The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe

by Richard Rohr

Faith at its essential core is accepting that we are accepted!

And God’s impossible acceptance of ourselves is easier to grasp if we first recognize it in the perfect unity of the human Jesus with the divine Christ.

“How you get there is where you arrive.”

If you pay attention to the text, you’ll see that John offers a very evolutionary notion of the Christ message. Note the active verb that is used here: “The true light that enlightens every person was coming (erxomenon) into the world” (1:9). In other words, we’re talking not about a one-time Big Bang in nature or a one-time incarnation in Jesus, but an ongoing, progressive movement continuing in the ever-unfolding creation.

A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else.

The only people that Jesus seemed to exclude were precisely those who refused to know they were ordinary sinners like everyone else. The only thing he excluded was exclusion itself.

When you can honor and receive your own moment of sadness or fullness as a gracious participation in the eternal sadness or fullness of God, you are beginning to recognize yourself as a participating member of this one universal Body. You are moving from I to We.

Did you ever notice that in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells the disciples to proclaim the Good News to “all creation” or “every creature,” and not just to humans (16:15)?

We would have helped history and individuals so much more if we had spent our time revealing how Christ is everywhere instead of proving that Jesus was God.

Did it ever strike you that God gives up control more than anybody in the universe?

Divine perfection is precisely the ability to include what seems like imperfection.