Lord God is one. He revealed himself to us as a perfect unity of three Divine Persons: the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. We also know that the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity “for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. And was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary and was made man.”
The Mystery of Christmas concerns each of us personally. Jesus Christ “had come from God” (John 13:3), “descended from heaven” (John 3:13; 6:33), “has come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2), was born in Bethlehem during the reign of King Herod the Great and Emperor Augustus I. He is a Divine Person of the Word who became a true man to save us, free us from the horrific bondage of Satan, sin and death, “so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:5), to lead every man to full happiness and to participation in his Divine nature (cf. 2 Pet 1:4).
True God and true man
By coming into the world in human flesh, the Son of God becomes “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), “reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature” (Heb 1:3). He becomes the fullest and perfect revelation of God the Father. The human nature of Jesus was assumed by the Divine Person of the Son of God. Jesus Christ is not a human person but a Divine Person of the Word, nevertheless at the same time he is a true man and has a true Divine nature and a true human nature – hence, a body and soul, human intellect and will. „Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from ‘one of the Trinity’. The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity (cf. John 14:9-10)” (CCC 470).
Becoming a true man, “The Son of God (…) worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin (Vatican Council II, Constitution Gaudium et spes, 22). The council at Chalcedon in 451 AD defined the revealed tenet of faith about the mystery of Incarnation: “one and the same Christ only begotten Son, our Lord, acknowledged in two natures,’ without mingling, without change, indivisibly, undividedly, the distinction of the natures nowhere removed on account of the union but rather the peculiarity of each nature being kept, and uniting in one person and substance” (Denzinger, “Enchiridion”, 148).
In the mystery of Incarnation, through His humanity, invisible God became visible for human eyes. Looking at Jesus’ human face, we see the face of God. Lord Jesus left us an impression of his entire tormented body and face on the Shroud of Turin and an impression of his face on the Veil of Manopello at the moment of Resurrection. Jesus says: “And he who sees me sees him who sent me” (John 12:45). “The individual characteristics of Christ’s body express the divine person of God’s Son. He has made the features of his human body his own, to the point that they can be venerated when portrayed in a holy image, for the believer ‘who venerates the icon is venerating in it the person of the one depicted’ ” (CCC 477). For every person, the ultimate task, goal and value in life should be coming to know Christ and uniting in him in love. One has to agree to lose everything in order to gain Christ and be found in him. As St. Paul writes about himself: “I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:10-11).
The response of the Creator to the drama of original sin
God became a true man to save every man and complete the work of his creation. The mystery of Incarnation is God’s response to the drama of original sin. By bringing man to existence, God created him a man and a woman, in his own image and likeness, that is endowed him with intellect, free will and a capacity to love. The first people, Adam and Eve, given God’s selfless love, enjoyed a state of primeval bliss. Its source is friendship and harmony with God, an internal balance, and no prospect of suffering, old age and death. Prior to original sin, man was pure, he knew that he only needed God to be happy, he was in a relationship of love with God, he was free from lust of the flesh and of the eyes, and pride (cf. John 2:16). Through the ban on eating “fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” God said what is good for man and what is bad: that the greatest calamity is sin (unbelief and disobedience to God) symbolised by the eating of a fruit from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”
The temptation to commit the first sin comes to man from outside, from the world of purely spiritual, invisible beings. The tempter is the evil spirit, “who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev 12:9), whom Christ calls the “father of lies” (John 8:44). In his temptation, Satan questions what God says about sin, distorts the truth about God and suggests that sin will give man full happiness: “You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:1-5). The “father of lies” shows man the prospect of attaining eternal happiness against God and beyond God. This tempting prospect is the greatest lie. Man is a creature totally dependent on God and can never become almighty, that is “like God”, know good and evil. Only God is an eternal Lawgiver, the source of all being and as the absolute Truth and Good, infallibly shows what is good and what is bad for man. The essence of the first sin was the fact that Adam and Eve believed Satan and stopped believing God, and confirmed this with a specific deed manifesting disobedience to him.
This is how the drama of original sin came about, echoing the rebellion that had occurred earlier among angels – purely spiritual beings created by God and endowed by him with intellect and free will. These invisible spiritual beings, at the very outset of their existence, were given an absolutely free choice of accepting or rejecting the Creator’s selfless love. Some rejected God’s love, denied the truth that God was the only source of their existence and any good they received, and made themselves the only norm and source of freedom. They came to believe that they can “like God know good and evil.” It was a sin of absolute disobedience and pride, of the definitive rejection of God and of the denial of the truth about the total dependence of the creation on its Creator. It was a sin of absolute selfishness or “the love of oneself carried to the hatred of God,” as St. Augustine called it.
It was the evil spirit, Satan, represented as a serpent, that made Adam and Eve commit the first sin, break the ties of love and friendship with God, the only source of their existence and happiness. Original sin is a model, so to speak, of any sin. Saint John Paul II writes that “in the course of human history, sin is manifested not only as an explicit action ‘against’ God. This is, often, action ‘without God’: as if God did not exist. This is a conviction that he can be ignored, that one can do without him, relying only on human powers, which, according to human belief, are unlimited” (catechesis, 17.09.1986). Committing original sin, Adam and Eve, that is the entire mankind, in the name of the whole creation turned their back on God, said ‘no’ to their Creator. In this way, human nature was deformed by evil and lost the grace of sharing in the life and love of God. Mankind was ensnared in the terrible bondage of the forces of evil, sin and death.
Since the moment of original sin, every person coming into the world becomes a member of the family of man and inherits everything that it holds, thus, the reality of original sin as well. Original sin is shared by every man from the moment of conception. In the holy Bible, we read: “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned (…), one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Rom 5:12, 18); all men, (…) are under the power of sin” (Rom 3:19); “and the whole world may be held accountable to God” (Rom 3:19); “They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one” (Ps 14:3). It is a tenet of faith that the sin of Adam and Eve is shared by all men. Original sin is for all the descendants of Adam and Eve a lack of sanctifying grace in human nature. After original sin, human nature was deformed and deprived of sanctifying grace. The entire man, body and soul, became corrupted as the Council of Trent found. The corruption can be seen in yielding to the senses, weakening of the will, eclipsing of intellectual powers in coming to know the truth, harming of a spiritual capacity, upsetting of the emotional sphere, and an inclination to evil.
“The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6)
The truth about original sin should always be seen together with the mystery of Incarnation and Redemption by the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who became a true man to save us, free us from the terrible bondage of Satan, sin and death. St. Paul writes that Adam “was a type of the one who was to come” (Rom 5:14) that is Jesus Christ: “For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. (…) For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:15, 19). The joyous truth of Christmas is manifested in the fact that true God became a true mortal man, that he entered the human reality of sin, suffering and death for the purpose of achieving a final and decisive victory over all evil, forgiving all sins and taking man from death to life. When the Son of God became a true man, from the moment of conception he made this humanity his own.
Since Jesus Christ is God, his Divine Love is timeless and encompasses all men from the beginning of creation until the day of the Second Coming. Therefore, the Son of God could lay upon himself all sins and sufferings from the history of every man. The holy Bible reads: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; (…) But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities” (Isa 53:4-5). Becoming a true man, the Son of God takes upon himself the whole evil of the world. It is God himself that in passion and death on the cross suffers all the consequences of men’s sins, experiences the terrible suffering brought by sin. God “for our sake made him to be sin who knew no sin” – St. Paul writes (2 Cor 5:21).
It must be remembered that any human suffering is only a small particle of the suffering Jesus bore during his passion and crucifixion. If you give your suffering to Jesus, unite it with his suffering, it will become a source of incredible graces for you and for others; it will become a road to salvation. Otherwise, it will be a force of total destruction. In the book Conversations with John Paul II by André Frossard, the pope says that he met many ill people who considered their suffering a Divine gift: “The apex of my experience in this area was a confession I heard from a man whose condition objectively was very serious: ‘Father, you can’t imagine how very happy I am.’ I saw a man who had lost everything in the Warsaw Rising and himself was left bedridden as an invalid. And this man, instead of complaining about his fate, told me: ‘I am happy.’ I did not even ask why. I realized without words what must have taken place in the soul of the man I spoke to, how this process could have proceeded – and above all – who could effect it.”
Jesus Christ accepts also true human death from the history of every man. Dying on the cross, he becomes absolutely “like men” and at the same time perfectly obedient to the Love of the Father. With his suffering caused by the sins of all people, the Son of God reaches every place affected by the destructive power of sin, that is the disobedience of the creation to the Creator. He does that at the moment of his death, at the climax of suffering, when he experiences the ultimate consequences of all human sins, which he expresses in the words of the prayer: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46). At the same time, in this experience of utmost suffering and the truth about sin, he shows absolute obedience and infinite filial Love: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” (Luke 23:46). In this way, the Son gives himself and entire sinful mankind to the love of the Father who by giving himself to the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit overcomes any sin and death, to which Jesus’ Resurrection testifies.
Thus, the Incarnate Son of God, through his Passion, Death and Resurrection, achieves a decisive victory over any evil, Satan, sin and death, forgiving all our sins. This is the main reason for the joy and ardor of faith. And this redemptive reality of the Incarnation of the Son of God, his Passion, Death and Resurrection is constantly present because in God there is no past and future, but only a constant “now”, and the drama of salvation continues and will continue until the Second Coming in the course of earthly life of every man. Blaise Pascal was right to write: “Jesus will be in agony even to the end of the world. We must not sleep during that time” (Pensées, 552). Thus, the suffering and agony of Christ continues in the suffering of people.
To the question of atheists: “where is God when innocent people suffer and die?”, the answer is given by Jesus: in every suffering and dying man, God himself suffers and dies, he who became a true man, to take us from death to life. Thanks to the Incarnation of the Son of God, who united himself with every man, who died for us and rose from the dead, all of mankind was invited to share in the mystery of the most perfect communion of Triune God, to join in the bonds of love between the Son and Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. We must, however, in absolute freedom, consent to this, with all our sinfulness and weakness entrust ourselves to Christ through Mary in daily prayer, accept the gift of his Merciful Love in the sacrament of reconciliation, replenish ourselves with the Eucharist, his glorified Body and Blood, and walk with him along the road of faith through life.
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
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