Conforming Ourselves to Christ

God created every person to share in his life – to be like God and live like God forever! God’s plan is to bring about a great exchange – he would take on our lowly humanity in order to give us a share in his divinity. Who wouldn’t want to be part of that? St. Peter writes in his 2nd letter that we will become “partakers in the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4). And this fact led St. Augustine and St. Thomas to say: God became man so that man could become god.      How will we come to share in the life of God?  The Holy Spirit and Mary conceive the life of Jesus in our souls through Baptism and then we are to cooperate with God so that Christ is fully formed in us. CCC 520 In all of his life Jesus presents himself as our model. He is "the perfect man", who invites us to become his disciples and follow him. In humbling himself, he has given us an example to imitate, through his prayer he draws us to pray, and by his poverty he calls us to accept freely the privation and persecutions that may come our way However, If we strive to become like Jesus by imitation alone we will fail. God knew this and He provides a further means:  CCC 521    Christ enables us to live in him all that he himself lived, and he lives it in us…We are called only to become one with him, for he enables us as the members of his Body to share in what he lived for us in his flesh as our model: St John Eudes: We must continue to accomplish in ourselves the stages of Jesus’ life and his mysteries, the events of his life, and often to beg him to perfect and realize them in us and in his whole Church…for it is the plan of the Son of God to make us and the whole Church partake in his mysteries, the events of his life and to extend them to and continue them in us and in his whole Church. This is his plan for fulfilling his mysteries in us. Through the Mass and the Sacraments Jesus makes the Events from His life Present So that what took place in Him can take place in us and transform us CCC 1085 In the liturgy of the Church (the Mass and the Sacraments), it is principally but not only the Paschal mystery, the suffering death and Resurrection that Christ signifies and makes present…When his hour comes he lives out the unique event of history which does not pass away: Jesus dies, is buried, rises from the dead, and is seated at the right hand of the Father “once for all. His Paschal mystery is a real event that occurred in our history, but it is unique: all other historical events happen once, and then they pass away, swallowed up in the past. The Paschal mystery of Christ, by contrast, cannot remain only in the past because…all that he did and suffered for all men - participates in the divine eternity, and so transcends all times while being made present in them all…”  Jesus is an eternal Person Eternal means there is no past and no future, only the “Present” Every event from the life of Jesus remains PRESENT So that we can enter into it Take part in it – be conformed to it And become like him The mysteries, meaning the events of the life of Jesus are made present in the Mass and the sacraments  So that what took place in Jesus May take place in us And we be conformed to Him How does this happen that the events of the life of Christ are made present and we enter them? CCC 1099 The Holy Spirit Recalls the mystery of Christ  In the Liturgy of the Word, the first half of the Mass, the Holy Spirit recalls the saving events from the life of Christ; but it doesn’t end with there; CCC 1104 the Christian liturgy not only recalls the events that saved us but actualizes them, makes them present. The Paschal mystery of Christ is celebrated, not repeated. It is the celebrations that are repeated, and in each celebration there is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that makes the unique mystery present. That is why 1370 can say: In the Eucharist the Church is as it were At the foot of the Cross with Mary, united to the offering and intercession of Christ.