The Wonder of Incarnation by: St. Gregory Nazianzen

The very Son of God, older than the ages, the invisible, the incomprehensible, the incorporeal, the beginning of beginning, the light of light, the fountain of life and immortality, the image of the archetype, the immovable seal, the perfect likeness, the definition and word of the Father: he it is who comes to his own image and takes our nature for the good of our nature, and unites himself to an intelligent soul for the good of my soul, to purify like by like.

He takes to himself all that is human, except for sin. He was conceived by the Virgin Mary, who had been first prepared in soul and body by the Spirit; his coming to birth had to be treated with honor, virginity had to receive new honor. He comes forth as God, in the human nature he has taken, one being, made of two contrary elements, flesh and spirit. Spirit gave divinity, flesh received it.

He who makes rich is made poor; he takes on the poverty of my flesh, that I may gain the riches of his divinity. He who is full is made empty; he is emptied for a brief space of his glory, that I may share in his fullness. What is this wealth of goodness? What is this mystery that surrounds me? I received the likeness of God, but failed to keep it. He takes on my flesh, to bring salvation to the image, immortality to the flesh. He enters into a second union with us, a union far more wonderful than the first.

Holiness had to be brought to man by the humanity assumed by one who was God, so that God might overcome the tyrant by force and so deliver us and lead us back to himself through the mediation of his Son. The Son arranged this for the honor of the Father, to whom the Son is clearly obedient in all things.

The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, came in search of the straying sheep to the mountains and hills on which you used to offer sacrifice. When he found it, he took it on the shoulders that bore the wood of the cross, and led it back to the life of heaven.

Christ, the light of all lights, follows John, the lamp that goes before him. The Word of God follows the voice in the wilderness; the bridegroom follows the bridegroom’s friend, who prepares a worthy people for the Lord by cleansing them by water in preparation for the Spirit.

We need God to take our flesh and die, that we might live. We have died with him, that we may be purified. We have risen again with him, because we have died with him. We have been glorified with him, because we have risen again with him.

The Many Images of Jesus

We all have been created in the image and likeness of God and His image will be as numerous as His creation. Wherever we go and whatever time and space we may belong, God will continue to reveal His image to us. The most powerful of all these is the incarnation of God, to become one of us so He can once and for all reveal the true image of God. In Jesus, we see God and through Him we can see God in each and every one of us.

In whatever circumstances, time and situation, we can see an image of Jesus. This is how much God loves us and how much He is willing to accompany us in this journey where He has invited us to come. In Philippians 4:12, Paul exhorts us “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty…” That in both abundance and need, we will see Christ in our situation. That He has invited us to recognize Him in times that everything seems to be working out well and on the other extreme, continue to recognize Him when we have nobody to turn to.

We are also be influenced to change the image of Jesus as our time and needs change. In our modern day faith, many will try to mold an image of Jesus to the perception and needs of the time and therefore the same Jesus can be interpreted and adopted to as many as the changes in time and needs in accordance to the demands of the ever changing winds of culture.

When we turn to the Gospels, we can also see the remarkable range of depictions of the image of Jesus. Mark emphasizes the humanity of Jesus, calling him at times a carpenter and referring frequently to his emotional responses. John on the other hand, depicts Jesus first a divine figure who was then made flesh. Taken as a whole, the Gospels themselves present an image of Jesus who is remarkably complicated, at times serenely above human wisdom, at other times impatient, even angry.

The advent of new technologies and the rise of the popularity of social media where information and images can be available at a click of a finger, have only made the image of Jesus more difficult to capture. In our Christian culture today - we will find Jesus in just about any character we want. He can be a God who blesses you abundantly because you practice tithing, He can be a God whose most and foremost agenda in your life is for you be rich and comfortable, He can also be an entertainer who doesn’t bore you with His litany of do’s and don’ts. Of course there is the traditional image of Jesus as teacher, healer and shepherd.

In baptism, we share in the three fold ministries of Christ – Priest, Prophet and King. I think that the image and ministry of Christ we have neglected is the image of Jesus as a Prophet. The Jesus that is most visible in Matthew and Luke is the “countercultural” Jesus, one who challenges his followers to see the world in a truly different way and live in accordance to the moral truth of our faith.

Some of us may even have difficulty recognizing or relating to the true image of Christ. For me, the one question I ask is – Is Jesus relevant in my life today? If I can sincerely say yes, I am sure I will have no problem seeing the image of Jesus yesterday, today and tomorrow and in whatever circumstance my journey may lead me.

Ascending or Descending Christology in Catechesis

The ecumenical council of Chalcedon has beautifully described the truth about the 2 natures of Jesus. It is that Jesus was not God only or man only, but truly God and truly man, perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity. As a consequence of this, two approaches came about on the study of the nature of Jesus Christ. A descending Christology that emphasizes or starts with the divinity of Jesus and ascending Christology that emphasizes or starts with His humanity. In differentiating the approach - descending or ascending don’t mean anything like “better” or “worse.”

So a descending Christology looks specifically at things as Christ’s pre-existence, being the 2^nd person in the Holy Trinity and his relation to the other persons in the Trinity, and how His divinity was manifested during His public life as accounted for in the Gospel. Ascending Christology on the other hand is interested in things like the fact that Jesus like us, gets hungry, thirsty, tired, angry at times, and how these humanly characters play on God’s work of incarnation and redemption.

The difficult part now is to identify my preference in my own catechesis as I have never thought before of the two approaches. Going deep into my thoughts and coming into play my first reflection paper where I mentioned John 3:16 –“ for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son…” and considering now my second favorite scripture passage – Phil. 2:5-10 - “Who, being in the form of God, did not cling to being equal to God, but emptied himself taking the form of a slave…” which we popularly call in the seminary as the Philippian Hymn, I would probably say that unconsciously I have been drawn to use the descending Christology on my catechesis.

I have always mused on the idea that God, in His perfection, would even consider stripping himself of His divinity and will become human. For me, it is a divine act and glimpses of God’s actions in my life can only be understood when I come to appreciate what God has done for me on the cross.

That is my thought process and how I get convicted of the reality of God. But the way I have understood Scriptures is not the scholarly way. I have written in my second reflection paper on this course that theology without prayer is dead and the best theological lesson is the worship of the Church - that our way of understanding the divinity of Jesus is connected to the Church’s teachings, worship, prayers and ethics. And the best and foremost ways of validating our beliefs about Jesus come from our actual knowing of Jesus, our own experience of Him both collectively as a Church and individually. Our belief about Jesus is communal, and reflects the common experience of those who know and have known Jesus. Without realizing that as I minister to people God has entrusted to me in my ministry in RCIA, I have been using the ascending Christology. That in hindsight, looking into the identity of Jesus a fully human gives me a more compelling argument on His salvific work. That people remember the human Jesus who walked by the shores of Galilee healing the sick, feeding the hungry, driving out demons… the witness of the Church is about what she remembers from what she saw and heard from the man called Jesus.

Abba Father, a modern reflection on how Jesus revealed God as our Father

In September 2014, we came back to Calgary following a short, 3 year residency in Houston, Texas. My youngest son was in Grade 2 at that time and he was enrolled in St. Albert the Great School. As I was not working at that time, I was the one responsible for bringing him to school at 8:10am and picking him up at 2:40pm everyday.

One afternoon, I was coming back early from doing an errand, I decided to drop by Tim Horton’s for coffee and donut as I have not had one since our return. I was enjoying every bite of that sugary donut and every sip of that coffee when I noticed that it was 2:55pm already.

I literally jumped out of my seat and run to my car and God knows how many traffic laws I have violated that afternoon (good thing, there was no traffic camera along 130^th avenue and no police patrolling the area) and when I got to the place where parents picking up their children park their cars, it was almost empty.

I saw my son further down the playing field and I started running and shouting out his name. The field was so wide and my voice was just a tiny sound in the vastness of that field. From that far distance, I could see his shoulders dropped and I could feel his pain. My son would have been thinking why on earth I have forgotten him. I continue to run towards him while calling out his name and finally he turned around and he started running towards me and called out to me – daddy! At this point, everything seems to have slowed down as in a slow motion effect in a movie and we embraced.

 

He calls me daddy everyday and there is no other name he calls me but daddy. But for some reason, it suddenly meant something different for me. I genuinely felt that I was really a dad and it was a call of love, excitement and joy and I could sense that there is nothing more important for him at that time but me. The feeling was mutual.

As a cradle Catholic, it is easy to overlook that God is our Father. It is a word we use to pray everyday or a word we hear in most of the liturgy, a word we use to profess our faith. But Jesus, in teaching His disciples to pray and to call God – Abba, He really meant that He is our Father.

By far, the most compelling parable about God as our Father is the parable of the prodigal son. In here, we see how this father, after being violated by his second son, still longs and waits everyday for the return of his lost son. We can downplay this father’s state of mind, but Jesus is trying to let us experience what kind of love is this – that God loves us as in like crazy love.

Like my own personal experience of being a “wandering” father, God our Father will never exchange us for coffee and donut. No matter how far we are from Him and even seemingly we can’t see Him, He sees us and He feels our pain and He longs for our return. We can run back to His loving embrace and like Jesus, we should call out His name, for truly is He is our – Abba!

Divine Providence

Divine providence consists of the dispositions by which God guides all his creatures with wisdom and love to their ultimate end. He does not withhold anything necessary for anyone who would like to come to Him.

Throughout the history of our faith, and particularly in the clear invitation of Jesus in the gospels, God has offered Himself to all without distinction. He sent His son Jesus to die for all of us so we can be recipient of this inexhaustible grace, the grace that gives us the strength to love Him back. For He created us out of love and through this same love He calls us.

Beyond the amazing beauty of this thought, without the freedom to reciprocate the love that God has for us, that by choosing to love Him back, we will never be able to experience how it is to be free. For if love is not given back free, it is not love at all.

Forced love can never be true love. If we can't say no to the urges of our body, that is not truly being free. It only means that we are in bondage and enslaved in the desires of our human flesh and that is not the freedom God intended for us to have.

God has invited all of us to His great banquet feast, but we must accept and embrace that invitation and do what it takes to get to the table. For reasons unknown to us, some seem to be satisfied with or only able to see the crumbs under the table rather than the great and endless delights of the feast above. There are many reasons for this but only God knows the specific barriers that exist in any man’s heart.

The other comforting element is that God is patient. Time and flesh are our enemy when it comes to our redemption but God is always ready and willing to give us all He has if we will turn to Him.

Our own standard claims that every good thing that happens in our lives - new car, new job, bigger house, etc are God's blessings, and yet we heard Jesus speak some few weeks back in the Liturgy when He echoed the sermon on the mount and named those He does consider "blessed!" These are those who are oppressed, nothing to eat, those who don’t have jobs and sick and helpless but whose faith remain steadfast. In Jesus' parable of the vineyard worker, we will see that God's justice and mercy work totally different than our own standard of justice and mercy. These are just some of the many circumstances He communicates to us that His economy of salvation doesn't work in the way our culture and time work.

Finally, there is, in the mystery of God’s provision, a way that we can participate and even somehow increase the grace that an individual can receive from God. God has chosen to work through the prayers of others to bring His grace to His people. So, what can we do? Pray, pray, pray, and pray some more…. and be holy.  And the greatest testament to the love of God is how love has changed those who encounter him.