Years ago, I first mustered the courage to walk into a Catholic church, and I imagined I would stand out like a sore thumb. I assumed the people there would turn me out as soon as they saw me. As far as I knew, churches were for Caucasians who had grown up Christian and not for an Indian like me.
Gathering All Humanity
I was pleasantly surprised to discover quite the opposite. I saw an array of people in so many colors and sizes that it seemed I was part of a living mosaic: Caucasians, Indians, African-Americans, Asians, old and young, single people and families. Never had I expected that worship could draw together so many different people. And yet, the remarkable thing was that we were not merely a mass of disparate individuals packed together, but a symphony of souls gathered towards the altar. I still marvel today at seeing so many different people converged in adoration of Christ on the Cross. The altar on which Christ’s sacrifice is made present in the Eucharist becomes a magnetic pole galvanizing the whole mass of believers.
Today’ s reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians proclaims this reality joyfully with the simple line, “Christ is all in all.” Paul exhorts the church to “strip off the old person,” to cast aside all the attachments of the old life, and to put on the new, “after the likeness of Him who created Him.” All the former divisions among people fade away as they are re-made and Christified. Here, there is no more room for “Greek or Jew, circumcision or uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free man.” Rather, the Christians who gather together in worship and prayer see in each other reflections of Christ, who is the true light illuminating all men. Let the words sink into your ears: “Christ is all in all.”
What More Do We Need?
This declaration of the “all in all” not only strips away the exterior distinctions among men, renewing their identity in the one body of Christ, but heals our interior selves as well. For believers, Christ breathes his life into all the broken areas of reality, both into our own hidden wounds and outwardly into the various gaps of the world outside us. All longing is quenched in Him. As we pray with these words of St. Paul, let us ask ourselves, if Christ truly is “all in all,” what more can we ever desire? Why do we seek any other satisfaction around us, when the treasure par excellence, the Logos that coheres all of reality, has given Himself to us?
Intimacy and Majesty
Let us take to prayer this mystery enfolded within the gift of “Christ who is all in all.” These words call to mind the reflections of St. Augustine in his Confessions, as he mused upon the reality that God dwells within us intimately, closer to us than we are to ourselves, and at the same time encompasses all of reality and time. He is the all which animates our innermost thoughts and experiences, and the all through which the universe was spoken into being. The closer we come to this mystery in prayer, the more deeply we may live in Christ, he who is all in all, the same now, today, and forever.
