
<p>The sapiential depth of this text appears very quickly, in the words <em>in Christ Jesus</em>. What is the meaning of this <em>in</em>? When Paul is suddenly struck down on his way to Damascus, he hears these words from the Lord Jesus: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” [Acts 9:4] Already the whole “Mystery of Christ” which will be Paul’s gospel is implicit in these words, which are much more than mere metaphor. In persecuting Jesus’ disciples, Paul had been attacking Jesus himself. Something unprecedented has taken place: Jesus, risen from the dead, is actually and physically identified with those who have believed in him. You are the body of Christ, Paul will tell the new Christians and he means just that.</p>
<p>From this decisive moment and from Jesus’ words, the Mystery of Christ unfolds. Paul preaches and teaches this in his letters, especially those to the Romans, Galatians, Colossians and Ephesians. The new synthetic scope and sapiential depth that we find in these letters is the immediate expression of the new reality itself.</p>
<p>I shall attempt briefly to sketch the shape of this new reality that has come into the world in the risen Christ by recalling some of its main attributes as Paul proclaims them, creating not only a new theology for the new reality but often a new language as well.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 30px;">• The new life is <em>in Christ</em> and <em>in him</em>. Paul never tires of telling us of this new participatory relationship with Jesus Christ that has been opened to human beings. This is not “merely poetry” but reality, a reality in which the secret heart of poetry may be found.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 30px;">• This participation in Christ, <em>in the body of Christ</em>, is at the same time a new participation in God, divinization. God dwells within the baptized Christian, not merely as “other” but in a unitive relationship, as one spirit.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 30px;">• With this new divine immanence comes the new freedom that Paul proclaims in his letter to the Galatians. Freed from the many prescriptions of the Jewish Law, from circumcision to dietary limitations, the Christian is to awaken to the liberty of the children of God within God’s Creation, and to an expansive vision of the breadth, the length, the height and the depth. The mystery of Christ comprehends all reality, God and all that God has created.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 30px;">• In balance with this the new freedom in the Holy Spirit, the Christian participates in a new unity of all reality, a unity which gradually expands in the course of history from its initial seed which is the Church, itself ever growing.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 30px;">• In the final words of our starting text from Ephesians Chapter 2, one finds a simple structure, which pervades like a watermark the Mystery of Christ. Paul is writing of the reconciliation of Jews and Gentiles in Christ: <em>for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father</em>. In Christ the vertical union with God and the horizontal communion between human beings have been joined, producing that figure of the cross, which is the baptismal sign of the disciple of Christ. The Mystery of Christ, however, does not close like a box or a legal verdict. Rather, it opens into everything around it like a growing tree, like the man Jesus stretched upon the tree. It is the Tree of Life, reaching into the whole Creation.</p>
<p>The Event of Christ, finally, is a burning bush of fresh life, an undying seed of newness. The unprecedented phenomenon of the modern West, despite its huge shadow, is witness and promise of the infinite generativity, the exponential fire of newness that has been ignited by Christ and continues to bear fruit in this world through human beings.</p>