The Mystery of The Incarnation 

 

 

The Bishop's Voice
Dec. 22, 2006
Bishop Michael Sheridan, STD

An often-told but lovely story goes like this: A little girl was hard at work drawing with her crayons. The little girl’s mother was curious about her child’s artistic project. "Whose picture are you drawing, dear?" asked her mother. The little girl responded: "I’m drawing a picture of God." "But, darling," said the mother, "nobody knows what God looks like." The little girl beamed and retorted: "They will when I get finished!"

This is a wonderful story for Christmas because it expresses in a very simple way the great mystery that we celebrate during this holy season. It is the mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of God’s becoming a man like us in all things but sin. God, who is pure spirit and totally other than all of creation, has taken a body — a human nature — to himself. Now we know what God looks like.

It’s not that we have a painting or photo of God. We know what God looks like because he has condescended to show himself to us in Jesus of Nazareth. Every human word that Jesus spoke was a word of God. Every human act that Jesus performed was an act of God. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," Jesus said to his apostle Philip (Jn. 14:9). Jesus is truly God in the flesh.

Reflect on this magnificent truth for just a moment. It is, indeed, a mystery beyond our ability to fully comprehend. Some of the earliest heresies in Christianity were the results of theologians’ attempts to rationalize the mystery — to make it more reasonable and thus more palatable. It was unheard of that one being — one person — be both God and man. And yet that was exactly the faith of the church.

In the fourth century a priest of Alexandria named Arius proposed that the Son of God was not, in fact, God, but rather a created being. Jesus, then, was merely a human person, albeit the most God-like human person that ever lived. This teaching seemed to resolve the otherwise difficult dogma that proclaimed Jesus to be fully human and fully divine. But this was not the faith of the church. It took an ecumenical council to condemn the heresy of Arius.

In the fifth century Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, understood that the Son of God must be God if he is truly our Savior. But, claimed Nestorius, Jesus of Nazareth was simply and only a man. For Nestorius Christ was two persons — Jesus the human person through whom God the divine person showed himself. In other words, God has appeared to us as if he were a man. Again, a more comprehensible explanation of the Incarnation, but not the faith of the church which held that there was only one divine person, Jesus of Nazareth, who is both God and man. And it took yet another ecumenical council to finally deal with these heresies.

When we look upon the figure of the babe of Bethlehem in the Christmas crèche, we are gazing upon none other than the eternal God of heaven. God wished to communicate himself to us in the only manner that we could apprehend. And so, God became one of us. In taking our human nature the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity in no way ceased to be God even as He became fully, and for all eternity, a human being.

At the heart of all religion is the search for God. Everywhere and at all times man has reached for the God who is always beyond our reach. Man has always yearned to know God and to receive his blessings. At Christmas God announces to all mankind that he has stooped to us. In the words of the apostle Paul, the second person of the Blessed Trinity "emptied himself and took the form of a slave" (Phil. 2:7). God entered our world in the flesh of a helpless baby. The God for whom all men have searched has searched us out in the Incarnation.

Our late beloved Holy Father Pope John Paul II, in his reflections on Christ for the Jubilee Year, wrote: "It is a search which begins in the heart of God and culminates in the Incarnation of the Word. If God goes in search of man, created in his own image and likeness, he does so because he loves him eternally in the Word, and wishes to raise him in Christ to the dignity of an adoptive son . . . God seeks man out, moved by his fatherly heart" (Celebrate 2000!, Page 22).

What a gift God has given us — the gift of himself! Why did God become man? Because he loves us and wants to save us so that we might live with him for all eternity. The birth of Christ is our hope and our salvation. I pray that each and every one of us will receive Christ into our lives not only on Christmas, but every day of our lives.

To all in the family of God, I wish that the many blessings and graces of this holy season will be yours. Let us pray for each other and love one another as Jesus — God made man — has taught us.