The Whole Christ

I ran into an interesting article written by J. Murphy-O'Connor in Liber Annuus 1999. It addresses St. Paul and his letters on the body of Christ. Here is how it starts:

One of the fundamental struggles of Paul’s ministry was to make Christ as
central to the lives of his converts as it was to his own. Their resistance is
not difficult to explain because we share it. At heart we are all theists who
pay lip service to the centrality of Christ. What I mean
is clearly illustrated by the fact that we think of our lives as “doing the
will of God” rather than as “following Christ”. We pray and make retreats in
order to “discern the will of God”. We invoke the aid of spiritual directors
to help us achieve clarity in that quest and to ensure that we do not deceive
ourselves. I have never heard a retreat master or a spiritual director
discourage such efforts to penetrate what is assumed to be a mystery by saying
“Imitate Christ”, even though they will admit in theory that Christ is “the
wisdom and the power of God” (1 Cor 1:24), who said, “I am the way, and
the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).

Go here to read the rest of the article: http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/sbf/Books/LA49/49181JMC.pdf