Richard Rohr: Christ: From the Beginning of Time
Many people don’t realize that the Apostle Paul never met the historical Jesus and hardly ever quotes Jesus directly. In almost all of Paul’s preaching and writing, he refers to the Eternal Christ Mystery or the Risen Christ rather than Jesus of Nazareth before his death and resurrection. The Risen Christ is the only Jesus that Paul ever knew! This makes Paul a fitting mediator for the rest of us, since the Omnipresent Risen Christ is the only Jesus we will ever know as well (see 2 Corinthians 5:16-17).
Jesus’ historical transformation (“resurrected flesh”) allows us to more easily experience the Presence that has always been available since the beginning of time, a Presence unlimited by space or time, the promise and “guarantee” of our own transformation (see 1 Corinthians 15:1-58). In Jesus, the Timeless Christ became time bound so we could enjoy the personal divine gaze (see 1 John 1-2).
Whenever the material and the spiritual coincide, there is the Christ.
Jesus fully accepted that human-divine identity and walked it into history. Henceforth, the Christ “comes again” whenever we are able to see the spiritual and the material coexisting, in any moment, in any event, and in any person. All matter reveals Spirit, and Spirit needs matter to “show itself”! I believe “the Second Coming of Christ” happens whenever and wherever we allow this to be utterly true for us.