Becoming Whole
I am amazed by Wilfrid Stinissen. Some of the insights, while possibly not original, are said in a way that makes sense at a level I cannot explain. Perhaps it is because he is a Carmelite, perhaps he is just particularly gifted in writing about the spirituality of Scripture. Whatever the reason, some of the passages from Nourished by the Word really speak to me.
from Nourished by the Word Wilfrid StinissenAdam is an incomplete first sketch of Christ. Adam is created in God's image, but Christ is God's image. This relationship to Christ remains even after Adam's Fall. The most profound thing about him, that he is created in God's image, is not destroyed by the Fall. In an indirect way, we get right from the Bible's first chapter the consolation that even fallen humans have a likeness to Christ.Something in them is unaffected by the sin. All of our earthly life is a wandering, a seeking, in order to completely find our identity in this unaffected part.
All of life is a search for completion, which is why when we find that completion in anything less than God, there is a hollowness, a vaccuum that we cannot deny. When we try to stuff the God-shaped void with possessions, power, sex, glory, self, anything less than God, the hole remains, and now is more like an infected wound, we are aware of it--it aches and hurts all the time. We groan in our emptiness, unhappy ourselves and needing to share our unhappiness.
