LAST NEWS   Michel Quoist
MEET CHRIST AND LIVE!

translated by J. F. BERNARD
GILL AND MACMILLAN

1. Loving one's brother today 9. My neighbour and I 17. In the image of God
2. If Jesus read today' s newspaper 10. My husband is not a Christian 18. The dead are aIive!
3. God's children go to school 11. The commercial smile and the Christian smile 19. The age of anguish
4. I'm too good a neighbour 12. There is someone among you 
you don' t even know		 20. We have too much to do
5. I want to be Somebody! 13. There are too many people we just leave asleep 21. It's Christmas at our house
6. On God' s track 14. Our little girI is a young woman 22. The Christian in action
7. A Father's gifts 15. A miracle tranquilliser 23. My parents are divorced
8. Finding my place in the work of creation 16. Houses for the children of God 24. The rediscovery of nature

12. There is someone among you you don't even know

Every year we condemn in the severest terms the pagan manifestations surrounding the religious feast of Christmas. We are shocked and disgusted by everything, from the outrageous expenditures for gifts to the forced 'good cheer', from the exaggerated emotions of midnight mass to the smell of stuffed turkey.
All of our brothers stand before our court of judgment, non-Christians as well as those who, as we say, 'call themselves Christians'. As always, we are among the judges rather than among the accused. And behind our self-righteous judgments there lurks something worse, the attitude of Pharisees. We, thank God, are not like the rest of men. For us, Christmas is God, the true God of Christians who, in Christ Jesus, has come to save us.
It is no doubt true that people mutilate and caricature the Christmas message. But what right have we to judge their intentions and pass sentence on them? And why do we insist on seeing only the negative side of these festivities? Through the eyes of faith, it is just as easy to see in these simple emotions and efforts at merry-making an unconscious appeal to the God of love who has come down among men. We should try to accept, as an opportunity for conversion, this boisterous celebration of Jesus' birthday which the Church, in its liturgy, encourages us to re-live. Is our love so pure that we can afford to dispense with such things? Do we not also tend to strip God of his true nature? Do we not also set up 'graven images' -even idols? Wouldn't the prophet be justified in saying to us, as well as to others: 'There is one among you whom you do not know.'

Too often, people think of God
as a common name which has become part of everyday language;
as a vague 'being' who is supposed to have magical powers;
as the creative force behind the universe and its evolution;
as an idea which can be demonstrated in order to comfort the minds of men.

But this is not the God of the Christians.

Too often, and for too many people, the 'act of faith' is summed up in this manner: There is 'something' greater than us, something inapproachable because it is so distant, unknowable because it is mysterious; something which we must contend with and endure; something we must try to bend to our own will; something whose good will we must cultivate.

This is in no way the faith of Christians.

Too often men speak of 'being religious' or of 'having religion'. They refer to a complex
of badly assimilated religious information,
of badly observed moral laws,
of rituals, often idolatrous in themselves, performed distractedly,
of social concepts which are as ultra-conservative for some as they are revolutionary for others.

This is by no means the religion of Christians.

The God of the Christians is not
a god-object,
a god-idea,
a god of morality,
a god of social order.
The God of the Christians is
a person,
 a person who is called Jesus Christ;
a person who, historically, once lived among men.
The God of the Christians is not
'something' greater than us, but
 someone among us.

Christmas, then, is God come among us, made visible to us.
Christmas is God, hitherto inaccessible and unknown, becoming man and joining hands with men, greeting men, speaking to men, loving men, dying for J;.l1en. 'No one has ever seen God; it is only the Son, who is nearest to the Father's heart, who has made him known'  (John 1: 18). 'The Word was made flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory' (John 1: 14).
St John was still caught up in the excitement of that encounter when he wrote: 'Something which has existed since the beginning, that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have watched and touched with our hands: the Word, who is fife-this is our subject. That life was made visible: we saw it and we are giving our testimony, telling you of eternal fife which was with the Father and has been made visible to us. What we have seen and heard we are telling you so that you too may be in union with us, as we are in union with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. We are writing this to you to make our own joy complete' (1 John 1: 1-4).
God became man for the whole of mankind, and therefore for me. He carne to see me, to speak to me, to become my friend, to save me. l am personally involved with him.
 Many men are deists. They believe in a Creator-God who imposes order on the universe.
 Christians, however, believe in Jesus Christ, trust in him, live with him and in him within his Church, and work for the Kingdom of his Father.

Some Christians are badly in need of being re-educated. In extreme cases, they are capable of knowing and practicing their religion 'sociologically', without knowing their God. What they need is to find Jesus Christ, who is the source and the life. 'This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son; anyone who has the Son has life, anyone who does not have the Son does not have life' (1 John 5: 11-12). And 'if anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him, and he in God' (1 John 4: 15).
Why are we Christians rather than Buddhists, say, or Moslems? Because we have confidence in Jesus Christ and not in Buddha or Mohammed. Why do we belong to the Catholic Church rather than to another Church? Because it was Jesus Christ who founded this Church, and only this Church. We may suffer from the imperfections of the Church' s human face, but we recognize that we are part of that Church. We will never agree to the establishment of another Church alongside our Church; but we work, none the less, to purify the Church when we purify ourselves, so that Jesus plan for it may be realized in an ever more perfect way.
It is very hard for us to recognize the profound reality of Jesus Christ under the visible signs of the Church, even when those signs are the sacraments themselves.
We tend to think of grace as 'something that we receive'. We say: 'I'll ask God for grace' - whereas grace is, in fact, Christ' s life in us, his love which saves us and transforms us in the very root of our being.
God became man so that man could become god; that is, so that man could be 'divinized' in Jesus Christ. In this sense, the Christian's act of faith is not: 'I believe that God exists.' It is not even: 'I believe in a personal God, someone who has come among men.' It is this: 'I believe in Jesus Christ, who loves me and saves me.'
For a Christian, to believe means to accept being loved infinitely, being forgiven, being saved. The Christian's God is not someone who must be appeased, or, even primarily someone who must be loved. His God is above all someone by whom he must allow himself to be loved. The greatness of the Christian' s God is not that he is all-powerful, but that he is all-loving. His transcendence is the absolute of love, not the absolute of philosophers.
'God's love for us was revealed when God sent into the world his only Son, so that we could have life through him; this is the love I mean: not our love for God, but God' s love for us when he sent his Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away' (1 John 4: 9-10).
'We ourselves have known and put our faith in God' s love toward ourselves. God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him' (1 John 4: 16).
I am loved by God, since the beginning of time, infinitely. That I am a sinner does not keep God from loving me. Holiness does not consist in being without sin. On the contrary, it means acknowledging that I am a sinner (and not merely that I am someone who commits sins), accepting that fact within myself, and believing with all my strength that Jesus loves me just as I am and that his love saves me. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners' (Matt. 9: 12).
'The word was made flesh.'
'There is someone among you whom you do not know.' He is called Love.

Lord, forgive me for having mutilated your Face, as vandals rip and tear at a priceless work of art.

Forgive me for having mistaken you for a mere subject of discussion, as though faith were the result of a demonstration. (1)

Forgive me for having used you as a tranquillizer for my restless mind, as though you were the inaccessible god of the philosophers.

Forgive me for having used you as a 'spiritual weapon' against the 'spirit of materialism', as though human salvation were a campaign rather than the mystery of Jesus, dead and risen.

When I discovered that you were a person, Lord, and that you were nearby, I did not act accordingly.
Forgive me for having too often acted as though:
You were someone who had come to pay a bill;
You were someone whose commandments I had to follow in order to be in your good graces and to have the right to eternal life;
You were someone rich and powerful from whom, through prayer, I could obtain favors.

Lord, I forgot the most important thing; the essential thing, without which the rest is nothing, or, at best, a ridiculous caricature.
I forgot, God, that you are an infinitely loving Father and that it has been your eternal plan to make me your son.
I forgot, God, that you are Love,
and that Love has come down among us.
I forgot, God, to let myself be loved.

 

 

[1] Faith is not irrational. It is reasonable to believe in Jesus, but reason cannot make us believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Savior of Mankind. Only grace can do that. 'No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me' (John 6: 44).