"Christ is Everywhere and in Everything"
One of the primary attributes of the Divine ("God") is omnipresence, that is, God is present everywhere at the same time. There is no place or time that God is not present.* The Christian faith tradition teaches that the "Word" (Logos)—"the Son of God"—the "Second Person of the Trinity"—the "Christ," fully entered matter and became incarnated ("enfleshed") in the human person of Jesus of Nazareth. This tradition also teaches that the "Holy Spirit," the "Third Person of the Trinity," comes and indwells in each person when they receive the Sacrament of Baptism.
This tradition further teaches that "Christ" was present and actively participated in Creation:
In the beginning* was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be (John 1:1-3)
[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things,and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:15-17).
A question arises that if "Christ"—the Divine Presence—could become fully incarnated in the human person of Jesus of Nazareth, just over 2200 years ago, why could Christ have not also become incarnated in all of creation since the beginning of our known universe approximately 13.7 billion years ago? The Christian faith tradition teaches that Christ was fully and completely manifested in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Likewise, why can't Christ—the Divine Presence—also be incarnated in each of us? "There is only Christ: he is everything and he is in everything" (Colossians 3:11 NJB). This is, of course, separate from the question of how and to what extent the presence of Christ is manifested in, with, and through each of us.
Fr. Richard Rohr OFM defines "the Christ Mystery," as "the indwelling of the Divine Presence in everyone and everything since the beginning of time as we know it." He states,
Everything that exists in material form is the offspring of some Primal Source, which originally existed only as Spirit. This Infinite Primal Source somehow poured itself into finite, visible forms, creating everything from rocks to water, plants, organisms, animals, and human beings—everything that we see with our eyes. This self-disclosure of whomever you call God into physical creation was the first Incarnation (the general term for any enfleshment of spirit), long before the personal, second Incarnation that Christians believe happened with Jesus. To put this idea in Franciscan language, creation is the First Bible, and it existed for 13.7 billion years before the second Bible was written. [see Romans 1:20].
When Christians hear the word "incarnation," most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God's radical unity with humanity. But in this book, I want to suggest that the first incarnation was the moment described in Genesis 1, when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything. (This, I believe, is why light is the subject of the first day of creation, and its speed is now recognized as the one universal constant.)
* * *
But instead of saying that God came into the world through Jesus, maybe it would be better to say that Jesus came out of an already Christ-soaked world. The second incarnation flowed out of the first, out of God's loving union with physical creation....in Christianity, we have made the mistake of limiting the Creator's presence to just one human manifestation, Jesus....God loves things by becoming them. God loves things by uniting with them, not by excluding them. Through the act of creation, God manifested the eternally out-flowing Divine Presence into the physical and material world. Ordinary matter is the hiding place for Spirit, and thus the very Body of God.
Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe" (New York: Convergent, 2021): 12-13, 15–16. This book is worthy of your consideration.
_________________________________
*This attribute of God presents a variety of philosophical and theological questions that are beyond the scope of this post. For a discussion on some of these issues, you may wish to consult the article "Omnipresence," in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things,and in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:15-17).
When Christians hear the word "incarnation," most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God's radical unity with humanity. But in this book, I want to suggest that the first incarnation was the moment described in Genesis 1, when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything. (This, I believe, is why light is the subject of the first day of creation, and its speed is now recognized as the one universal constant.)