Lesson 9

MEETING – POINTS WITH CHRIST

To see Christ only as a teacher who gave the world a new and beautiful message is to see only one aspect of His life and work. He not only taught, but He opened up a new way of life for every man and woman of every age. He founded a new people, the People God.

We have seen how the People of God gather with Christ around the altar in the sacrifice of the Mass and share together the Eucharistic meal (the meal of thanksgiving). In the Mass Christ Himself becomes the very food and drink of their souls under the form of bread and wine. All united together, the People of God offer themselves with Christ and in Christ to the Father, making a priceless gift of themselves in this way.

The Bible uses other pictures to describe this People of God. Christ spoke of Himself as a Shepherd who gathers the sheep into one safe fold. “I am the Good Shepherd,” He said. “MY sheep know me and I know them, just as my Father knows me and I know him. And for these sheep I am laying down my life. I have other sheep too which do not belong to this fold. I must bring them in too; they will listen to my voice; so there will be one fold and one shepherd” (John 10, 14-16).

No man has ever spoken words like that about himself; and we have seen how in truth Jesus did lay down His life for His sheep. Christ also called Himself the door by which the sheep can enter into the fold.

The Bible often speaks of God’s people as a field, especially a field where grape vines grow. The Lord of the vineyard tends it with care, visits it often and watches over the growing fruit. Further, Christ, as we have already seen, calls Himself the vine : “I am the vine, you are its branches. If a man lives on in me and I in him, then he will yield abundant fruit; separated from me, you have no power to do anything” (John 15, 5).

Finally, the People of God are called a body – the Body of Christ who is the Head, and we who are the members :

“The body is one and has many members, but all the members, many though they are, are one body; and so it is with Christ. It was in one Spirit that all of us, whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, were baptized into one body. All of us have been given to drink of the one Spirit.

“Now the body is not one member, it is many. If the foot should say, `Because I am not the hand I do not belong to the body,’ would it then no longer belong to the body? If the ear should say, `Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,' would it then no longer belong to the body? If the body were all eye, what would happen to our hearing? As it is, God has set each member of the body in the place he wanted it to be. If all the members were alike, where would the body be? There are, indeed, many different members, but one body…