Fully alive

        And you who were once estranged . . . . . . he has now reconciled in his fleshly body . . . . . .

        I can't help but think of our redemption through the body of Jesus. It wasn't just that he died for us, as if that might be enough in itself. It is intimately linked, fused if you will, to the radical realization that God became man. Yes this was God but the redemption came from becoming fully human. Human in every way. Jesus lived as a human from that first scream of breath at birth, through being nursed, crawling, the first few steps, the childhood games, the pain of mistakes and learning limits on this flesh and bone. The desires of adolescence and confusing and new relationships.  Take the full breadth of humanity and Jesus willingly took it on and yes on through torture and death and still, rising to new life as we too are promised.

        The reconciliation is His body being, existing and loving like our body. Same body, same blood, same senses, same opportunities, same temptations, same tumult. I won't shy away from it, yes even His sexual nature is what he embraced and lived with. Even if few would even try to expose and know that He was, Jesus was a sexual being too. That is part of our redemption too. 

          The glory of God is the human person fully alive.  Those are the words of St. Irenaues.  Fully alive is what Jesus became. If we are to find redemption, it is in all aspects of humanity. We were created to love. We are created with emotions. Even Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple. It is also said that emotions are not wrong, it is what you do with them. Jesus embraced and engaged all people and especially and fully in himself as a human, breathing loving, feeling man.

       We are called to love, not rampantly and at the expense of others for we are all equal, all loved, all creations of God to be respected.  But in that respect, there is an intimacy and obligation to love as Jesus loved and lived. To whatever extent we are called to, we must live and love in all of our humanity.

      For living and loving, fully alive, we pray. 

      

Colossians 1:15-23

 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for inhim all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

 And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him— provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel.