Ideal
Personality in the Light of Christian Liturgy By Rev Fr Paul Ikechukwu OGUJIOFFOR
Christ
is the ideal personality. When Christians meet Christ in and through the
liturgy they are transformed in their daily encounters and engagements because
Christ the True Man (cf. The Nicean Creed) gives the ideal personality. Each
encounter with Christ in the liturgy defines, shapes and brings about ideal
personality, which is holiness of life.
Ideal
personality is a liturgical treasure that is engraved intrinsically by Christ
through the Church’s liturgical life in the lives of Christians. The reality of
Christian life is that which we shall explore here through ideal personality
that is fruition, a full realization, blossoming and flourishing of the
liturgical dimension of Christian life.
Every
form of life flows from God, who is life itself and sustains all in being, but
man is free and has a free will. He can drift and has often drifted away from
God through sin. Human life without God, like a branch cut off from its trunk,
will wither. Not only man’s origin is derived from God, but also his survival
and flourishing. Therefore, a spiritual experience of God is a growth in
holiness of life. It is in its nature holistic, that is to say it involves
one’s entire being, one’s own thoughts, words and gestures that indicate and
include divine symbols and signs as well as the involvement of the whole
community that is in encounter with God. This encounter with God is not a
private affair.
During
celebration of the Sacrifice of Mass Christ the True Man transforms the
oblation into his Body and Blood and Christians into ideal personality through
the action of the Holy Spirit. This brings out the fact that there is always
two transformation that goes around at the Eucharistic celebration (cf.
Eucharistic Prayer III, Respice, quae
sumus, in oblatione Ecclesiae tuae et, agnoscens Hostiam, cuius voluisti
immolatione placari, concede, ut qui Corpore et Sanguine Filii tui reficimur,
Spiritu eius Sancto replete, unum corpus et unus spiritus inveniamur in
Christo-Look, we pray upon the oblation of your Church and, recognizing the
sacrificial Victim by whose death you reconcile us to yourself, grant that we,
who are nourished by the Body and Blood of your Son and filled with his Holy
Spirit, may become one body, one spirit in Christ.). Indeed in the
Eucharistic celebration Christians meet Christ the True man who transforms
them. By partaking of the Holy Communion Christians got transformed and they
become like Christ, hence the Father sees them in his Son.
When
through liturgy Christians meet Christ, it changes their life for Christ is the
liturgy and through it gives ideal personality, this is because in what is
going on they benefit from it for the work of the Spirit does not depend on
Christians. In this mystery, the grace does not depend merely on the
Christian’s disposition, watching or time rather what happens is Christ is
present and is operating with the collaboration of the Holy Spirit.
Christians
in liturgical encounters undergo processes of change and orientations as a form
of drawing more closer to God, hence their lives begins with baptism giving
them identity of ideal personality manifested in their lives of love. This
concrete manifestation of love is observed from their daily lives starting from
the family the nuclear church. In this nuclear church self sacrifices and
values of ideal personality are learnt through the parents and guardians, which
make for easy and sound comprehension of a well celebrated liturgy.
Can
Christians possibly practice their faith individually and alone without being
in communion in a given or know liturgical Christian community? What is indeed
a Christian life that has liturgy as its foundation? Can there be a Christian
life totally devoid of liturgical dimension? What is the characteristic
essentiality of liturgy in a Christian life?
