Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
After a bit of a hiatus, we're continuing today our reflections on Franciscan spirituality, which we stopped at about the beginning of August.
When we last left off, we were speaking about spiritual Christocentrism, so having Christ at the center of our spiritual life.
Today we're just going to say a few words specifically about that search for Christ.
Search for Jesus and the infinite person that He is, is really the most urgent need that we have.
Everyone is a Christian, at least in potency, if not in actual fact.
To be a Christian in act means I actually profess and live the faith of Jesus Christ.
To be a Christian in potency means simply I have the tremendous potential to belong to Christ, to be a living member of His Church.
In that sense, no one's excluded from the plan of God.
So it's very important that the unconscious and perhaps confused and misguided search for Christ that many people make, it's important that it become a conscious search for truth and light and love, a conscious search which engages all of our energy, all of our capacity.
The Lord says in Jeremiah 29 verses 13 and 14, when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, says the Lord.
And the search for Christ is a personal search, and our individualistic society can at least appreciate that aspect.
Only the Church can present to us Jesus in all His authenticity and offer him to us in His sacred mysteries.
The Church offers us the means that create in us that bond of life and love to Christ.
It hinges on us, though, to not place an obstacle to the workings of God's grace.
If we don't aim at this personal conquest, this conquest of fully embracing the divine reality that is in us through baptism, if we don't fully embrace God's grace, then Christ will be more like a stranger to us than a friend or a spouse.
Our Christianity will turn into just an empty habit, formalistic, yes, maybe respectful of the tradition to be a Christian, to go to Mass, but it won't be life for us.
It won't be a true encounter with the Lord, which everyone, if they understood what that meant, would desire more than anything, actually.
Every one of us has at least the potential to become like our Lord.
That's why we were created, to become like him.
We even have the means necessary for it.
We have a mind, which is open to the truth, can be open to the truth.
We have a will, which can choose what's truly good for us.
We have our affective capacities, our physical energies, inclinations, tastes, attractions, temperaments, our own way to react and respond in front of all the realities that present themselves to us.
As a side note, we may have shared this the other day, I think, but it's worth repeating.
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity says that Jesus has something to say to each one of us, and this is what He would say, this is what He says.
My child, give me your heart, that in you and through you in a life of union I may love, or rather we may love, the Father ardently.
Give me your mind, your eyes, your hands, your whole being.
I wish in you and by you to live, as it were, a second life, holy of love, which will be the complement and continuation of my earthly life at Nazareth and in Palestine.
This is what the Lord wants from us.
He wants us to give him the freedom to live His life again through us, potentially through you.
It's with the gifts of our mind and our heart and affections and our temperament and our abilities that we have to search for Jesus.
With all of those gifts, we should try to know him as best as we can, to love him as best as we can, to serve him according to our strength and our energy.
Unfortunately, He usually gets the leftovers from us, right?
Not the best that we have to offer, unfortunately.
A sincere search for him requires everything that we have.
God gives himself to us in Christ.
He gives himself to everyone who searches for him with a sincere heart.
And since God gives us everything, guess what He wants back from us?
He wants everything, actually.
Every one of us is a special word of God with a small w.
God doesn't repeat himself.
We all have a certain uniqueness to us.
And every one of us who searches for Christ, it's as if we're searching for the truest and most genuine sense of ourselves, of who we are.
The true significance of who I am, of my life, as a word of God, without having to be a carbon copy of someone else.
And slowly, Jesus, in His own anxious search for us, reveals himself.
And as He does, we begin to understand not only him, but we begin to understand ourselves as well.
And we find the fullness of our being and of our meaning and purpose in life in him.
So the search for Christ must be a personal search.
In our next reflection, we'll talk more about another important aspect of searching for Jesus.
Let's just ask Our Lady today for the grace to truly begin to search for her Son with everything that we have, remembering those words from Jeremiah, When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, says the Lord.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.