Reading Under the Other Sun

  When the Son of God, the fullness of personal existence, becomes the Son of the Earth, he allows himself to be contained by the universe at one point in space and time; but in reality the universe is contained in him. He will not use his body to possess and exploit the world, but by his constantly eucharistic attitude, he makes it a body of unity, flesh which is both cosmic and sacrificial. In him the world becomes a spiritual corporeity, not dematerialized but quickened by the Spirit. Willingly he buries his luminous corporeity in our suffering and burdensome corporeity, so that on the Cross, and in the sudden radiant dawn of Easter, everything is bathed in light; not only the universe, but all human effort to transform it. That is why the body and blood of Christ are not just grapes and wheat, but bread and wine! In and around him, fallen matter ceases to enforce its necessary consequences and constraints, becoming once again a means of communion, a temple of celebration and me...

  Eternity begins here and now, in our ability to do away with objectification, to see that in Christ the door of clever ignorance which is shut between me and my neighbour is for ever broken down. In eternity our neighbour is no longer an impersonal object 'that one' - classified, catalogued, forgotten, but comes to life as profoundly secret, unfathomable as God himself or as I am to myself. Then I am set on a destined path as if entering a land of childhood, knowing very well that, in the words of St Gregory, it will take me all eternity to go 'from beginning to beginning, by way of beginnings without end' (Commentary on the Song of Songs, PG,XLIV,941 A). Eternity is a first time, continually renewed. The miracle of the first time: the first time you realized that this person would be your friend, the first time, in childhood, that you heard that heartrending music, the first time that your child smiled at you, the first time. Then you become used to it. But etern...

  …clots of blood fall from the face of God and the Man of sorrows is resurrected. He and everything. Him in everything. Everything in Him. The children of Rachel are resurrected, Lazarus leaps out of the tomb for good, the smell of roasted fish on the shores of the lake, the long hair of the harlot, that moment when he makes them lie down on the grass to receive from the five loaves, where Peter was forgiven, and every second of your wretched life where your veins were full of life: all is risen. Everything begins; one can try to love, since there is no more death, since death itself is full of God.  Olivier Clément, L’ Autre Soleil (Paris: Stock, 1975), 109. Translation by Fr. M