“Of his fulness we all have received, and grace for grace”

By Fr. Roy Cimagala

Chaplain

Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE)

Talamban, Cebu City

Email: roycimagala@gmail.com

THESE are words of John the Baptist that refer to our basic relationship with Christ. (cfr. Jn 1,16) Yes, let’s be clear about this basic truth about ourselves. We have received the fullness of our being from Christ. That’s when we truly become like Christ. As theologians have termed it, we are supposed to be “alter Christus” (another Christ), if not, “ipse Christus” (Christ himself).

As we end another year and start a new one, let’s be reminded that we are still a work in progress insofar as our over-all humanity is concerned. We should not forget that we should be heading toward the fullness of our humanity in Christ who first of all is in charge of making us like him. But we need to cooperate as fully as possible in this ongoing work of Christ in us.

We need to process this truth of our faith about ourselves very slowly, because it will obviously astound us to think that we are supposed to be like Christ, to be another Christ if not Christ himself. Who, me, one with Christ? We most likely would be tempted to say, tell it to the Marines!

We are supposed to be ‘alter Christus’ simply because, if we have been created in the image and likeness of God, and Christ is the Son of God who is the perfect image and likeness that God has of himself, then we can only conclude that we have to be like Christ.

In other words, Christ as the Son of God is the pattern of our humanity. If we want to know who we really are, how we ought to be, all we have to do is to look at Christ and try our best, with God’s grace, to identify ourselves with him.

More than that, because of our sin that defaced the original state in which we, in Adam and Eve, were created, Christ is the Son of God who became man to save us. The immediate conclusion we can derive from this truth of our faith is that for us to know how to handle our sinfulness and wounded condition, again all we have to do is to look at Christ and try our best, with God’s grace, to identify ourselves with him.

That identification with Christ as our Redeemer cannot but involve the acceptance of the cross through which our salvation is achieved. We have to know therefore the full meaning of the cross in our life, and embrace and die on it the way Christ embraced and died on it.

This is what is meant to be ‘alter Christus,’ an ideal that can be reached because insofar as God is concerned, everything is already given for us to be able to be so. Things now just depend on us on whether we would like to be ‘alter Christus’ or not.

All the means are made available. We have the sources of divine revelation that show us the truth about ourselves. We have the word of God. We have the Church and the sacraments, especially the Holy Eucharist.

We just have to make the necessary adjustments in the way we think, in the way we identify ourselves. It would not be presumptuous, even given our limitations and woundedness, to start and keep thinking that “I am another Christ, ‘alter Christus.’” We just have to try our best, with God’s grace to think and act like Christ.

We have to have the very sentiments of Christ who has everything that is good and proper to us. When he said, “Whoever is not with me is against me, whoever does not gather with me scatters,” it is quite clear that for us to be ‘alter Christus’ is a necessity. It’s not something optional, though it has to be chosen freely.