A chip from the same block - the Image of Christ

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 3rd week in Easter time 

April 20, 2021: Acts 7:51 -8:1a; John 6: 30-35.

Sometimes when we speak to the youngsters (even to others for that matter), about the suffering that Jesus underwent, about his endurance of passion, his capacity to surrender into the hands of God, his capacity to forgive etc., they tend to retort saying: 'but after all, he was son of God! he could bear that!" That is a heretic way of thinking, we need to be very careful about it!

Yes, Jesus was the Son of God but he was a human person and fully so. He was not appearing to be a human being, he WAS a human being. As the letter to the Hebrews says, he was like us, a human being in everything! That is infact the most challenging part of our faith. That Jesus lived our life, he went through all that we experience ourselves: feelings and temptations, sufferings and anxieties, irritations and all of human realities. The challenge is that we live in his footsteps. The early Church was highly conscious of this call and we have today in the first reading the fruit of this.

The first reading today presents to us, the first martyr Stephen  - he was a chip from the same block as Christ. The apostles performed miracles and healings, just as Jesus did and of course the Word records them all. But as death, it records only that of Stephen, because he died like Christ! Just like the apostles lived like Christ, Stephen died like Christ! There is a special call in this - to imitate the life of Christ, life-project of Christ and the life style of Christ, right upto death. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ, said St. Paul...who was standing there as young Saul and watching Stephen die! Oh what beginnings the Church had!

Do we carry the same spirit within us today, as people of God - the spirit of Christ? When we do, we shall not only imitate Christ, we shall become alter christus, another Christ... that is what we are called to be: to be a chip from that same block.