Christmas Thoughts

 To be saved by Christ, to me personally, means to be united to Him so much so that I participate in the inner life of the Trinity through Him. 

This implies several notes, primarily a relational love between myself and Christ, the fact that this love started with my baptism and that I grow in that love or detract from it day in and day out, and that it did not originate from me. Let us work through these points backward. 

To begin, I did not seek out Jesus. In fact, I tended to walk away from Him more often than I enjoyed being in His Presence. But due to causes and effects beyond my control, walking with Jesus became a beautiful and encouraging experience, and as time moved forward I chose to invest in our relationship more and more often. The relationship started, however, in the very beginning by my baptism, a cause of effects that I was not in control of. 

This was the very beginning of my relationship with Jesus, thus rendering it more of a process than a one-time event, due to my material and temporal mode of existence. I do not know what the sequence of events in our relationship looks like from His view in Heaven, but I do know that for me it is a daily process of moving forward, backtracking, and trying again. 

Thus far it seems evident that our relationship was initiated by God’s gift of grace in my heart (baptism); that our relationship exists due to His gifts of faith, hope, and love that allow me to love Jesus now (without having ever seen Him or heard Him) despite my fallen nature; that as a material creature, our relationship is as difficult to navigate as any other. 

Communication is often lacking, it is always hard to find the time, and sometimes He feels just too far away. But with a steady diet of grace and my choice to accept it, faith, hope, and love persevere and our relationship continues to evolve, deepen, and grow.

This brings us to the love that we share and what kind of relationship it is. 

The purpose of being saved is for Christ to have His Bride (each and every member of the Church) with Him forever in Heaven. 

This can only happen through the Father’s creation of and love for mankind, and through Christ’s radical and spousal gift of His entire Self, both becoming like His beloved in Her flesh, but also making her like Himself, elevating Her humanity and introducing Her to His Divinity. This is the kind of nature-fixing love that every member of His Church is called to from the moment of Baptism, and thus it is the end goal of my personal relationship with Him. 

Like any bridegroom, He can present Himself to any potential bride on a personal level and the choice of life with Him is up to her. So even though baptism often happens in infancy, a relationship is still up to the will of each baptized individual. If she chooses life with Him, then He promises her the contemplation of what is infinitely good, true, and beautiful; He promises her eternal life with Him; He promises her the fulfillment of her deepest desires, thus literally leaving her without a single want or care. 

If she does not choose life with Him, then she chooses knowledge of what is evil, false, and ugly, thus embodying those qualities herself; she chooses eternal life without Him, which is the absence of Love forever; and she is left with every desire unsatisfied, all of them feeding on themselves forever, always growing and further infesting every inch and moment of her existence. But most importantly, this damnation (as the opposite of the salvation offered), is choosing to forfeit her role as His bride, united to Him and thus partaking in the perfect, endless, and infinite Love of the Holy Trinity. This is what He promises and this is what she would be refusing.

As for me, I choose to grow in my relationship with Jesus. Someday, when I die, God willing, we will have reached a spousal love in our relationship and that is the mode in which I will exist for all eternity. 

To be saved is to be His bride. 

He is good, true, and beautiful. 

He does not lie, so His promises are secure, and I know that with Him, I would be safe and happy forever. To be safe and happy is at the deepest depths of what I desire, and I can not help but happily and willingly accept His Word and His Love, and follow Him into eternity by continuing to grow in faith, hope, and love of Him. 

Let us usher the Newborn Christ into our hearts this season and allow the seeds of our relationship with Him to be planted in our hearts, seeds of an Everlasting Love.

Love,

Laney <3