OUR IMAGE OF JESUS
Jesus’ question: «Who do you say I am?», goes on asking believers still of our time for an answer. Not all of us have the same image of Jesus. And that’s not just because of the inexhaustible character of his personality, but above all because each one of us goes about elaborating our image of Jesus based on our interests and concerns, conditioned by our personal psychology and the social circle we belong to, and marked by the religious formation we have received.
And yet, the image of Christ that each of us can have has a decisive importance for our life, since it conditions our way of understanding and living out our faith. An image of Jesus that is impoverished, unilateral, partial or false will lead us to a way of living our faith that is impoverished, unilateral, partial or false. That’s why it’s so important to avoid possible deformations of our vision of Jesus and to purify our attachment to him.
On the other hand, it’s purely illusion to think that one believes in Jesus Christ because one «believes» in a dogma or one is disposed to believe «in what Holy Mother the Church believes». In reality, each believer believes in what he believes, that is to say, in what he personally goes about discovering in his following of Jesus Christ, although naturally he does it inside of the Christian community.
Unfortunately, there are all too many Christians who understand and live out their religion in such a way that probably they would never have even a smidgen of a lived experience of what it means to personally encounter Christ.
Already in a very early moment of their life they have had a childish image of Jesus, when they probably haven’t yet raised with sufficient clarity the questions to which Jesus can respond.
Later on they no longer went back to think about their faith in Jesus Christ again, maybe because they consider it something trivial and without any importance for their lives, maybe because they don’t dare to examine it seriously and rigorously, maybe because they are happy with preserving it indifferently and apathetically, without any echo in their being.
Unfortunately they don’t suspect what Jesus could be for them. Marcel Legaut wrote a harsh phrase, but maybe one that’s right on: «Those Christians ignore who Jesus is and are condemned by their own religion to never ever discover him».
José Antonio Pagola
Translator: Fr. Jay VonHandorf
