What does the Church teach about Jesus Christ? Part Three

In today’s post, we will continue to examine what is said about Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Nicene Creed.  Today, we will focus on the underlined words below:

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

We stated in the previous post that Our Lord has always existed in the Blessed Trinity, as the Second Person of the Trinity.  We discussed his life in the Trinity as the Son. 

So why did he, at a certain moment in time, take on human flesh and enter time as we know it?   Why did he decide to leave the blessings of eternity and come down into our finite and sinful condition?  

I covered these reasons in a previous post entitled” The Word Became Flesh”.  In that post, I stated these reasons as outlined in the Catechism:

1) The Word became flesh in order to save us by reconciling us with God (p.457).  Before all else, God came to save us for heaven, from hell.
2) The Word became flesh so that we might know God's love (p.458).   God loves us so much He wants us to spend eternity with Him. Jesus reveals this reality.
3) The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness (p.459).  By his teaching and example, Jesus showed us how to become holy.
4) The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of divine nature" (p.460).   Saint Thomas Aquinas says that God became man so that he "might make men gods".

Please read that post in its entirety for more on what all this means for us.  The link is here:

http://jimscatholicblog.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-word-became-flesh.html

When Jesus became incarnate, did he stop being God?  No.  

Let’s read what the Catechism says about the person of Jesus as God and man:

479 At the time appointed by God, the only Son of the Father, the eternal Word, that is, the Word and substantial Image of the Father, became incarnate; without losing his divine nature he has assumed human nature.

480 Jesus Christ is true God and true man, in the unity of his divine person; for this reason he is the one and only mediator between God and men.

481 Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God's Son.

482 Christ, being true God and true man, has a human intellect and will, perfectly attuned and subject to his divine intellect and divine will, which he has in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

483 The Incarnation is therefore the mystery of the wonderful union of the divine and human natures in the one person of the Word. 

Jesus is one person, a divine person, with two natures.  He has a human intellect and a will, and a divine intellect and will.  That is why, he could at the same time, “increase in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”  (Luke 2:52) AND, and have, as the Catechism (#474) states, “in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal.”

Jesus is both God and man.   This is why he is so unique among all the figures in human history, why he is so loved by many, and perhaps why he is often misunderstood.

This mystery of Jesus as God and man is very rich, and can be discussed much more in depth than what we are here.  But it is important for us now to just realize that Jesus is indeed human and divine, in his nature (as opposed to us who are human, but only are divine by adoption, through the grace of the Sacraments).  This has implications for us, and I discuss that, as well as go into a little bit more detail about the divine and human in Jesus in a post I did entitled “True God and true man”.   Here is the link:

http://jimscatholicblog.blogspot.com/2016/07/true-god-and-true-man.html

So how did Jesus become incarnate?  He did so through the womb of Mary, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in the town of Galilee, who was betrothed to man named Joseph.   I have spoken about Mary before in various posts, but not from a theological perspective on her as the Mother of God.  She deserves several posts on her in this role, but for our purposes here, here are just a few points that shed light on the mystery of Christ in His Incarnation:

1)      For her to carry the Son of God in her womb, she was preserved from all sin from the moment of her conception, a Catholic belief known as the Immaculate Conception.  Pope Pius IX proclaimed in 1854:   The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.   Mary was saved in advance by the merits of Christ’s Death and Resurrection.    This all again points to the reality that Christ is divine.  If he was not, he could be conceived in any ordinary womb like the rest of us.

2)      Mary is truly the Mother of God.   If Jesus was just God, she could not be a mother.  If Jesus was just a man, she could not be the Mother of God.   Since Jesus is both God and man, she can be truly called this exalted title.

3)      Mary remained a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Christ.   Jesus was conceived not by human seed, but by the Holy Spirit.   (I speak a little bit more about this, and the role of the Spirit in Mary’s early life in this post:  http://jimscatholicblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-holy-spirit-and-mary-part-1.html )    We read in the Catechism how the virginity of Mary demonstrates the divinity of Christ : Fathers see in the virginal conception the sign that it truly was the Son of God who came in a humanity like our own (#496).  Jesus has only God as Father (#503). Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit in the Virgin Mary's womb because he is the New Adam, who inaugurates the new creation: "The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. (#504).

Now that we have discussed the very beginning of Christ’s life on Earth, the Incarnation, we will, in the next post, begin to discuss the life of Jesus as he: continues to grow in his mother’s womb, is born, grows up, begins his mission, preaches, is crucified, and rises.  All the events of his life are in part a revelation of who Jesus is, and thus, we indeed need to look at his life to get a fuller understanding of the  “boundless riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8)

Joseph, spouse of the Mother of God, pray for us.


(The painting below is entitled "Incarnation of the Word".   You may not see Jesus in it, but you can see the Holy Spirit and Mary, and therefore, you know he is there!)