Christocentrism of Charism – Buggert - CarmelStream

ahistorical essence which exists fully in its first moment of existence. Human nature is a project or
task. Human nature to be all that it can be demands a history of self-realization through human
freedom. We must "do" ourselves to "be" ourselves.
Thus for Rahner the response of Jesus' human freedom to God's total self-gift is a response
that is made throughout the history of Jesus, constituting that history and hence the very being of
Jesus. It is through his obedience to the Father, obedience unto death, that Jesus "does" Jesus and
hence becomes more and more who and what he is, the perfect image of God, the Son of God. The
total self-communication of God to Jesus and Jesus' total response to this self-communication
reaches its own climax in Jesus' own death and resurrection. It is in his death that Jesus collects and
sums up or recapitulates his own history of free obedience to God and totally hands himself over to
the Father. Jesus' death is Jesus' total "yes" of free obedience to God. cxxxvii In this total self-emptying
or response to God, which is his death, itself enabled by God's total self-gift to Jesus' freedom, Jesus
has totally actualized his infinite openness to God, his capax Dei. He has become "fully human" and
hence divine. He is now, through his obedience, obedience unto death, the perfect Son of God, the
perfect sacrament or expression of the divine. In turn, in raising Jesus from the dead God has
accepted and given eternal validity to the total "yes" of Jesus to God which occurred in his death.
Jesus dies into God. The resurrection constitutes the dialectical reality of God's self-gift and Jesus'
response, which culminated in his death, an eternal reality.
Hence Jesus' freedom and obedience, culminating in his own act of total self-kenosis in his
death, as well as Jesus' being raised by God are all the history of the incarnation itself, moments of
one process or history beginning with Jesus' conception and ending with his death-resurrection.
They are constitutive of Jesus' history of becoming more and more who he is, the Son of God.
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