“All you who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” This is the prayer that is sung at the initiation of a person into the Greek Catholic faith. It reveals the goal of a person’s initiation into this faith, namely to put on the ‘mind’ of Christ. The big question is: How does a person put on the ‘mind’ of Christ?

Absolutely central to the way in which the Fathers understand the nature of humanity is the notion that human beings are created in the ‘image’ of God and called to use the earthly journey to grow in his ‘likeness’. This doctrine is central not only to the Fathers’ understanding of human nature, but also to their theology as a whole. However, we must first understand that Jesus, the Christ, is God’s image and that we are called to grow in his likeness. Jesus is   God’s self-manifestation which has been made known to us through His incarnation. Jesus, we believe, is God made man in the second Person of the Holy Trinity through the power of the third Person, the Holy Spirit.

To be human is to be made in the image of Jesus and, being in his image, means that we must recognize our relationship to Him. To be human means learning to be human in the likeness of the archetype of humanity, who is Jesus.

Humankind is created according to an image – the Word of God – that we only truly know through the incarnation. It is only through the Incarnation that we can truly understand what it is to be human. What we know from our experience of being human is what it is to be with a limited likeness to Jesus. For the Word of God, in becoming man, became what we are meant to eventually become. To be human is to have a nature with certain capacities and faculties that are never properly realized in our present state of being.  We have only a glimpse of these faculties in Christ. So Jesus is the human that we are called to become through a life of personal growth and transformation. This personal growth comes from “putting on Christ” – from acquiring the “mind of Christ”.

Being in the image of God means having an affinity with God which is granted to us through His grace. We grow in His likeness when we attempt to cooperate with life and begin to think like Christ. We tend to act in accord with the way we think!