Christ's reality is not limited to saving souls....

A quote by Father Raimon Panikkar seems appropriate today when so many were expecting a rapture or the end of the world.

Although history must not be neglected, neither may Christ's historical role be ignored, Christ's reality is not limited to saving souls, making them, so to speak, ascend to heaven. Christ's full reality cannot be split into three nor reduced to one function. Christ is the Only Begotten and First Begotten, Mary's son and Son of Man, the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega, this is why his reality transcends the categories of substance and individuality, as well as other concepts that need to be reeaximined, like those of creation and redemption.

A spiritual comment may help us understand what such a christophany accentuates. Our fidelity to and love of Christ does not alienate us from our kindred—which includes angels, animals, plants, the earth, and, of course, men and women. Christ is a symbol of union, friendship, and love, not a wall that separates. Jesus is certainly a sign of contradiction, not because he separates us from others but rather because he heals our hypocrisies, fears, and egoism, while leaving us as vulnerable as himself. Instead of rejecting others because they are pagan, nonbelievers, sinners—whereas we are righteous and justified—Jesus impels us toward others and makes us see the negative which is in us too. Insofar as we share love, sympathy, suffering, and joy with all our neighbors, we discover the true face of Christ that is in all of us. “You have done it to me” (Matthew 25:40) is no simple moral exhortation to do good; it is rather an ontological assertion of Christ’s presence in the other, in every other, in the smallest of the small—not for the purpose of discovering an “other” hidden in the neighbor but in order to discover the neighbor as part of ourselves. In fact, neither those on the right nor the left are conscious of the presence of Christ (Matthew 25:37) because what matters is the human face of the neighbor.

[Part 3 Christophany: The Christic Experience: Chapter 6—The Protological, Historical, and Eschatological Christ Is a Unique and Selfsame Reality, Distended in Time, Extended in Space, and Intentional in Us p. 168]