The Incarnation of the Word

Being almighty, God does marvelous things.  Our Lord does whatever he wills, in heaven, on earth, in the seas.  Being perfectly wise, all His actions are done in wisdom.  Thou hast disposed all things in measure, and number, and weight.  Being supremely good, and having no needs Himself, He does all things for the good of His creation.  For thou lovest all things that are, and hatest none of the things which thou hast made.  But thou sparest all: because they are thine, O Lord, who lovest souls.

God made creation through His Word and through His Holy Spirit.  By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all the stars.   He has never been distant from creation.  In him we live and move and have our being.  And He willed that at the right time, the Word should enter the creation that He had made.

But how would this come about?  The Word would take to Himself a human nature, composed of body and soul.  Thus, without ceasing to be God, He could become also man.  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  This is called the incarnation, and it is the greatest of all God’s marvelous deeds.

The name of the Word-made-flesh is Jesus Christ, the God-man.  He is only one Person, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity.  But He has two natures.  From all eternity, He has the nature of God.  From the moment of the incarnation, when He took flesh in the womb of the holy virgin Mary, He has the nature of man.  In him dwelleth all the fullness of the godhead bodily.

By the incarnation, God has supremely manifested His power, His wisdom and His goodness.

He has manifested His power.  No creature has the power to take to itself some new nature, while remaining what it is.  If wood is burned, it takes on the nature of ash: but only because it ceases to be wood.  If I eat some bread, I take it to myself by digestion, but the bread ceases to be what it is so that it may become part of me.  No creature can take to itself a new nature, unless either that which takes or that which is taken ceases to exist.

The incarnation is unique.  The Word, who is eternally from the Father and equal to Him in every way, has taken on a human nature.  In doing this, He neither changed Himself, nor destroyed the nature that He took on.  He became what He was not, man, without ceasing to be what He is, God.  This is a work of divine power, which no creature, not even an angel, could accomplish or even imagine.

The incarnation manifests God’s wisdom.  Our final happiness will be to see God as He is.  But this is something so great that we might doubt that it was possible, if He had not first done something still greater, joining our nature to Himself in a single Person.

We needed God to teach us.  But He could do this in no better way than by coming in Person, once His messengers had prepared men for His coming.  So, the prophet Isaias foretold: Thy eyes shall see thy teacher.

We needed someone to show us the way to eternal life.  No one could do this better than One who has come from eternity into time.  The prophets who lived before Christ were all men like us, who were themselves seeking the way to God.  But Jesus could say of Himself: I am the way, the truth, and the life; and No one comes to the Father but by me.

We also needed someone to take away our sins.  Only Jesus Christ, being equal to the Father, could do this, by making the perfect offering of His own life.  Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.

The incarnation also manifests God’s goodness.  One who is good, loves to give of what he has.  The better he is, the more he loves to give.   An ungenerous man gives presents rarely, and their quality is poor.  A generous man loves to give alms to the needy and to welcome guests to his house and table.  A good father equips his sons and daughters with the best of all that he has.  And since God is supremely good, it is fitting that He should give supremely.

In creating the heavens and the earth, God poured out His blessings on all creatures. He gave them power to exist and act: to fire that it would burn, to birds that they would fly and sing.  In creating human beings and angels, He shared His goodness still more abundantly, giving us the power to think and pray and love.  And by the incarnation of the Word, He has communicated His goodness in the most perfect way possible: He united a human nature to the Word so as to be one only Person.

Since Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man, He has all that belongs to each nature.  As God, He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient.  As man, He was mortal; and although, since His resurrection from the dead, He is no longer able to suffer or die, He still has a body and a soul like us.  Being a man, He has human thoughts and feelings, though without our imperfections.  When His life on earth was over, He entered heaven as man, and there He prays for us in His Father’s presence.

No one could have guessed that God would act in this way.  But then, why should men have been able to foretell what God would do?  My thoughts are not your thoughts: nor your ways my ways, says the Lord.  For as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are my ways exalted above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.  But now that the incarnation has happened, we can see to some degree how it befits God’s wisdom, power and goodness.  Yet it is still something so great, that we cannot hope in this life to understand it fully, or even to believe it firmly except with the help of God.  A man cannot receive anything, unless it be given him from heaven.