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Being Christlike 24/7

Encountering Christ in Daily Life

By Bob Laird

I could not but help to reflect on Patricia Bainbridge's post, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" as she sees fellow bloggers (and I would extend that beyond just blogging) harshly criticizing someone, but then telling them that "I'll pray for you."

While each of us is scarred by original sin, each of us is also given the free will to make sound decisions. Decisions often come not only by intuition, but also by care study, thought, counsel, and prayer. Interpersonal relationships are often established and nurtured by sound decisions on how to treat people.

Perhaps the ultimate gift that our Blessed John Paul II gave to us on this subject was his profound insight into the human person. He presented this insight to us in his two monumental works The Theology of the Body and his Apostolic Exhortation on the Family. The first was a series of Wednesday papal addresses given over the period of time from September 1979 to November 1984 and the second was published in 1981.

Libraries are now being written about these works as scholars study and analyze the meaning of the human person as presented not only by a philosopher and a theologian, but also by The Pope.

I must admit that my source of understanding of this subject fell back to one book written in 1985 by Fathers Richard Hogan and John LeVoir (now Bishop LeVoir) titled, Covenant of Love (2nd ed., San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1992). For some reason, these two pastor/scholars found a way to unwrap the work and present it in a simple way.

Each of us is made to the image and likeness of God. Since God manifests Himself on earth in the presence of Jesus Christ, our role model in this life, should be to follow the example of Christ. While WWJD (What would Jesus Do?) was a popular slogan of the '90's, it is still an actual model for us today. "What did Jesus do?" While there are many verbs which accurately describe Christ, the one operative verb that each of us can understand is Love. Jesus loves. So we should love.

How do we love? Pure and simple; we can love by seeing each person that we come in contact is as Christ. After all, if each of us is made in God's image; then each person we come in contact with is also made in God's image. Pure and simply; treat each person as we would treat Christ. If we do so, it seems to me that the rest of life will work out.

So bloggers! We each must think before we act. When we act; we act as if we are blogging to Christ Himself!