Article 3
"HE WAS CONCEIVED BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY
SPIRIT, AND WAS BORN OF THE VIRGIN MARY"
Paragraph 1. THE SON OF GOD BECAME MAN
I. WHY DID
THE WORD BECOME FLESH?
456
With the Nicene Creed, we answer by confessing: "For us men and for our
salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became
incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and was made man."
457
The Word became flesh for us in order to save us by reconciling us with God,
who "loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins":
"the Father has sent his Son as the Saviour of the world", and
"he was revealed to take away sins":70
Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead,
to rise again. We had lost the possession of the good; it was necessary for it
to be given back to us. Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us
the light; captives, we awaited a Saviour; prisoners, help; slaves, a
liberator. Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to
descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and
unhappy a state?71
458
The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God's love: "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."72 "For God so
loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life."73
459
The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness: "Take my yoke upon you,
and learn from me." "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no
one comes to the Father, but by me."74 On the mountain of the
Transfiguration, the Father commands: "Listen to him!"75
Jesus is the model for the Beatitudes and the norm of the new law: "Love
one another as I have loved you."76 This love implies an effective
offering of oneself, after his example.77
460
The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine
nature":78 "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son
of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the
Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of
God."79 "For the Son of God became man so that we might
become God."80 "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make
us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might
make men gods."81
II. THE
INCARNATION
461
Taking up St. John's expression, "The Word became flesh",82
The Church calls "Incarnation" the fact that the Son of God assumed a
human nature in order to accomplish our salvation in it. In a hymn cited by St. Paul, the Church
sings the mystery of the Incarnation:
Have this mind among
yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of
God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied
himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. and
being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death,
even death on a cross.83
462
The Letter to the Hebrews refers to the same mystery:
Consequently, when Christ came
into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you
have taken no pleasure. Then I said, Lo, I have come to do your will, O
God."84
463
Belief in the true Incarnation of the Son of God is the distinctive sign of
Christian faith: "By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit which
confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God."85
Such is the joyous conviction of the Church from her beginning whenever she
sings "the mystery of our religion": "He was manifested in the
flesh."86
III. TRUE
GOD AND TRUE MAN
464
The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God
does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply
that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He
became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true
man.
During the first centuries, the Church had to defend and clarify this truth of
faith against the heresies that falsified it.
465
The first heresies denied not so much Christ's divinity as his true humanity
(Gnostic Docetism). From apostolic times the Christian faith has insisted on
the true incarnation of God's Son "come in the flesh".87 But
already in the third century, the Church in a council at Antioch had to affirm
against Paul of Samosata that Jesus Christ is Son of God by nature and not by
adoption. the first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 325 confessed in its Creed
that the Son of God is "begotten, not made, of the same substance
(homoousios) as the Father", and condemned Arius, who had affirmed that
the Son of God "came to be from things that were not" and that he was
"from another substance" than that of the Father.88
466
The Nestorian heresy regarded Christ as a human person joined to the divine
person of God's Son. Opposing this heresy, St. Cyril of Alexandria
and the third ecumenical council, at Ephesus
in 431, confessed "that the Word, uniting to himself in his person the
flesh animated by a rational soul, became man."89 Christ's
humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who
assumed it and made it his own, from his conception. For this reason the
Council of Ephesus proclaimed in 431 that Mary truly became the Mother of God
by the human conception of the Son of God in her womb: "Mother of God, not
that the nature of the Word or his divinity received the beginning of its
existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a
rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the
hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the
flesh."90
467 The Monophysites affirmed
that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine
person of God's Son assumed it. Faced with this heresy, the fourth ecumenical
council, at Chalcedon in 451, confessed:
Following
the holy Fathers, we unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our
Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the
same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body;
consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as
to his humanity; "like us in all things but sin". He was begotten
from the Father before all ages as to his divinity and in these last days, for
us and for our salvation, was born as to his humanity of the virgin Mary, the
Mother of God.91
We confess that one and the
same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures
without confusion, change, division or separation. the distinction between the
natures was never abolished by their union, but rather the character proper to
each of the two natures was preserved as they came together in one person
(prosopon) and one hypostasis.92
468
After the Council of Chalcedon, some made of Christ's human nature a kind of
personal subject. Against them, the fifth ecumenical council, at Constantinople in 553, confessed that "there is but
one hypostasis [or person], which is our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the
Trinity."93 Thus everything in Christ's human nature is to be
attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, not only his miracles
but also his sufferings and even his death: "He who was crucified in the
flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, is true God, Lord of glory, and one of the Holy
Trinity."94
469
The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He
is truly the Son of God who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man
and our brother: "What he was, he remained and what he was not, he
assumed", sings the Roman Liturgy.95 and the liturgy of St. John
Chrysostom proclaims and sings: "O only-begotten Son and Word of God,
immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the
holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, you who without change became man and
were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you
who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
save us!"96
IV. HOW IS
THE SON OF GOD MAN?
470
Because "human nature was assumed, not absorbed",97 in the
mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of
centuries to confess the full reality of Christ's human soul, with its
operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion,
she had to recall on each occasion that Christ's human nature belongs, as his
own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. 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:98
The Son of
God. . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a
human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has
truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.99
Christ's
soul and his human knowledge
471
Apollinarius of Laodicaea asserted that in Christ the divine Word had replaced
the soul or spirit. Against this error the Church confessed that the eternal
Son also assumed a rational, human soul.100
472
This human soul that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human
knowledge. As such, this knowledge could not in itself be unlimited: it was
exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time. This
is why the Son of God could, when he became man, "increase in wisdom and
in stature, and in favour with God and man",101 and would even
have to inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn
only from experience.102 This corresponded to the reality of his
voluntary emptying of himself, taking "the form of a
slave".103
473
But at the same time, this truly human knowledge of God's Son expressed the
divine life of his person.104 "The human nature of God's Son, not
by itself but by its union with the Word, knew and showed forth in itself
everything that pertains to God."105 Such is first of all the case
with the intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of
his Father.106 The Son in his human knowledge also showed the divine
penetration he had into the secret thoughts of human hearts.107
474
By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ
enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal
plans he had come to reveal.108 What he admitted to not knowing in this
area, he elsewhere declared himself not sent to reveal.109
Christ's
human will
475
Similarly, at the sixth ecumenical council, Constantinople III in 681, the
Church confessed that Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations,
divine and human. They are not opposed to each other, but co-operate in such a
way that the Word made flesh willed humanly in obedience to his Father all that
he had decided divinely with the Father and the Holy Spirit for our
salvation.110 Christ's human will "does not resist or oppose but
rather submits to his divine and almighty will."111
Christ's
true body
476
Since the Word became flesh in assuming a true humanity, Christ's body was
finite.112 Therefore the human face of Jesus can be portrayed; at the
seventh ecumenical council (Nicaea II in 787) the Church recognized its
representation in holy images to be legitimate.113
477
At the same time the Church has always acknowledged that in the body of Jesus
"we see our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we
cannot see."114 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".115
The heart
of the Incarnate Word
478
Jesus knew and loved us each and all during his life, his agony and his
Passion, and gave himself up for each one of us: "The Son of God. . .
loved me and gave himself for me."116 He has loved us all with a
human heart. For this reason, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by our sins
and for our salvation,117 "is quite rightly considered the chief
sign and symbol of that. . . love with which the divine Redeemer continually
loves the eternal Father and all human beings" without
exception.118
IN BRIEF
479 At the time appointed by
God, the only Son of the Father, the eternal Word, that is, the Word and
substantial Image of the Father, became incarnate; without losing his divine
nature he has assumed human nature.
480 Jesus Christ is true God
and true man, in the unity of his divine person; for this reason he is the one
and only mediator between God and men.
481 Jesus Christ possesses
two natures, one divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the
one person of God's Son.
482 Christ, being true God
and true man, has a human intellect and will, perfectly attuned and subject to
his divine intellect and divine will, which he has in common with the Father
and the Holy Spirit.
483 The Incarnation is
therefore the mystery of the wonderful union of the divine and human natures in
the one person of the Word.
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