, not so much for her sake as because you know your Lord asks it of you. This is the true union of our will with the will of God. (3.8, 11)

God loves each of us with an everlasting love. We are made in his image (Genesis 1:27). When he sees you, he doesn’t see your sins as much as himself, the perfectly loveable God reflected back in your own soul like in a mirror. Because you are in the image of the infinite God, you have infinite dignity. No one can ever take that away from you.

I have some advice drawn from my experience: we must constantly return to Christ and his words in the Bible. He said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in them will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Everything is unmerited grace. When we’re in heaven, after our earthly work is done (such as it is), we will say to him, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do” (Lk 17:10). Although we are sinners, this does not make us useless to God. He has redeemed us by his cross and resurrection. Our sins are forgiven if we but ask. To quote Pope Francis: “God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy” (Evangelii gaudium 3).

He sends us out to be his hands and feet in the world. No one else is coming to fix things for us; no one else is coming to save us. Yet this discomfiting truth does not mean we are alone. He said: “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you” (Jn 14:18). “The Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Rom 8:26). God’s Holy Spirit is within us. The Spirit empowers us to be co-redeemers with Christ. We don’t control the outcome, which is in God’s hands and which he will complete in his own time. We can’t save the world, but we can make a real difference. As Saint Paul puts it: one plants, another waters, but God causes the growth (see 1 Cor 3:6).

When we feel doubting or hopeless, we can always return to Christ’s words in Scripture. Read and reread the Sermon on the Mount. Read and reread his parables. His words have brought ultimate meaning to my life. The meaning is love, as you know. “What’s the meaning of life?”: it’s not a great, unsolved mystery! I know the meaning of life, because my Lord told me: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength … and you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30–31).

Daily prayer is also essential. We’re all busy, I know. But we can at least pray when we wake up in the morning, or on the way to school or work. We can pray before bed. Morning and evening prayer. Daily recitation of the Our Father cleanses and re-centers us. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, forgive us our debts as we forgive those in debt to us.” The 150 Psalms—the prayers of the ancient People of God, the same prayers Jesus himself, a Jew, prayed. In the Psalms you will find praise, lament, comfort, and joy.

No one lives the Christian life perfectly, obviously. Even great saints were forgiven sinners. Only in the Kingdom of God—when faith will become sight and all sacraments will cease—will our love be complete. In the meantime, while life and breath remain, we pick up our cross.

I’d like to end with my favorite quote from Pope Francis, from July 7, 2015, in Ecuador:

And this is the good news: the finest wines are yet to be tasted; for families, the richest, deepest and most beautiful things are yet to come. The time is coming when we will taste love daily, when our children will come to appreciate the home we share, and our elderly will be present each day in the joys of life. The finest of wines is expressed by hope, this wine will come for every person who stakes everything on love. And the best wine is yet to come, in spite of all the variables and statistics which say otherwise. The best wine will come to those who today feel hopelessly lost. Say it to yourselves until you are convinced of it. Say it to yourselves, in your hearts: the best wine is yet to come. Whisper it to the hopeless and the loveless. Have patience, hope, and follow Mary’s example, pray, open your heart, because the best wine is yet to come. God always seeks out the peripheries, those who have run out of wine, those who drink only of discouragement. Jesus feels their weakness, in order to pour out the best wines for those who, for whatever reason, feel that all their jars have been broken.