The Great I Am

Jesus: The Seven Secrets to Ever After

“I Am” Meaning? Christ shared seven “self-improvement” steps to becoming the best possible version of you — through Him

God became man to show us The Way. The first question Jesus asks: “What are you looking for?” (John 1:38).

We are born restless, needing more. As the Church fathers said: “God became man that man might become God.’’ He tells us who He is so that we might learn who we are.

More than 300 times spanning the entire Bible, from Genesis (15:1) to Revelation (22:16), God is called “I Am.” Like children imitating Dad, we answer: “Here I am, Lord.”

Mary answered her calling with her own “I am,” answer: “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me,” a Fiat meaning to become “wholly God’s because He is wholly ours.” Her son builds upon that Biblical “I am” tradition.

Meant to be: Becoming a better you

“When we are truly ourselves, we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are,’’ Thomas Merton writes.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: “The revelation of the ineffable name ‘I Am who Am’ contains then the truth that God alone IS…God is the fullness of Being and of every perfection, without origin and without end. All creatures receive all that they are and have from Him, but He alone is His very being, and He is of Himself everything that He is.” (CCC, 213).

Jesus shared seven steps

Seven is the Biblical number of perfection and completion. There are seven sacraments throughout a lifetime. Jesus’ seven “I Am” declarations are sacred self-improvement steps we follow through life’s journey.

Here are the seven steps to becoming more like our Creator:

1. You are what you eat and drink

“I am the bread of life” (John, 6:35). St. Augustine explains: “When we eat the Body of Christ, we become the Body of Christ.”

You are what you eat.

Bread as food and a person? The bread of life is both “an invitation to faith” and the Eucharist: eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus.

The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible stresses: “these two halves of the sermon work in tandem,” where “eating is believing” and “believing leads to eating.”

The one thing God doesn’t control is your ongoing choice: Christ or something else.

“Again, the drink we give Him is our brokenness, our worldliness, our sin,” Father Michael Gaitley writes. “The drink He gives us is His love and mercy, His tenderness and friendship. That is the life of the Spirit.”

Gaitley adds, “we all have our ways of dealing with stress. If it’s not drugs or alcohol, it may be food, television video games, movies, music, or even pornography. The way of the Christian, however, is to find relief from the anxieties of life primarily by turning in faith to our Almighty Father. He has the power to calm the storms of our lives… He sends His Word who proceeds to tell us ‘I AM; do not be afraid.’’’

Manna, fed to the ancient Jews in the desert, means “what is that” because the ancient Jews didn’t understand the gift of food they were receiving. Bishop Robert Barron explains:

“The ark of the covenant contained the law of God and the manna from heaven, and was surrounded by the mysterious ‘showbread’ or ‘bread of the presence.’ Now, in the true tabernacles found in our churches, we find the living law, the true manna, and the definitive bread of the presence.”

In The Diary of Maria Faustina Kowalska, a long series of conversations from the 1930s, Jesus tells the first canonized saint of the 21st century:

“I desire to unite Myself with human souls; My great delight is to unite Myself with souls. Know, My daughter, that when I come to a human heart in Holy Communion, My hands are full of all kinds of graces which I want to give to the soul. But souls do not even pay any attention to Me; they leave Me to Myself and busy themselves with other things. Oh, how sad I am that souls do not recognize love! They treat Me as a dead object.” (Diary, 1385).

2. You are what you love, what you’re drawn toward

“I am the light of the world.” (John, 8:12).The Greeks had two words for life: bios (a temporal life ending in death) and Zoe (eternal, immortal life). Christ’s light replaces darkness with something visible to all who can see.

“Christianity is, above all, a way of seeing,’’ Barron explains. “Everything else in Christian life flows from and circles around the transformation of vision. Christians see differently, and that is why their prayer, their worship, their action, their whole way of being in the world have a distinctive accent and flavor. And Jesus is the way to see.”

Why resist the light? Imagine sleeping in a dark room when someone flips on a bright bedroom light. It’s jarring, too much light at once, so you immediately cover your eyes.

Jesus similarly said we prefer to stay in darkness when we know we’re doing something wrong (John, 3:19) or prefer the praise of certain people in our lives over the praise of God (John 5:44, 12:43).

“The Spirit of the world, who is Satan, tries to get us to forget…he moves us to make idols of our spouse or girlfriend as if a creature could fully satisfy the longing for love that moves the heart of a child of God. He gets us to think that we must earn love and become ‘somebody’ to be loved. But we already are somebody. We’re the children of God!”

Dogmas (true principles), the Cathechism argues, are “lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of faith.” (CCC 89).

3. You are where you are going, the goal you are moving toward

“I am the door of the sheep” (John, 10:7). Jesus asks us to both seek and knock, warning that a thief or robber will “sneak in another way.”

But the shepherd uses the door the right way. The sheep “know his voice.” The real relationship is quickly recognized.

Do you know where you’re going? When we are still and quiet and pray, the quiet can open our heart and conscience to the Voice. We are called. To do things, to go places, to join causes, or pursue vocations. We hear the call.

Baptism is called a door to the Church and the other Sacraments of life. Death is also called a door to the supernatural and afterlife beyond Earth. “The doors of homes, the ‘domestic churches,’ and of the great family which is the Church must be open to all of them. “No one is without a family in this world: the Church is a home and family for everyone, especially those who ‘labor and are heavy laden.’” (CCC, 1658).

4. You are who you trust and follow

I am the good shepherd” (John 10:11). Who protects you from the wolf, the demons who want to eat or destroy you? The “hireling,” sees the wolf coming and runs. The good shepherd, committed to his sheep, lays down his life.

Shepherds were the first witnesses called to meet the Holy Family. And when Jesus tells Peter to form the Church and gives him keys the Kingdom, he adds a specific calling to the first pope: “Feed My sheep.”

Note that King David himself was a shepherd called to lead and show the way.

The Good Shepherd ought to be the model and “form” of the bishop’s pastoral office. Conscious of his weaknesses, “the bishop… can have compassion for those who are ignorant and erring. He should not refuse to listen to his subjects whose welfare he promotes as of his very own children…. The faithful… should be closely attached to the bishop as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is to the Father.” (CCC 428).

5. You are a miraculous gift, what you hope and dream and more

“I am the resurrection and the life,” (John 11:25). Jesus alone offers meaning, our hope for rebirth, second chances, and a life worth living. St. John Paul the Great called this the Law of the Gift.

“What becomes especially clear as the Mass comes to its high point is the relevance of the Law of the Gift, a principle centrally on display throughout the Bible and the tradition of the Church,” Barron writes. “That axiom can be stated simply enough: one’s being increases and is enhanced in the measure that one gives it away.”

Jesus speaks of being “the Resurrection and the Life,” after raising Lazarus from the dead. He uses the term literally: loving you so much that He will die for you and come back to life: He shows us He can turn death into life for himself and anyone else.

The Catechism notes few things in faith are more challenged than the resurrection and its promise of eternal life. But it explains: “Encounters with the risen Christ characterize the Christian hope of resurrection. We shall rise like Christ, with him, and through him.” (CCC, 995).

Barron describes artists like Picasso, able to see “visual analogies… So the intelligent Christian is one who has an analogical religious imagination, the capacity to appreciate the resemblances between the Biblical patterns and the patterns of her existence.”

6. You are The Way: the way you live your life

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Jesus alone is our way, and the original Christians were known as The Way because they were the ones who found a better way to live, a living example for others.

“In the early Church, the way the Christians won over their neighbors and converted the Roman Empire was through love. Indeed, the pagans would say of the Christians, ‘See how they love one another,’’’ Gaitley writes.

Jesus is not just a guide or teacher, but life, love, and truth itself. Like so many of us, Thomas lamented, “We do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus told them they did know: It’s as simple as following Him, following the signs and maps that lead us closer to Him.

The “theological virtues” of faith, hope, and charity all connect to what Peter Kreeft calls our “three powers of the soul: the mind, our desires, and will. Hinduism says God is infinite being, understanding, and bliss. Way, Truth, and Life fit similarly: in Latin they align as “via, veritas and vita.”

“The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness: ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me,’’’ the Catechism continues. “On the mountain of the Transfiguration, the Father commands: “Listen to him!” Jesus is the model for the Beatitudes and the norm of the new law: ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’” (CCC, 459).

7. You are who you cling to

“I am the true vine.” (John 15:1) “He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

The vinedresser (the Father) trims the vine stock (Jesus) to cut away the fruitless withered branches, which strengthens the one bearing fruit, and the message comes during the Last Supper: The Church began over a meal.

“One cannot honor another person without blessing God his Creator. One cannot adore God without loving all men, his creatures,” (CCC, 2069). Because we are interconnected, we will suffer because of that connection and thrive and be saved by it.

The Father’s love for us is “everything. It’s our home,” Gaitley writes, but we fail to hear His Voice and run away. The fruit of love “is impossible” without the Cross. The daily prunings of life improve us as well as the Holy Spirit, who acts as the “sap” energizing and powering our works of love.

“The fruit referred to in this saying is the holiness of a life made fruitful by union with Christ. When we believe in Jesus Christ, partake of his mysteries, and keep his commandments, the Savior Himself comes to love, in us, His Father and His brethren, our Father and our brethren. His person becomes, through the Spirit, the living and interior rule of our activity.” (CCC, 2074).

Jesus explains: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

“When we are grafted onto Him,when we assume His mind and His attitude, when we live His life, we are able to see the world as it is, and not through the distorting lens of our fear and our hatred,’’ Barron writes.

Sources:

Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament, Second Catholic Edition, RSV, 2010.

The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Prentice Hall, 1990.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, Our Sunday Visitor, 2000.

Barron, Bishop Robert, Exploring Catholic Theology, Baker Academic, 2015.

Kreeft, Peter, Probes: Deep Sea Diving into St. John’s Gospel, Ignatius, 2019.

Gaitley, Father Michael, 33 Days to Greater Glory, Marian Press, 2019.