May the road to Easter lead us to our authentic Christian life

When President Jimmy Carter died, the world lost a great man of faith. In some way, it seemed that as long as he was here with us, engaging in his selfless work for others, there was hope – for the world and for us. For me, his passing prompted a need to learn more than I knew about President Carter, so I shelved the book I had been reading and turned to writings about our former president.

I discovered that President Carter had a favorite modern author – Philip Yancey, and his favorite book of Yancey’s was “The Jesus I Never Knew.” He shared, “More than any religious book that I know, this presents Jesus Christ in vivid and practical terms as personifying the finest human traits of peace, justice, humility, benevolence, forgiveness and compassionate love. At the same time, his divinity is never forgotten.”

I smiled as I reflected on this, having read, enjoyed and been encouraged by this very same book myself. Of course, I was also happy to know I shared something meaningful with a man I greatly admired.

The jacket of Yancey’s book promised to uncover “a Jesus who is brilliant, creative, challenging, fearless, compassionate, unpredictable and ultimately satisfying …,” which it did. The one characteristic that wasn’t mentioned on the list is the one that makes all the others possible – authentic.

Jesus was authentic – he was accepting of himself and others, he embraced his brokenness, prayed through his fear and was devoted to the will of his Father, staying on his life’s course even though he knew it meant both rejection by those he loved and a painful death. Jesus understood the value of being true to himself and he hoped for that trait in others.

It was the authenticity and honesty of Nathanael that Jesus affirmed in saying, “Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him” – in spite of Nathanael’s insult of Jesus: “What good can come out of Nazareth?”

But Jesus saw into Nathanael’s heart, as he sees into ours, and what he saw was not a man who smiled and bowed or offered his hand in friendship only to sling insults and barbs when Jesus turned his back, but, rather, a man who lived with integrity and honesty, who had “no guile in him.” 

Nathanael was like the blessed servant of whom St. Francis of Assisi spoke: “Blessed is the servant who loves his brother as much when he is sick and useless as when he is well and can be of service to him. And blessed is he who loves his brother as well when he is afar off as when he is by his side, and who would say nothing behind his back he might not, in love, say before his face.”

Personally, I often wonder what God sees when he looks into my heart, because another painful truth is that the easiest person to fool about our lapses in honesty and integrity is our self. It might have been that way for Jesus if he hadn’t spent so much time in prayer.

We live in a world where deceit is the norm and honesty is rare. We are encouraged to be and to do whatever it takes to be successful, to be noticed, to be admired, to be loved, when, in truth, we should strive only to be and do whatever it takes to live the Gospel. 

Because this is not a simple task, Lent has served as a time of honing and discovering, through prayer, fasting and times of solitude, so we can be better assured that our authentic self is prepared to embrace our Risen Lord at Easter.