11 CHAPTER 1 Christ as our Passover — the Interpretative Key of the Mystery of Man and God At the beginning of his epoch-making pontificate, which centered on preparing the Church and the world for a conscious entry into the third Christian millennium, St. John Paul II wrote that “Christ, the Redeemer of the world, is the one who penetrated in a unique, unrepeatable way into the mystery of man and entered his ‘heart.’” These words of the saintly pope become more profound in reference to the famous statement of the Second Vatican Council: The truth is that only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord. Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling.4 The highest and most fundamental vocation of every man is to become authentically Christlike, a “son or daughter in the Son,” because the life of every person is a story of becoming. We carry the ingrained law of over time becoming who we already are, thanks to the gift of our vocation. During our lifetime, through everyday choices, decisions, and acts, we become either sons in the Son or children of disobedience. If we were sons by nature, we would not need time because we would have lived immediately in eternity. However there is only One Son. Those destined to become sons and daughters in Him need time to accept the Son and let Him be formed within them (cf. Gal 4:19). The life of every man seen from such a perspective is kairos, the time of salvation, the time of becoming the image of the One in Whom and for Whom everything was created (cf. Col 1:15–20). This transformation does not only involve abandoning “the old man” with his burden of sin but also lessening the distance between 4 St. John Paul II, Encyclical Redemptor Hominis, March 4, 1979, No. 8, in http://www.vatican. va/john-paul-II/encyclicals/documents.
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