Catechism 101: The Incarnation - Week 4

0:11 In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory now and forever. Amen. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. All right. Welcome back to Catechism. And we're going through the creed. Uh last week we talked about we got into the creed finally after the introduc introductory stuff and then we got into

0:58 um the stuff about the father. I believe in one god the rest of that. So now we're going to get into the middle part the meat which is about Jesus. Okay. So I'm going to do some reading really quick and then we'll talk about it. 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, conssubstantial with the Father. Through him all things were made. Okay, we're going to stop there. I'm going to get into the second part of this soon, but I want to talk about this not too much because we've already touched on it quite a bit. that part that first part about it's

1:45 called christologology. Okay, that first part about uh Christ is a direct response to the heresy that I had mentioned before that kind of gave rise to this council of Nika uh Aryanism. You remember a few sessions ago we talked about the heretic Aras and he said that Jesus is not God. He's a creature, the highest of all of God's creation, but he's a creature nonetheless. Okay? The church has always believed from the beginning that Jesus is God. And that's a direct belief that comes from scripture itself, right? which we could talk about um

2:31 and I will shortly uh but the church responds to it with this line especially this one word that in English is it's a Latin word conssubstantial in uh I mentioned it last week in Greek it's homoas um that's to say that Jesus is of the same essence as the father the son is the same thing as what the father is which means that he's god Okay, this is found in scripture. Jesus is God. Do you find a line in the Bible that says Jesus is God? No, you will not. You will not. But it does speak about Jesus as God in a very Jewish way. And Jesus claims the ident that divine identity, a godly identity in a Jewish

3:16 way. So that the people that are reading the New Testament and of course the people that are writing the New Testament in a Jewish context, they'll know that Jesus is claiming to be God. I'll give you a few examples, although there are many, many, many more of these. Okay? In the book of Revelation, for example, Jesus is called the Alpha and Omega. These are the this is the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet. Why is that important? Because in the Old Testament, God is called the beginning and the end. the beginning of all things and the end of all things. That's God in the prophets, especially Isaiah. In the book of Revelation, those that's attributed to Jesus. Okay? Uh in the New Testament, Jesus calls himself most often his favorite title for

4:03 himself is son of man. This is taken especially from the Old Testament book, the prophet Daniel. uh the son of man there is a divine figure. He's a divine kind of human figure that uh receives the kingdom and then um that kingdom takes over the entire world. Okay. And the Jews at the time understood that the Daniel son Danielic son of man is divine. So that when Jesus constantly is calling himself son of man, they know what he's referring to. uh when the Jews ask him uh questions about his identity, he uses the word he uses the the term I am in Greek ego.

4:48 This is the Old Testament way in Greek for the name of God. Because Moses asks God at the burning bush, what is your name? And of course, the original is in Hebrew. He asks, "What is your name?" And God says Yahweh in Hebrew. When it's translated into Greek, it's ego. And nobody would say those words together. That was a holy name. And they wouldn't even say it. They would just say Lord. Anybody watch chosen? So wherever in the Old Testament, if you read it in English right now, it says the Lord God and Lord is in all caps, right? Wherever you find the word Lord in all caps in the Old Testament,

5:34 its original form was the was the name of God as he revealed it to Moses, Yahweh, Adoni in Greek. It was translated to Adoni in Greek, Lord. Because they held that name to be so sacred that they wouldn't even write it down. They would just replace it with the word Lord. And in English, they kept that. So they were they write Lord in all caps to indicate this is the name of God but out of reverence for the name of God they wouldn't say it when Jesus is questioned about his identity and he says the divine name ego I am which is what the word Yahweh means the name Yahweh means they the Jews pick up stones to kill him because they said he's blaspheming

6:22 he's not claiming to be the Messiah a lot of people claim to be to be the Messiah and they don't get stoned because it's not blasphemy to claim to be the Messiah. It's blasphemy to claim to be God. And that's what they tell him in the Gospel of John. You call yourself the son of God and in doing so you make yourself equal to God. And there are many other instances when Jesus calms the storm. You know that story. Jesus calms the storm in the Gospel of Matthew and Mark. When he calms the storm, they wonder at what he did because they say, "Who is this that can that even uh the seas and the winds obey him?" Well, that's a direct line from the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, in the

7:08 Psalms, the seas and the winds obey only God. And Jesus shows himself to be divine by commanding the seas and the winds. So there's a lot of biblical evidence for Jesus's divinity. And the church has always understood that he is God. But there are reasons why it's hard to swallow that. And you you get that. I think it's hard to believe that this guy that's walking the earth is divine. that this guy who eats and sleeps is the creator of the world. And yet that's the radical teaching of scripture. That's the radical revelation

7:54 of God. And that's the radical uh doctrine of the church. And the church has spent had spent many many years, centuries holding intention these two realities. Yes, this guy is fully man. He's fully human as in he had a difficult time with things. He cried sometimes. Okay. He got tired sometimes while you know when he was when he was on the boat with the disciples and there was a storm. He was even asleep. Okay. Uh he got hungry and he needed to eat. He did very human things just like you and I do. So you have to hold that intention with and he's also at once and simultaneously

8:39 the creator of the world. It seems too much on the mind. So it's hard hard on the on the mental pallet let's say. Okay. So people in the early church and even people today they'll often times emphasize one to the diminishment of the other. oftenimes they'll say he's God but he's not really man or he's not fully man or somehow his his humanity is uh diminished. The weight of it is lowered. Okay? Or they'll say he's man but he's not really God. I'll give you a couple examples of these. Sometimes when we say oh but Jesus

9:25 Jesus felt a lot of trials too. He he suffered a lot and he carried his cross and he did it manfully. Okay, we have to do the same. We're called to do the same and we're strengthened to do the same and we're given the same spirit as Christ to do the same. And then people will often respond will often respond by saying, "Oh, but that's Jesus and Jesus is God." When that line is said, it means he's God. So he's not really man the way that I you and I are human beings. He's not really human the way that you and I are human. He's God. Of course he can carry his cross to Calvary and Dion and everything like this. Jesus was tempted. We'll say and so he

10:12 faced temptations and the suffering that comes with temptation. And people will say, "Yeah, but he's God." You know, it's not like that big of a deal for him. For me, it's a really big deal. For Jesus, it's not that big of a deal. No, not really. Jesus was betrayed by his friend Judas. Jesus was abandoned by every one of his friends, every single one of them. Left alone to be arrested and to suffer and eventually to die. But then we'll say when we're feel lonely or abandoned or betrayed, we'll say, "Yeah, but that was Jesus. He's God. he can deal with that easier than I can. And that's just not the case. What

10:58 we're doing when we say stuff like that is we're diminishing the reality of his humanity and the fullness of his humanity. No, he felt loneliness more humanly than you and I because in fact, since he's a perfect man, he feels the weight of pain more than we do, not less. So he's more human in that sense and he experiences the depths of human tragedy more painfully than you and I do but he's fully human and so he fully enters into our tragedy and experiences it. We don't want to diminish that aspect of Christ. He's tempted. Yes, he's tempted

11:44 and he's without sin and he is divine. He is God. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't feel the full weight and the pain that comes with temptation. He felt temptation and he experienced it fully and it was painful for him. Much like it is for you and I. But he is God and we don't want to diminish that either. So when sometimes we approach Jesus and we think of him as only human then we kind of start to take away from his glory and we forget how glorious he is, how divine he is, how infinite and um without limit and without breadth he is how wondrous

12:30 and gigantic he is. really we forget that sometimes too. So the church always wants to keep these two things holding them fully in tension with one another without diminishing either one of them. And there's a reason for that. I'll get into the reason. Whenever we get into heresies about Jesus, usually it comes down to I'm diminishing his divinity or I'm diminishing his humanity. In the case of the Aryan heresy, of course, it was a diminishment of his divinity. So the church responded and said, "No, he is born of the father before all ages, God from God." He is God from God. He is

13:15 light from light. He is true God from true God. He is begotten, meaning that he's the son of God from all ages, forever and ever and ever in all of eternity. He's the son of God always but not made. Meaning that there was not a time when he was created. He was always the begotten son of God. He's the divine son of God conssubstantial with the father of the same substance of the same essence the same thing as what the father is. He is divine. Okay. Through him all things were made. This is a line from the gospel of John. You know the prologue of John, the the first chapter of the gospel of John. In the beginning was the word in the Greek

14:02 is logos. It's a better word. In the beginning was the logos and the logos was with God and the logos was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that was made. I want to explain this because this is kind of really cool. Um Pope Benedict made a really really big deal out of this and as a pope when he was invited to uh the university in Germany that he used to teach at Regensburg and this caused a lot of issues which I won't get into right now but he gave a a speech. He was given an honorary doctorate and he gave a speech or he was given an award or something. I

14:48 don't know if it was an honorary doctorate. He gave a speech called the Reagansburg uh address and he said this teaching that all things are made through the word of God. You know what this means? The Greek word is logos. It's really important. It's where we get our word logic from. It's where we get our, you know, we say biology. That's where that word comes from. or uh what um uh physiology or theology you know these these kinds of words they come from this word logos it's the logic of a thing the teaching of a thing it's the I like to use the word blueprint it's the blueprint of something okay the whole world has a blueprint everything in existence has a blueprint what's that blueprint well John says that blueprint

15:35 is God himself the son God the son he's that bluepint blueprint of God by which everything is made. What uh Pope Benedict said was well if there's a blueprint if there's a logic to everything that means that there's a defined in intellectual nature to everything. That means that everything kind of makes sense according to a system of thought and that system of thought resides in God himself. That means that we can know the world because there's a logic to it. What we might be able to call there's a law to it, right? And we can come to know that

16:20 law by thinking about it because we too are thinking creatures. We can know it. And by knowing it, somehow we can know something about God. We can get into the knowledge of who God is by knowing the things that he's made. because the blueprint by which everything is made is resides in God. And so we can kind of get to the mind of God by looking at the things that he's made. Much like we can do about um a painter, you know, if a painter paints, I don't know, a scene um of an ocean with a boat in the distance. Okay? And maybe it's sinking. Maybe you learn about the the painter somehow. Why is it sinking? You can think about that and

17:06 you can get to know what's going on in the mind of the painter as he's making that as he's painting that uh portrait. You can come to know him through his work. Same thing with God. But the teachings of uh the scriptures is that this is not just a blueprint. As the chapter of John goes on, it says the logos became flesh and dwelt among us. meaning that it's not just a blueprint. The blueprint is actually a person. Okay? And this person through whom all things are made, the blueprint, the logic of everything has taken on a full humanity and dwells among us. He's with us. That's Jesus

17:54 Christ. St. Paul in the first chapter of the letter to the Colossians, which I will pull up now, says this. He has this hymn that he writes. It's a probably almost certainly it's an early church hymn that was sung and that he knew and that he wrote in his letter to the Colossians. Let me read it for you. Jesus, he's speaking about him. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him all things were created in heaven and on

18:41 earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities. Those are all different ranks of angels. All things were created through him. And here's the key. This is where St. Paul adds something to what St. John said. All things were created through him and for him. That's a big statement. I mean, when I first read that, I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy. All things were made through him and for him." And who is this him? This is that guy that we look at every time we go into a church who's on the cross hanging, who has long hair and a beard. All things were made through him and for him. That what does that mean? He's the center. He's the

19:28 central figure. He's the central thing of everything. He's the most important anything ever. Okay? That's who Jesus Christ is. That's a really big statement. I'll go on. He is before all things and in him all things hold together. Wow. This is huge. In him, the one that we crucified, everything is held together. All of the universe and everything within it is held together in him. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in him he might be preeeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was

20:13 pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Cool. That's a huge, huge, huge statement. That's a really wonderful hymn. So that's Jesus. He's divine and he's also taken on a full humanity. That divine person, the son of God, took on a full humanity and experience everything that we experience. And the letter to the Hebrews a little later on, letter to the Hebrews makes a really nice statement by saying we have a high priest

21:00 Jesus. What's a priest? A priest is somebody that stands as a bridge between God and man. On behalf of God, he blesses the people. On behalf of the people, he offers worship, sacrifice to God. So, he's the in between figure. Okay. Who's the most in between? Who's the most perfect in between figure to act on God's behalf and on man's behalf? Well, maybe if we had somebody that was both God and man, that'd be a pretty good priest. And we happen to have that in Jesus Christ. That's the argument of the letter to the Hebrews. Since Jesus is both God and man, he is the priest properly speaking. In fact, nobody else can claim to be priest except for Jesus.

21:47 Now, in the church, we have priests ordained in Jesus's priesthood. That's how we're priests. Okay? But it's really his priesthood that we exercise. No priest in the church is a priest on his own accord. We're priests only in the name of Christ. He exercises his priesthood through the ordained priests of the church. That's what I mean. He's God and man and therefore the perfect priest because he's the perfect bridge because he's both. That's why he can act as God for man and he can act uh as man towards God. He's the perfect bridge. And what the letter to the Hebrews says is since he is perfectly man, fully man, he has entered into our humanity totally. He has

22:33 we have a high, it says we have a high priest that has experienced all of our experiences. He's like us in all things except for sin. I'm going to expand on that a little bit and say that Jesus has entered into our humanity. And what that means is he knows every bit of our suffering and has experienced it. That's what that teaching is. He knows everything that we go through and has experienced it. He's taken it onto himself. And the reason why he does that is because he's the great priest. He's taken onto himself all of your pain, all of your suffering, all of your worries, all of your anxieties, everything that all of your joys, everything that you endure, he has taken

23:20 on to himself. Especially because you and I are members of his body. He has taken that on so that he can hand it over to God. Since he's both God and man, he can offer it to God on our behalf. But then he invites us to be in union with him as he's offering our suffering. So we offer ours with him and it becomes one whole offering to God the father. And all of it God takes and he transforms for our glory, for our good and for our holiness and our eventually our perfect joy. Okay good. That's why the church makes such a big deal out of these things. And if you wonder why, you know, why am I talking

24:07 about it so much? Or why did the church spend hundreds of years talking about this issue? Is Jesus fully God? Is Jesus fully man? Is Jesus partially God? Partially man, is he God but not man? Man, but not God. If you wonder why this topic is such a big deal in the history of the church and why I'm making such a big deal out of it right now and it might get boring. Uh the reason why it's so important is because if we don't hold those two things together, we completely lose our sense, our idea of salvation. If Jesus is not God, then who died for us? Only a man. But if Jesus is not man, then who died on our behalf? Not one of

24:54 our own. And that ruins our salvation. Rather, salvation in the church means salvation in the scriptures and in the church. And to me, it makes perfect sense. I mean, maybe I'm biased, but uh salvation in the church and in the scriptures means that we're reconciled to God perfectly. And how better to be reconciled to God unless God says, "I'm going to so reconcile you to myself that I'm going to become one of you and I'm going to take you to myself." And that's what the teaching of the incarnation is. The the creed says that the son is begotten, not made, conssubstantial with the father. He's one the same as the father, the same thing as the father.

25:40 That is God. Great. Then it goes on to say that he became man. I'll read that in a minute. It establishes his divinity and then says, "And then he took on a full humanity." Why? Because the incarnation, God becoming man, the word incarnation means taking on flesh. The incarnation, God becoming human, that is the beginning and the essence of our salvation. What does sin do? Sin breaks relationships. That's the heart of it. Sin is not just breaking a commandment. It's not just

26:27 breaking a law. It's not just an infraction. That's true, but it's a basic like a it's a it's a kind of a silly thing in comparison to what it really is in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, of course it's breaking a law, but why is the law like that at all? Sin ultimately is breaking a relationship. It's a breaking a relationship between us and God. When we sin, we destroy, we harm our relationship with God. And it also breaks our relationship with other people. And it also breaks our relationship within ourselves. We ourselves become broken people from within when we sin. Which is why there's no such thing as a private sin. So if sin breaks up relationships and it

27:14 tears things apart and it severs what's otherwise united by God, God is going to reverse sin by reconciling things, bringing things back together. I think of it like this. Adam, Adam and Eve are created in God's image, right? So, I've always kind of had this in my mind. So, imagine taking a I don't know, a glass image of your best friend. Okay, let's say that. Imagine taking a glass image of your best friend or your mom or your dad or your sibling or your spouse or whoever you want. Okay. And you have a glass image of it of this person and it's great and you you like it and things like that. Okay. Imagine getting mad one

27:59 day and just taking that image and just breaking it. That's kind of a horrible thing to do. Right now, you don't break the person that's depicted in the image, but you do break the image. And the image was beautiful and it was meaningful because it's a an image an image of somebody that you love. But now you broke it. and he broke it kind of uh impulsively, okay? And out of anger and out of passion, emotion, whatever, you can't recognize the image anymore when it's shattered. That's what happens with Adam and Eve. They're created in God's image, and when they sin, the image is shattered. And the resemblance to the one that it's

28:47 re uh uh an image of while God is obviously not shattered but the resemblance to God is shattered now. So how does God restore the image? Well, you got to take the pieces and put it all back together, right? But what if God himself came and restored that image in himself? What if he took on that image for himself? That's the incarnation. That's the teaching of the scriptures of the New Testament, especially St. Paul. When St. Paul calls Jesus the new Adam, God was made man so that he can restore that image of God in man. But it's all

29:33 about restoration and reconciliation. And in doing so, he restores the image and he's restoring the relationship. That's why God becoming man is so essential and why it has to be God. He has to be God and he also has to be man for us to really get this as salvific. Okay, good. Uh so now I'm going to read this next part really quick. 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

30:19 Pontious Pilot. You know what? I'm going to stop there really quick. Sorry. There's something I wanted to say about this. By the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man. So, you know that in the Gospel of Luke, we read this every uh advent. It's the Jesus is born by this miraculous birth. Mary is a virgin. Um he takes in uh continuity with the teaching that he is he is fully human. Jesus takes his whole humanity from the body of the Virgin Mary. He takes his body all of it comes from the Virgin Mary. Not from a mother and a father obviously because of the miraculous virgin birth. So he takes his whole humanity from Mary herself. Okay.

31:06 And how is that possible? You say if uh humanity is born in in sin and everybody everybody takes original sin. Well, Mary was actually conceived without original sin. This is a teaching of the church which I want to stop and talk about for a minute. The teaching of the immaculate conception. many think uh refers to Jesus that Jesus was conceived without original sin. He obviously was but the teaching of the immaculate conception that dogma is actually a reference to Mary. Mary was conceived without original sin. Thomas Aquinus says uh you know to the to the kind of question did she have to be why did she have to be conceived without original sin? Thomas

31:52 says well she didn't have to be. She actually didn't have to be. Uh, but it was most fitting that she would be, and that makes sense. It's most fitting that she would be without original sin because she would become the mother of God. Okay. Is there evidence for this in scripture? There's plenty. I'm going to point to one so I don't belabor the point. Uh, when the angel Gabriel goes to Mary and he says, "Hail full of grace, the Lord is with you." When he says full of grace, okay, there's a word for that. It's to everybody say to

32:38 >> go ahead. You know Greek. Okay. Uh that word is a novelty. It's it's a it's a word that St. Luke actually invented. It's not a word that exists. Okay. That word in Greek means that Mary was always full of grace. Okay? As opposed to um the other time that that is seen in English in the New Testament is St. Steven right before while he's being stoned and he looks up to heaven. It says and right before he dies, he's martyed. It says that he was full of grace. So in English, Mary's full of grace. Steven is full of grace. But the Greek is different.

33:25 Uh in Greek, Steven is full of grace. And it's limited to in that moment. In that particular moment, he was full of grace. That makes sense. He's entering martyrdom. Okay. And Mary, it's different. Completely different grammar. same root word uh ky chyros uh which means joy or grace gift uh but the grammar is different. Mary has always been full of grace and is always full of grace. It's almost like an almost like a title more than it is um anything else. It's almost like her title is she's the one that is full of grace. Okay. And that's where, you know, the main point from from the scriptures where we

34:11 get the teaching of the immaculate conception and then becomes a tradition in the church. And I'm not going to get into that too much. There's a lot to be said about that. Um, but Jesus is born of the Virgin Mary. Okay. Uh, I would talk about a perpetual virginity, but that's going to take us to a lot of directions which I don't want to go to right now. Maybe I'll do that next week. Um, he takes his body fully from her. Okay. And the creed points this particular point out to say two things. One, it's in the scriptures. By the Holy Spirit, he was incarnate to the Virgin Mary. This is again doubling down on the fact that he's fully God and fully man. He is conceived by the power of God, but of a woman to be born of a woman, which

34:58 is to say that he's like everybody else. He has a mom, too. Okay. and became man. Good. Um, the next part of the creed is getting into his passion and death and then eventually the resurrection. Uh, and I'm going to do all that stuff next week. Right now I began this I got into the subject of what's called sotiology which is the theology of salvation. I got into that topic a little bit by getting into the incarnation. And I'm going to double double down on this point really quick till we get to next week when we talk

35:43 about the crucifixion. But so far let's start with this. The incarnation is essential for our understanding of uh salvation. It's our salvation begins when God and man become one with one another. Because remember sin is severance. Sin is a breaking up of a relationship. To save from sin means to reconcile what was broken. And that begins when the relationship which was broken between God and man is healed. And it the healing begins when God and man come together in the one person Jesus Christ at the incarnation. And then Jesus is going to go on to reconcile all men to

36:31 God through his humanity when he dies for us on the cross. So I'm going to stop there uh and we'll continue next week with uh theology of salvation when we get to Jesus's suffering and his death and the rest of that. Okay? In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. In the name of the Father, Holy Spirit. Amen.