When we finally allow life to take us through the
Paschal Mystery of passion, death, and resurrection, we also will be
transformed into the Christ Mystery. At this stage we will have found the
capacity to hold the pain of being human, not to fear it or hate it or project
it onto other people. Actually, it is really God holding the pain in us,
because our little self can’t do it.
But the Big Self, God in us, can absorb it, forgive it,
and resolve it. We know it is grace when we no longer need to hate or punish
others, even in our mind. We know someone else is working through us,
and for us. Our little life is not our own; henceforward, we do not need it so
much. We are now a part of the Big and One Life of the eternal and cosmic
Christ, “who will inherit everything and through whom everything that is, was
made” (Hebrews 1:2). The early Franciscan tradition
put it this way: Christ was the first idea in the mind of God and will be the
last idea. As Scripture puts it, He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and
the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13). History now has a
definitive arc and direction—and we are part of that arc of history and
God—which includes both life and death. The life part is so big now that we can
trust the death part.
Richard Rohr
