CHRIST, THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA

Christ is everything: divinity and humanity, transcendence and immanence, the beginning and the end of all creation, the center of the visible and invisible world, the primeval source and ultimate goal of our life, the Way, the Truth and the Life.  God is love: he embraces Christ and man in a single act of love, uniting all humanity in his Son.  Christ is the God who becomes "ours" in order to make us "his."  We are an "extension" of Christ. Christian life is Christ living in us.  The "imitation of Christ" means living as members of the Head who embodies all things in himself; it means loving in such a way as to become alike.

Christ is Emmanuel, God-with-us.  In the Eucharist, the Word made flesh "prolongs himself" in us.  He is the life of the Church and of its members, the food nourishing the new man, the viaticum -- the food-for-the-way -- for the earthly pilgrimage, the divinization of created human beings, and the seed of eternal life.  Eucharistic piety is the essence of Christian piety.  By our sharing in the sacrifice and in the sacrament, by our adoration, by our reparation, we, in fact, share in the eternal high priesthood of Christ.

Christ died on the cross for love of us.  His sacrifice calls for our sacrifice in return.  To rise with him we must also die with him.  This is the meaning of Christian penance, which despoils us of the old man and clothes us with the new man according to Christ.  The Cross alone redeems and saves.  In it Christians find their joy: "Fac me cruce inebriari" (Let me be intoxicated by your Cross)!