Ideal Personality in Christian Liturgy

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?