I, but no longer I: A liberation of our "I" from its isolation - Pope Benedict XVI

 I, but no longer I: A liberation of our "I" from its isolation

I can't help but think that sometimes you take words literally and then sometimes, if you are blessed, you hear and feel the heartbeat of the Word. 

Link to a homily given on April 15, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI 

Some outtakes of this homily:

Jesus is not a character from the past. He lives, and he walks before us as one who is alive, he calls us to follow him, the living one, and in this way to discover for ourselves too the path of life.

(Like the disciples we are perplexed at the Resurrection and ask) What happened there? What does it mean for us, for the whole world and for me personally? Above all: what happened? Jesus is no longer in the tomb. He is in a totally new life. But how could this happen? What forces were in operation? The crucial point is that this man Jesus was not alone, he was not an "I" closed in upon itself. He was one single reality with the living God, so closely united with him as to form one person with him. He found himself, so to speak, in an embrace with him who is life itself, an embrace not just on the emotional level, but one which included and permeated his being. His own life was not just his own...

The Resurrection was like an explosion of light, an explosion of love which dissolved the hitherto indissoluble compenetration of "dying and becoming". It ushered in a new dimension of being, a new dimension of life in which, in a transformed way, matter too was integrated and through which a new world emerges.

The Resurrection is not a thing of the past, the Resurrection has reached us and seized us. We grasp hold of it, we grasp hold of the risen Lord, and we know that he holds us firmly even when our hands grow weak. We grasp hold of his hand, and thus we also hold on to one another’s hands, and we become one single subject, not just one thing. I, but no longer I: this is the formula of Christian life rooted in Baptism, the formula of the Resurrection within time. I, but no longer I: if we live in this way, we transform the world.

Life comes to us from being loved by him who is Life; it comes to us from living-with and loving-with him. I, but no longer I: this is the way of the Cross, the way that "crosses over" a life simply closed in on the I, thereby opening up the road towards true and lasting joy.

True Life

True Life is experienced and reflected by living a life as a calling, breaking free from our hardness of hearts and 'old tapes' to remaining in His Love which is how our hearts were opened. The following meditation taken from The Magnificat by Father Maurice Zundel does a wonderful job of opening our eyes to this marvelous feature of being a member of this new creation in Christ.

Jesus wants to reintroduce us to the dialogue of love by breaking the seal of the stone of our hearts so that divine life may spring again and be communicated to us by his holy humanity as the fruit of his immolation. Thus Jesus redirects our life according to the Heart of God. By revealing love to us, by opening for us this unlimited credit, Jesus solicits our generosity to make us enter into the very movement of his being, to associate us with this wonderful detachment, to root our lives in divine poverty, to heal us of ourselves, finally to communicate to us all that he is.

To say that Jesus wants to communicate to us all that he is, is to say, since every grace is a mission, that the grace of the Incarnation given to his humanity does not concern it alone. It concerns all of humanity. All men are called to see, through Christ, their self in God by forming with him one sole body, one sole person. That means that the Incarnation, of the head that is Jesus, must be extended to us who are the members. Finally, Christian life, of which Christ is the center, according to the admirable words of Saint Paul to the Philippians: “For, to me, living is Christ,” this Christian life prolongs the Incarnation of Jesus, the head, in the members of Christ.

That entails admirable consequences made tangible to us by these great words of Saint Paul: You are the body of Christ, you are members of Jesus Christ, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. What a marvel! We are here in a church built of stone, before a tabernacle made of marble, and we approach this place with awe. We observe silence. We tiptoe our way ahead to the altar, we open ourselves to the radiance of this silence which is made different by the sacred presence of the Host…. He is there for us, to consecrate us, to transform us into a living host, so that we may truly be the sanctuary of the divinity.

Father Maurice Zundel

Father Zundel († 1975) was a Swiss theologian, poet, philosopher, liturgist, and author. [From Wonder and Poverty, Florestine Audette, r.j.m., Tr. © 1993, Éditions Médiaspaul, Sherbrooke, QC. Used with permission.]