meditation of the day

It is not enough to say that Jesus Christ teaches us the Truth about human life. The Christian faith affirms much more. The Truth of life is the Mystery at the origin of all that exists. All religions seek to discover this Truth. Only the Christian, however, will affirm that the Truth became a human being in the womb of a Jewish woman; that he was born as a baby and grew up as a man; that he was followed by people who were struck by the way he lived his life; and that he was executed by some of his opponents but rose from the dead victorious over space and time and is thus still present in his humanity in our midst. Only a Christian would say this. Jesus is the name of a concrete individual man who is the human embodiment of the Truth that all religions seek. He is the Truth made man. This is what we believe. It is not enough to say that Jesus is the name we give to the Truth. Jesus is the man who is the incarnation of the Truth. For this reason, before identifying himself as the Truth, Jesus calls himself the Way. Jesus is the Way to the Truth. To be a Christian is to embrace the Way to the Truth that Jesus is ... we do not seek solutions to the problems of life derived from religious sentiments, spiritual approaches, or philosophical convictions. We do not have answers to questions. In each circumstance of life, whatever it is, we seek not an answer but a Presence, the human presence that is the way to the "Answer," to the Truth. We do not come together as Church to find intellectual answers to our questions about the meaning and purpose of life. This is to reduce to the Church to an ideology. We come together not to find answers but to learn how to recognize and affirm a Presence. The Church is not "our way" of finding answers to our religious quest for the Truth; it is the method through which the Truth becomes humanly present to us. As the prolongation of Christ's presence in the world, it is the method through which the Truth becomes incarnate for us ... We come together as the Church to learn how to recognize the fact of this Presence, and to witness to it in any circumstance of life, especially when there are no answers. Jesus Christ is the way to the Answer. In him, way and answer coincide. - Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete