Catechism of the Catholic Church - Part 1 Section 2 Chapter 2 Article 2

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH



SECOND EDITION


PART ONE


THE PROFESSION OF FAITH


SECTION TWO


THE PROFESSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH


CHAPTER TWO


I BELIEVE IN JESUS CHRIST, THE ONLY SON OF GOD


ARTICLE 2


"AND IN JESUS CHRIST, HIS ONLY SON, OUR LORD"


I. JESUS


430 Jesus means in Hebrew: "God saves." At the annunciation, the angel Gabriel gave him the name Jesus as his proper name, which expresses both his identity and his mission.18 Since God alone can forgive sins, it is God who, in Jesus his eternal Son made man, "will save his people from their sins".19 In Jesus, God recapitulates all of his history of salvation on behalf of men.


431 In the history of salvation God was not content to deliver Israel "out of the house of bondage"20 by bringing them out of Egypt. He also saves them from their sin. Because sin is always an offence against God, only he can forgive it.21 For this reason Israel, becoming more and more aware of the universality of sin, will no longer be able to seek salvation except by invoking the name of the Redeemer God.22


432 The name "Jesus" signifies that the very name of God is present in the person of his Son, made man for the universal and definitive redemption from sins. It is the divine name that alone brings salvation, and henceforth all can invoke his name, for Jesus united himself to all men through his Incarnation,23 so that "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."24


433 The name of the Savior God was invoked only once in the year by the high priest in atonement for the sins of Israel, after he had sprinkled the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies with the sacrificial blood. The mercy seat was the place of God's presence.25 When St. Paul speaks of Jesus whom "God put forward as an expiation by his blood", he means that in Christ's humanity "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself."26


434 Jesus' Resurrection glorifies the name of the Savior God, for from that time on it is the name of Jesus that fully manifests the supreme power of the "name which is above every name".27 The evil spirits fear his name; in his name his disciples perform miracles, for the Father grants all they ask in this name.28


435 The name of Jesus is at the heart of Christian prayer. All liturgical prayers conclude with the words "through our Lord Jesus Christ". The Hail Mary reaches its high point in the words "blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." The Eastern prayer of the heart, the Jesus Prayer, says: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Many Christians, such as St. Joan of Arc, have died with the one word "Jesus" on their lips.


II. CHRIST


436 The word "Christ" comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah, which means "anointed". It became the name proper to Jesus only because he accomplished perfectly the divine mission that "Christ" signifies. In effect, in Israel those consecrated to God for a mission that he gave were anointed in his name. This was the case for kings, for priests and, in rare instances, for prophets.29 This had to be the case all the more so for the Messiah whom God would send to inaugurate his kingdom definitively.30 It was necessary that the Messiah be anointed by the Spirit of the Lord at once as king and priest, and also as prophet.31 Jesus fulfilled the messianic hope of Israel in his threefold office of priest, prophet and king.


437 To the shepherds, the angel announced the birth of Jesus as the Messiah promised to Israel: "To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."32 From the beginning he was "the one whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world", conceived as "holy" in Mary's virginal womb.33 God called Joseph to "take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit", so that Jesus, "who is called Christ", should be born of Joseph's spouse into the messianic lineage of David.34


438 Jesus' messianic consecration reveals his divine mission, "for the name 'Christ' implies 'he who anointed', 'he who was anointed' and 'the very anointing with which he was anointed'. The one who anointed is the Father, the one who was anointed is the Son, and he was anointed with the Spirit who is the anointing.'"35 His eternal messianic consecration was revealed during the time of his earthly life at the moment of his baptism by John, when "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power", "that he might be revealed to Israel"36 as its Messiah. His works and words will manifest him as "the Holy One of God".37


439 Many Jews and even certain Gentiles who shared their hope recognized in Jesus the fundamental attributes of the messianic "Son of David", promised by God to Israel.38 Jesus accepted his rightful title of Messiah, though with some reserve because it was understood by some of his contemporaries in too human a sense, as essentially political.39


440 Jesus accepted Peter's profession of faith, which acknowledged him to be the Messiah, by announcing the imminent Passion of the Son of Man.40 He unveiled the authentic content of his messianic kingship both in the transcendent identity of the Son of Man "who came down from heaven", and in his redemptive mission as the suffering Servant: "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."41 Hence the true meaning of his kingship is revealed only when he is raised high on the cross.42 Only after his Resurrection will Peter be able to proclaim Jesus' messianic kingship to the People of God: "Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."43


III. THE ONLY SON OF GOD


441 In the Old Testament, "son of God" is a title given to the angels, the Chosen People, the children of Israel, and their kings.44 It signifies an adoptive sonship that establishes a relationship of particular intimacy between God and his creature. When the promised Messiah-King is called "son of God", it does not necessarily imply that he was more than human, according to the literal meaning of these texts. Those who called Jesus "son of God", as the Messiah of Israel, perhaps meant nothing more than this.45


442 Such is not the case for Simon Peter when he confesses Jesus as "the Christ, the Son of the living God", for Jesus responds solemnly: "Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven."46 Similarly Paul will write, regarding his conversion on the road to Damascus, "When he who had set me apart before I was born, and had called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles. . ."47 "And in the synagogues immediately [Paul] proclaimed Jesus, saying, 'He is the Son of God.'"48 From the beginning this acknowledgment of Christ's divine sonship will be the center of the apostolic faith, first professed by Peter as the Church's foundation.49


443 Peter could recognize the transcendent character of the Messiah's divine sonship because Jesus had clearly allowed it to be so understood. To his accusers' question before the Sanhedrin, "Are you the Son of God, then?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am."50 Well before this, Jesus referred to himself as "the Son" who knows the Father, as distinct from the "servants" God had earlier sent to his people; he is superior even to the angels.51 He distinguished his sonship from that of his disciples by never saying "our Father", except to command them: "You, then, pray like this: 'Our Father'", and he emphasized this distinction, saying "my Father and your Father".52


444 The Gospels report that at two solemn moments, the Baptism and the Transfiguration of Christ, the voice of the Father designates Jesus his "beloved Son".53 Jesus calls himself the "only Son of God", and by this title affirms his eternal pre-existence.54 He asks for faith in "the name of the only Son of God".55 In the centurion's exclamation before the crucified Christ, "Truly this man was the Son of God",56 that Christian confession is already heard. Only in the Paschal mystery can the believer give the title "Son of God" its full meaning.


445 After his Resurrection, Jesus' divine sonship becomes manifest in the power of his glorified humanity. He was "designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his Resurrection from the dead".57 The apostles can confess: "We have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth."58


IV. LORD


446 In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the ineffable Hebrew name YHWH, by which God revealed himself to Moses,59 is rendered as Kyrios, "Lord". From then on, "Lord" becomes the more usual name by which to indicate the divinity of Israel's God. The New Testament uses this full sense of the title "Lord" both for the Father and - what is new - for Jesus, who is thereby recognized as God Himself.60


447 Jesus ascribes this title to himself in a veiled way when he disputes with the Pharisees about the meaning of Psalm 110, but also in an explicit way when he addresses his apostles.61 Throughout his public life, he demonstrated his divine sovereignty by works of power over nature, illnesses, demons, death and sin.


448 Very often in the Gospels people address Jesus as "Lord". This title testifies to the respect and trust of those who approach him for help and healing.62 At the prompting of the Holy Spirit, "Lord" expresses the recognition of the divine mystery of Jesus.63 In the encounter with the risen Jesus, this title becomes adoration: "My Lord and my God!" It thus takes on a connotation of love and affection that remains proper to the Christian tradition: "It is the Lord!"64


449 By attributing to Jesus the divine title "Lord", the first confessions of the Church's faith affirm from the beginning that the power, honor and glory due to God the Father are due also to Jesus, because "he was in the form of God",65 and the Father manifested the sovereignty of Jesus by raising him from the dead and exalting him into his glory.66


450 From the beginning of Christian history, the assertion of Christ's lordship over the world and over history has implicitly recognized that man should not submit his personal freedom in an absolute manner to any earthly power, but only to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Caesar is not "the Lord".67 "The Church. . . believes that the key, the center and the purpose of the whole of man's history is to be found in its Lord and Master."68


451 Christian prayer is characterized by the title "Lord", whether in the invitation to prayer ("The Lord be with you"), its conclusion ("through Christ our Lord") or the exclamation full of trust and hope: Maran atha ("Our Lord, come!") or Marana tha ("Come, Lord!") - "Amen Come Lord Jesus!"69


IN BRIEF


452 The name Jesus means "God saves". The child born of the Virgin Mary is called Jesus, "for he will save his people from their sins" (Mt 1:21): "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12).


453 The title "Christ" means "Anointed One" (Messiah). Jesus is the Christ, for "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power" (Acts 10:38). He was the one "who is to come" (Lk 7:19), the object of "the hope of Israel" (Acts 28:20).


454 The title "Son of God" signifies the unique and eternal relationship of Jesus Christ to God his Father: he is the only Son of the Father (cf. Jn 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18); he is God himself (cf. Jn 1:1). To be a Christian, one must believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God (cf. Acts 8:37; 1 Jn 2:23).


455 The title "Lord" indicates divine sovereignty. To confess or invoke Jesus as Lord is to believe in his divinity. "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit'" (1 Cor 12:3).


18 Cf. Lk 1:31.


19 Mt 1:21; cf. 2:7.


20 Deut 5:6.


21 Cf. Ps 51:4,12.


22 Cf. Ps 79:9.


23 Cf. Jn 3:18; Acts 2:21; 5:41; 3 Jn 7; Rom 10:6-13.


24 Acts 4:12; cf. 9:14; Jas 2:7.


25 Cf. Ex 25:22; Lev 16:2,15-16; Num 7:89; Sir 50:20; Heb 9:5,7.


26 Rom 3:25; 2 Cor 5:19.


27 Phil 2:9-10; cf. Jn 12:28.


28 Cf. Acts 16:16-18; 19:13-16; Mk 16:17; Jn 15:16.


29 Cf. Ex 29:7; Lev 8:12; 1 Sam 9:16; 10:1; 16:1,12-13; 1 Kings 1:39; 19:16.


30 Cf. Ps 2:2; Acts 4:26-27.


31 Cf. Isa 11:2; 61:1; Zech 4:14; 6:13; Lk 4:16-21.


32 Lk 2:11.


33 Jn 10:36; cf. Lk 1:35.


34 Mt 1:20; cf. 1:16; Rom 1:1; 2 Tim 2:8; Rev 22:16.


35 St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3,18,3:PG 7/1,934.


36 Acts 10:38; Jn 1:31.


37 Mk 1:24; Jn 6:69; Acts 3:14.


38 Cf Mt 2:2; 9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30; 21:9,15.


39 Cf. Jn 4:25-26; 6:15; 11:27; Mt 22:41-46; Lk 24:21.


40 Cf. Mt 16:16-23.


41 Jn 3:13; Mt 20:28; cf. Jn 6:62; Dan 7:13; Isa 53:10-12.


42 Cf. Jn 19:19-22; Lk 23:39-43.


43 Acts 2:36.


44 Cf. Deut 14:1; (LXX) 32:8; Job 1:6; Ex 4:22; Hos 2:1; 11:1; Jer 3:19; Sir 36:11; Wis 18:13; 2 Sam 7:14; Ps 82:6.


45 Cf. 1 Chr 17:13; Ps 2:7; Mt 27:54; Lk 23:47.


46 Mt 16:16-17.


47 Gal 1:15-16.


48 Acts 9:20.


49 Cf. 1 Thess 1:10; Jn 20:31; Mt 16:18.


50 Lk 22:70; cf. Mt 26:64; Mk 14:61-62.


51 Cf. Mt 11:27; 21:34-38; 24:36.


52 Mt 5:48; 6:8-9; 7:21; Lk 11:13; Jn 20:17.


53 Cf. Mt 3:17; cf. 17:5.


54 Jn 3:16; cf. 10:36.


55 Jn 3:18.


56 Mk 15:39.


57 Rom 1:3; cf. Acts 13:33.


58 Jn 1:14.


59 Cf. Ex 3:14.


60 Cf. 1 Cor 2:8.


61 Cf. Mt 22:41-46; cf. Acts 2:34-36; Heb 1:13; Jn 13:13.


62 Cf Mt 8:2; 14:30; 15:22; et al.


63 Cf. Lk 1:43; 2:11.


64 Jn 20:28,21:7.


65 Cf. Acts 2:34-36; Rom 9:5; Titus 2:13; Rev 5:13; Phil 2:6.


66 Cf. Rom 10:9; 1 Cor 12:3; Phil 2:9-11.


67 Cf. Rev 11:15; Mk 12:17; Acts 5:29.


68 GS 10 § 3; Cf. 45 § 2.


69 1 Cor 16:22; Rev 22:20.

The Divine Motherhood by Dom Anscar Vonier, OSB - Chapter VIII

THE DIVINE MOTHERHOOD BY DOM ANSCAR VONIER, OSB

Chapter VIII

THE BLESSED FRUIT OF MARY’S WOMB.

Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth was the cause of one of the greatest miracles in the purely spiritual realm of things, the sanctification of John the Baptist in his mother s womb. "For behold as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy" (Luke i. 44). Christian tradition holds that the soul of John at that moment received sanctifying grace, Mary’s sweet voice being like the sacramental instrument of the supernatural transformation. But the source of the grace that came to the soul of John was the ever blessed Fruit hidden in Mary’s bosom. Mary brought into Elizabeth s house the personal fulness of all grace in the Blessed Thing that was still part of her own maiden life.

It would be an imperfect treatment of our dear subject, the divine motherhood, if we neglected to consider the teachings of Catholic theology concerning the bodily and spiritual conditions of the blessed Fruit of Mary’s womb, of the Holy Thing that sanctified the soul of John, and made the infant leap for joy in the mother s womb. We could never understand fully the spirit of the Magnificat unless we remembered what was the Life that was throbbing within Mary’s life when she spoke her immortal Canticle.

Here we may leave the text of St. Luke s Gospel and take for our guide St. Thomas Aquinas, the great theologian of the Incarnation; in the third part of his Summa, in the 33 d and 34th Questions, the holy Doctor treats of the state of the Proles, the divine embryo, in Mary’s womb, and its perfections.

There are two main principles which ought to govern all our thinking when, with Elizabeth, so many times each day we bless Mary in the Fruit of her womb, in the recitation of the Hail Mary.

The first principle is this: there was not the minutest fraction of time in which the new Thing made of Mary’s blood was not God.

The second principle, which is a logical sequel of the first, is thus formulated by St. Thomas, in Summa q. 34, a. i: "In the mystery of the Incarnation we have to pay more attention to the descent of divine fulness into human nature than to the ascent of human nature . . . into God."

I do not say that the two principles just enunciated stand at the head of the treatise on those matters in the Summa; but an analysis of all St. Thomas says makes it clear that the twofold axiom is really the heart of all his doctrine on our Lady s wonderful secret.

In virtue of the first principle, which is strict Catholic faith, we have to admit that, whatever may be the generative process with other human beings, in the case of Christ’s conception there never was anything but a clearly defined human embryo, with an immortal soul. It is against the very laws of the Incarnation to suppose that at any moment, however brief, the new Life that stirred within Mary’s life was not the life of a bodily organism animated with a rational, immortal soul. The presence of the immortal, the intellectual human soul, from the very start, is indispensable to the Hypostatic Union; the divine Person took flesh by means of the immortal human soul, not vice versa; for, says St. Thomas, in Summa q. 6, a. i: "The human body is not fit for the Hypostatic Union except through its relationship with the rational soul". This rational soul, again, had full intellectual activity, perfect use of all its specifically spiritual power; it had freedom of will, freedom of choice, a clear vision of all things intellectual. It was the intellect of full maturity and the will of perfect manhood.

Here our second principle helps us to extend this subject still further, being, as already said, a logical sequel of the first principle. The blessed Fruit of Mary’s womb had then all the fulness of grace, the full power of meriting eternal life for those that were to be redeemed; beatific vision was at that first moment as complete in that soul, as it ever was after, even on the Resurrection morning. Christ was perfect comprehensor, i. e. One Who had the clear beatific vision of God in the very first instant of His being conceived" (Summa q. 34, a. 4). If Heaven ever abode within a creature, Mary was that abode during the nine months of her pregnancy.

There is a distinct tendency amongst writers on the mystery of the Incarnation in our days to make the Redeemer of mankind subject to that idolized idea of modern thinkers, the ascent from the lower life to the higher life. Whatever may be the merits of such a philosophy, it is distinctly repugnant to those who grasp the mystery of the Incarnation more completely, to associate this way of thinking with the Fruit of Mary’s womb. There we have not a struggle heavenwards, but we have Heaven opened, and the plenitude of grace coming out of it descending towards man.

Therefore our theology starts with infinite fulness of grace, light and power in the Holy Thing that rests in Mary’s virginal bosom. Christian sanctity, in its vaster aspect, is not a struggle from poverty to possession, but it is an immense, infinite possession from the very start, from the womb of God’s Mother, from the most indivisible point of inception; the second act in the drama of sanctity, the properly human act, is that "of his fulness we all have received, and grace for grace" (John i. 1 6).

To bear in her bosom a Being of such spiritual magnitude is truly for a woman to be the Mother of God. The most inalienable of all the motherly functions, that of giving of her own lifeblood to build up the growing organism of the Man-Child within her, was indeed for Mary divine motherhood, because she was building up the body of One Who was God, not unconsciously, in a state of dormancy, as it were, but in the full splendour of the saints, in splendoribus sanctorum.

Coming now to the strictly bodily condition of the blessed Fruit of Mary’s womb, we have to admit, of course, that Christ’s sense life was not developed till He reached maturity after His birth. Consequently such mental life as depended on developed sense life had to await the natural maturity of time, as with all other human beings. What we say about the completeness of the intellectual life of the soul of Christ in the womb of Mary in no wise does away with the reality of the embryonic state.

Here, however, St. Thomas seems to make a concession to grace at the expense of the ordinary course of embryonic nature; he thinks that from the very first the divine Person in Mary’s womb may have had what he calls the sense of touch. I quote his words from the Summa q. 29, a. 2:

"As Christ in the first instant of His conception had a rational soul, His body being then already formed and organic, there is much more reason to say that in the same instant He may have possessed the operation of the sense of touch."

I must ask leave of my readers not to exact more from me on this subject. The Church, in her Liturgy, has found the very words which become the mystery. She apostrophises Mary thus: "O Virgin of virgins, how will this be, because no one was ever like thee before, and no one will ever be like thee afterwards?" Mary is made to reply: "Daughters of Jerusalem, why do you wonder at me? The Thing you see is a divine mystery." Virgo virginum, quomodo fiet istud, quia nec priniam similem visa es nec habere sequentem?r Filia lerusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc, quod cernitis. (Officium Exspectationis Partus B. M. V.)

Excerpt from Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume IV, Chapter II

Walter Farrell, O.P., A Companion to the Summa, Volume IV

CHAPTER II -- THE DREAM OF THE AGES


(Q. 1-3)

A DREAM can be an opiate or an inspiration. It can be the world of make-believe by which the coward escapes reality; or it can be a star lighting up the path of men, leading them on to a revelation of the profoundest meanings of the world even when it stops over a cave. It can be the restless, charging steed on which a man rides over the hordes of things earthly, crashing through the barriers that imprison the world.

It is to be noted that a dream, either as a reverie or a vision, is of no use to a man whose mind is blind. If his eyes are so dim that he cannot see the horror around him nor the splendor of the goal which makes battle a glory, he will not dream. Indeed, he cannot dream.

Men and their dreams: The stuff of dreams

In one sense or another, men have always been dreamers because, normally, men are not blind. There has always been a percentage of cowards among us, of men and women who use their dreams to escape reality; but that percentage has always been small, since the human heart is a thing so stout as to dare again and again the dangerous business of love. A far greater percentage of men live on dreams in the sense of visions. There has always been a vision before the heart and mind of a man; how else would that heart and mind reach out, as they do, beyond what is already had, straining to the ultimate grasp of the infinite itself?

When men stood on the lowest rung of their human achievement, what was only an ordinary thing seemed high and hard; at such times their visions have been lowly, even despicable things. At other times, their visions have been as startling as a joyous shout of courage thundering out of clouds of desperate battle. They have been daring, reckless, superhuman things.

In other words, the stuff of man's dreams has always been furnished by the far horizons of humanity. Behind every human life there has been at least the ghost of that wild, reckless dream that goes as far as dreams can go, even to God Himself. Sometimes it was a tortured, twisted dream, a kind of nightmare which revolved around the mad notion that men could become God. Sometimes it was a disappointing, shrunken thing, as though the dream had squeezed itself through too narrow an aperture to reality, a distorted thing that revolved around the absurd conceit that men were gods because the human level was the peak of reality. Much more persistently, the dream has been that dream of dreams centering on God dwelling amongst us, being like to us but still God. It made God homely, familiar, tangible. It made Him man, but, because He still remained God, that dream was powerful enough to uproot the staid mediocrity of men left on their own level.

A dreamless world

As long as there was left to them the far human horizons, men dreamed dreams and saw visions; robbed of these horizons, the magic stuff of dreams was gone. It is the shame of our time to have shortened the horizons of man, step by step, until now he is blind for want of something to see. By removing God and heaven from his heart and mind, our time has made it impossible to look up. Man might have been left to stare along the monotonous level of his own humanity, even though his eyes, whatever direction they took, would always end up short staring at the gray walls of nature. But that was allowing too much of the stuff of dreams. His very nature was denied; he was denied the right not only to look up but even to look along the distinctive horizon of his own humanity.

He was only allowed to look down, to search, nauseated, the depths from which he allegedly came to find there some reason to sustain his self-respect. Of course the visions of the children's tales were forbidden childish eyes; after all, we had found psychological horrors in the guileless wanderings of Alice in Wonderland and reduced all dreams to sex.

This blind man's world would be too stolid, too brutal, too animal for men to bear; but it is hard to keep men blind since, do what we will, men remain men with all that divine dissatisfaction and reckless reaching of the human heart. We have tried to make the inspiring glimpse of a vision impossible, we have attacked the inclination to dream, have driven it out and in its place planted a horror of the visions that might have led men on; but we have forgotten that men will dream, must dream, or they will die. They will become sick of the revolting depths, uncertain of the limited lives ascribed to them, and they will either despair or, in spite of arguments to the contrary, they will dream.

The realization of the vision -- the Incarnation:

Its nature; The doctrine of Faith

There has been reason for the dreams of men in the very nature of man's mind and will. For that dream of dreams, the dream of our walking arm in arm with God, there is reason more solid than the nature of man. It rests upon the long promise of God, a promise whose fulfillment was awaited so patiently by a race that knew what it was waiting for and somewhat less patiently by a world that knew that much was lacking. That dream was realized, that seeking became a reality, when the maid of Galilee answered the angel: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word." At that instant God became incarnate. God was made man. The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us.

In his Summa St. Thomas does not touch on the Incarnation until he has treated exhaustively of God and man; and with very good reason. It is only by knowing something of God and something of man that we can appreciate the splendor of the union of the two in the Incarnation. It is only by the contrast of the infinite, dazzling perfection of God with the limited, stumbling perfection of the best of men that we see something of the generosity and unreckoning love involved in the Incarnation, with the consequent debt of gratitude owed to God by men. When we understand man's relation to God, his desperate need for attaining that final goal, we can understand much more of the tender thoughtfulness of God in giving us a personally conducted return to Himself. Without one or the other, God or man, there is no sense to the Incarnation; without a knowledge of both, there can be no insight into the mystery; without the goal, thoroughly understood, the full, homely meaning of the incredible fact is lost.

The angel Raphael's protection and guidance of the younger Tobias on his long journey and safe return home is a dim shadow of the life of God on earth. Here God was not merely taking on the appearance of a man, as did the angel, he assumed man's own nature. He treated us like the children He hoped we would become, taking us by the hand, showing us by the example of His own life how we were to live our lives lest, as children, we be frightened by the majesty of divinity, He came to us in the familiar nature with which we must face all the struggles of our own short lives.

So much love and sacrifice went into the Incarnation, and so much love and sacrifice has come out of it through the centuries, that it is easy to give emotion its head in talking of this mystery; but this was never the way of Thomas. Because of that very emotional appeal of the mystery, it is essential that we get its intellectual side firmly and clearly. By our Faith it is infallibly true that the Word of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, assumed true human nature from the Blessed Virgin Mary. In this mystery there is one person involved, the person of the Son of God; there are two complete and perfect natures, a human and a divine, really distinct from one another and joined only in the Person of the Son of God. Christ, the Person) is at the same time true God and true man; God from eternity, man in time.

Faced with a truth of this proportion, the human mind not infrequently rebels; and a revolt against truth adds up to error. It might be noted at once that in this business of error we admit no superiors; it is an old trick of our human nature promptly to exhaust every possibility of error. In the comparatively simple matter of preparing a letter for the mails, for example, there is only a limited field for mistakes: the name, the street number and name, the city, the country, the return address, the postage, and the box in which the letter is deposited. Yet every day in America mistakes are made in every one of these respects. We can be depended on for mistakes; and that was no less true two thousand years ago than it is today.

The errors of men

In the mystery of the Incarnation three things are involved: the divinity of Christ, the humanity of Christ, and the union of the human and divine nature in the one divine Person. In the first four centuries of the existence of the Church every possible error was made against all three. Some men said that Christ was not God, denying His divinity. They were willing to look on Him as the most perfect of men, as more than a man, or even more than an angel, as long as He was to be less than God. Other men, defending His divinity, insisted that He was not human: perhaps His body was only a ghostly body; if it were real, it must have been a heavenly, not an earthly thing; or, since the evidence of His suffering and death was overwhelming, granted that He had a body, He could not have had a soul; again the evidence was too much, so perhaps He had no human will.

The attack on the divinity and the humanity of Christ did not exhaust the possibilities of error; there was still the matter of the union of those two. Some heretics insisted that the union was entirely accidental, like that of a heap of stones thrown carelessly together. Others, indignant at such a mistake, refuted it by maintaining the union was an essential one: the divine nature and the human nature were somehow fused together to form a third mysterious thing that was neither God nor man, as matter and spirit are united to form what is neither a soul nor a body but a man.

Error in this matter is not surprising, for this is mystery. The reason for the error is always astounding. It rests upon the notion that we can treat a mystery as we would a problem in mathematics. We are not content to feed on it, to penetrate it; rather we must destroy it by reducing it to the dimensions of our own human mind.

Its mystery

Of course there is mystery here since an infinite Person is involved. The truth is so wide that only the swinging doors of the divine mind can possibly accommodate it. Our minds, in contact with this truth, are like the arms of a very small child seeking to embrace its mother. The child can cling to its mother even though its arms cannot encircle that loved one; even though the arms of our mind cannot go around this truth, at least we can cling to it. We cannot discover the truth of the Incarnation by any human means. It must be told to us by God; once told, we cannot possibly understand it fully, for it is a properly divine truth. But we can and do wax strong on it, penetrate it a little, deepening the darkness of its splendor and lovingly examining it from all sides. What we can do by our own reason in this matter is to ward off the shower of small stones thrown by objectors and see the complete freedom of this mystery from any contradiction.

The Incarnation is a fact and a fact worth clinging to. Indeed, it is the central fact of the universe, the fact that gave youth back to an old, tired, disillusioned, despairing universe. It reopened the gates of heaven. It is much more than the beginning of an era. It is a release from slavery for creatures who have freedom in their very blood. It is the essential fact of Christianity.

We can, of course, speak of the historical Christ. The fashion today, however, is to speak of an historical Christ as if He were a mere character in history no different from any other man who walked across the human stage. This is sheer nonsense if, at the same time, one insists on retaining a claim to Christianity; yet when I have pointed out to individuals that the modern smartness was in reality a denial of Christianity, I've been made to feel as heartless as though I have told a child there was no Santa Claus. The conclusion simply cannot be dodged: if Christ were not divine, then Christianity is a despicable hoax.

Credibility of the fact of the Incarnation

Christ was divine. We cannot prove this by reason; but it can be known and known more certainly than we know the very first principles of thought. For here, you see, there is no such intermediary between ourselves and supreme truth as the light of human reason. This truth comes to us on the direct and full authority of Truth itself; it cannot be proved, it must be believed. Nor is it such a difficult thing to believe; despite its immanent mystery, it is an eminently credible truth.

The existence of Christ and the words of Christ are as certain as any historical truth can well be. Yet this man, Christ, said He was God, not in a whisper, not obscurely hinting, but publicly: before His disciples, before crowds, before His judges. He was so understood; indeed, for saying this thing He died. His statements are well worthy of belief. His whole life is evidence that He was neither a fool nor a liar He was not an actor talking Himself into a part. The splendor of His doctrine, the perfection of His life, His love of God and men are more than enough proof of this. To say the contrary, to say that Christ was deceived or was a deceiver of men, is to fly in the face of the historical evidence. Yet this man, who was neither a fool nor a liar, seriously made the claim again and again that He was God.

His statements had the solemn confirmation of God Himself. There were, for example, the express words of approval at the transfiguration and baptism; there were the miracles of the conservation and propagation of His Church of which the Incarnation was a fundamental doctrine. Miracles are not worked in confirmation of a lie for the very simple reason that God is Truth. Christ Himself worked miracles in express proof of the truth of His words. He made prophecies which were fulfilled. Through Him were fulfilled all the long prophecies of the Old Testament. Surely, if any statement made in the history of the world is worthy of belief, it is the statement that Christ was God, that God became man. Believing it, we have laid hold on the truth around which all human history revolves.

If God were a clumsy lover of men, we might be forced to make excuses for something or other about the Incarnation. Certainly, in the course of human love, we must make allowances for love's good intentions. We know the lover did not mean to spill coffee on a gown in his eagerness to arrange a wrap, to wake up the baby with an over-cheery greeting, to arouse the enthusiasm of the populace by a resounding kiss in a railroad station. Human love is, often enough, clumsy and embarrassing in its expression, but not so divine love; precisely because it is divine, it is perfect in every way. It is not surprising, then, that the Incarnation is perfect from the side of God, from the side of men, and even from the angle of all the circumstances.

The fittingness of the Incarnation: From the nature of God

We shall see more of the beauty of the perfection of the Incarnation in eternity; but even now our stumbling minds, peering at the great work of God, see enough to make us lose our hearts completely. We know, for example, that the visible world was not meant as a set of blinders but rather as lenses giving new sight to our eyes, that we were not meant to stop at the obvious but to penetrate to the invisible things of God through the visible world spread out before our eyes. In the Incarnation, the perfections of God are manifest as no world can manifest them. In the infant Son of Mary there is evidence of a divine goodness that did not shrink from the womb of the virgin or the weakness of the flesh; of the thoughtful justice that brought about the conquest of man's enemy by man himself; of the wisdom that made a perfect payment of a most difficult, an infinite price; of the power that is indeed infinite, for nothing is greater than for God to become man.

Indeed, if we remember no more than the infinite goodness of God, the fittingness of the Incarnation strikes our minds in a burst of splendid brilliance. A quirk of human nature makes first page news of vice while virtue is made the material for an epitaph, perhaps because we so readily see that a rotten apple can spoil a whole barrel. It is, however, no less evident that a good neighbor fills a neighborhood with good neighbors; that a wise man scatters his wisdom; that a saintly priest can change the whole character of his parish. For scattering power is even more true of good than of evil.

Some of that scattering of good is undoubtedly necessary; but not all of it for, after all, we do have beggars. We can give a dime away now and then and we hardly believe ourselves more generous than God. While it is undoubtedly true that God does not have to diffuse His goodness beyond the ineffable confines of the Trinity, what is more natural, more perfectly becoming, than that infinite Goodness should scatter itself? Creation is a statement of the efficient diffusion of that goodness; the life of sanctifying grace, a non-substantial participation of the divine life itself, is a declaration of the divine eagerness to share goodness, an eagerness impatient of the limits of nature; the highest diffusion of the highest Good is found in the personal and substantial union of God to human nature.

If our notion of generosity were not the finite thing it must always be, we might have said that we could have expected something like this from God -- with the comforting privilege of saying "I told you so." In solid truth, only God could have had such an expectation. Always if we are seeing the truth we are overpowered by the goodness showered upon us.

From the end of the Incarnation -- the redemption of men:

The price of our ransom

The inherent beauty and goodness of the Incarnation, the divine vistas it opened up, the supreme dignity it conferred on our fallen nature add up to a total of such charm as even to sweep some theologians off their feet. They decided that the Incarnation would have taken place if Adam had never sinned. Thomas yielded to no man in his recognition of the charm of the Incarnation; but he was a hard man to sweep off his feet, intellectually as well as physically. He had the irritating habit of keeping his feet solidly on the ground even when he was peering into the high things of Good. In this matter, he could see no room for conjecture. A truth such the Incarnation can be known only by revelation; and revelation assigns one definite motive for the Incarnation, namely, the redemption of man and the destruction of sin. He agrees with Augustine in his joyous phrase: "O happy fault," the fault of Adam that merited such a redeemer.

His hard-headed denial that the Incarnation would have taken place in any case has seemed like a dash of cold water thrown on the romance of the Incarnation. In fact, it has been a dash of cold water, clearing our eyes and our heads; not at all a damaging thing when we are looking at the truth. Romance built on anything less than the truth is a pitiful thing, doomed from the start to shattering disillusionment; there is nothing pitiful nor disillusioning about the Incarnation. In reality, Thomas's opinion gives a more profound insight into the wonders of a divine wisdom that could make the sin of Adam work to such good. It does not decrease, it recognizes the sublimity of the romance of the Incarnation.

Inducement to good

With the purpose of the Incarnation, the redemption of men, clearly in mind, the full perfection of the Incarnation as a fitting means is not hard to see. How better can man be redeemed than by moving him to good and restraining him from evil? And how can man be moved to good more effectively than by the divine virtues of faith, hope, and charity, by the solid steps of good works, by positively sharing in divinity?

Of course the worried father, looking into the very eyes of Christ, would find it not too difficult to say: "I believe, Lord, help thou my unbelief." It is not hard to understand the hope and courage of the woman suffering from an issue of blood as she crept up behind Christ to touch the hem of His garment, the garment of the Son of God at that very instant on His way to raise the daughter of Jairus to life. The love of Magdalen, great as it was as she followed her Master up and down Palestine, was nothing compared to the love awakened in her heart by the three hours on Calvary. It is hard to resist a love as impetuous as that of Mary's Son. There is no easier, more effective way of engendering faith than by seeing, talking, living with the Son of God. There is no deeper root for hope than the evidence of His eagerness to help.

As for good works, how could they be made easier for us than to have Christ Himself mark out with His own tired fed the steps we are to follow. The road from Bethlehem to Calvary is not nearly so hard, as long as we can put our arm upon His; we may even find the courage to stop in the midst of our agony for a word of comfort and a gesture of help to others before we plod stubbornly on. This was the example Christ left; an example that was taken up joyously by all of the saints who crowd the corridors of heaven

The final inducement to good was the share we were given in divinity. Now our nature shares substantially in that divinity by the Incarnation, until, in heaven, we personally and individually will share in that divinity by the vision made possible through the grace of Christ.

Restraint from evil

A man is not restrained from evil because he is thrown behind bars or tied hand and foot. Give him some self-respect by showing him he can fight evil, give him the truth that he might see what has to be fought, and set him free to fight -- then, indeed, he has been restrained from evil. That is what Christ did for us in the Incarnation. He humiliated the satanic master before the very eyes of his slaves; He gave new dignity to a nature that had crashed from supreme heights. He protected us from the error of presumption, showing us that it was by His grace and His sufferings that we were saved; from the error of pride by opening our eyes to the humility of God. Finally, the supreme gift of freedom was bought by the ransom that set us free from the slavery of the devil.

In one sense, this Incarnation of the Son of God is more than beautifully fitting: it is absolutely necessary for a complete satisfaction in strict justice. God in His divinity could not suffer for sin; man as an individual could not redeem a whole race, let alone pay an infinite price. It was absolutely necessary that some nature capable of suffering and merit should be assumed by a person whose life had infinite value. Only this, through the justice of God, could perfectly and completely satisfy for man's offenses.

From the time of the Incarnation

God knows men; and nowhere is this more evident than in the timing of the Incarnation. A child at his home-work, if helped too soon, may resent the help, confident of his own abilities; he may take the help too lightly, or depend on it so much that he will put forth no efforts of his own. Man, who is always a child, also needs time to accept help: time to admit the humiliating knowledge of his own defects; time to see how much of truth he could lose; time to perceive how much of virtue would die out even with the help of the Old Testament; time, in other words, to be ready to accept the help that only God could offer. He needed time, too, to prepare to welcome a Savior of such dignity. Yet he could not have too much time, lest his faith become sluggish. Indeed, if the Incarnation were put off till the end of the world, man, with his capacity for getting used to anything, might well get used to the depths in which he would by that time be wallowing. Look what happened to knowledge, to reverence of God, to moral life, in the actual time elapsing between the fall of Adam and the actual coming of Christ.

God was not too late or too early in the help He brought to men. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity was made man in the fullness of time, at just the right time, a time that gives the faith of men its full scope, embracing a faith of the future for the ages past, a faith of the present for the contemporaries of Christ, and a faith of the past for all of us who would come after Him.

Thus far we have seen the fact of the Incarnation, the credibility of that fact, its beautiful fittingness; but, as yet, we have done no more than glance at the mystery itself. The technique is something like that of a man faced with a task of which he is a little afraid. He will clear off the desk, arrange his correspondence, attend to odd jobs that have been neglected for months, working all around the principal task while he tries to keep his eyes averted from it. Eventually he runs out of excuses and has to get down to work. It is time that we got down to work at the mystery of the Incarnation, scrutinizing the very heart of it -- the hypostatic union itself.

The hypostatic union:

Elements of the union: Distinction of nature and person

We have the material of this mystery stated clearly in revelation: a divine nature, a human nature, and a divine Person. This divine Person, at one and the same time, exists in two natures, being His divine nature while having His human nature. Yet there is only one Person involved. This extremely bald statement of the mystery brings home the necessity of our fully grasping the notion of person and that of nature, along with their difference.

A philosopher would meet this difficulty by saying that a person is the responsible agent while a nature is that by which this agent acts; but this is little help to anyone but the contented philosopher. It becomes clearer when we notice that it is John Jones who talks, laughs, enjoys poetry and makes mistakes; and that he does all these things because he is human, because he has human nature. The proud young father peering through the glass walls of the hospital nursery runs smack into the whole truth when he admits his complete conviction that all the babies are human but he hasn't the slightest idea who is who.

There is no difficulty in seeing the difference between nature and person; after all, every man has the same human nature, but every man is a different person. The difficulty comes in trying to snare this difference with the frail lariat of words. Perhaps the closest we can come to it is in insisting on the non-exclusive character of nature and the decidedly non-communicable character of person. Nature, then, is not a perfect unity, it does not forbid communication; while the personal note establishes complete unity that makes this person distinct from everything else in the universe, a thoroughly completed substance, capable of rights and duties. Once that personal note is present, this nature can act; the acts are acts of this person, they can be attributed to absolutely no one else in the universe.

In the case of the hypostatic union, we have a human nature and a divine nature. The divine personality constituting a divine person is there; but the human personality which would constitute a human person is not there. This human nature is personalized by a divine personality. In this union, then, there is no human person; only the Person of the Son of God. The union is not a union of nature to nature; human and divine nature are not tied to each other directly but in the personality of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The same Person is the subject of the actions which proceed from both the divine and the human nature. It was Christ Who was hungry, Who was thirsty, Who was sorrowful; it was that same Christ Who forgave sins, Who raised the dead, Who founded the Church.

The notion that nature is united to nature in this mystery is not only heresy, it is an insult to intelligence. It would mean that the human and the divine nature were tossed together like a heap of stones, i.e., they were not really united but rather stood side by side. The result, of course, would not be one person but two, Christ would never have existed. Such a union might mean that the divine nature and the human were fused together like hydrogen and oxygen into a mysterious third thing that would be neither God nor man. If such a union is taken to mean that the divine and human natures, incomplete themselves, somehow complete each other as body and soul complete each other to form human nature, the result is just as absurd. For the outcome of this union would be neither God nor man, while the process itself would involve the absurd error of an imperfect God completed and perfected by a defective human nature.

No, this union was not of nature to nature; it was a personal union. Not a simple personal union in which the person is the result of the union of incomplete substances such as the body and soul in man. Here, in this mystery, the union is a personal, substantial one in which the person is not caused by the union but rather pre-exists it. In this unique personal union, with its unique title of "hypostatic," the two substances brought together, human and divine nature, are both complete and the person pre-exists the union. The difference between union of this kind and the personal union out of which the human person emerges can be made quite clear by a momentary consideration of the dissolution of this latter union. When a man dies, the union of body and soul is dissolved. Since a person originally resulted from that union, with its dissolution, the person no longer exists: the soul of John Smith may be in heaven, but not John Smith; in fact, John Smith isn't anywhere until after the resurrection when body and soul are reunited. When Christ died on the Cross, there was the same separation of body and soul through the destruction of human nature; but the Person, the Divine Person Who had pre-existed the union with human nature, continued to exist.

In this unique way of hypostatic union the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became incarnate. That is a solemn truth of faith. The divine Person, then, is the sole responsible agent in the whole life of Christ. It was the Second Person of the Trinity who was born, grew, suffered, died; and it's precisely here that we find the secret of the infinite worth of the smallest acts of the Son of Mary.

It was not necessary to wait for our time to uncover the objection that the doctrine of the Incarnation adds something to God: before the Incarnation He was not man; afterwards, He was. This is exactly the same difficulty we faced in the first volume of this work in dealing with creation. Indeed, it is the fundamental difficulty found in all the relations between God and His creatures; and it is precisely in the nature of relation that we find the answer. Fundamentally, of course, the answer is that divine action perfects others but does not add perfection to an already infinitely perfect God.

Our mind being what it is, we prefer to take answers apart and examine every smallest detail of them. Pondering this matter of relation, then, we see that it is no more than the order of one thing to another, always dependent on its two terms. When a pillar, for example, is seen by a tourist, there is a relation set up between the two; something quite impossible without both the pillar and the tourist. The same is true of the relation established when the earth is heated by the sun, or when human nature is assumed by the Word of God. Do we say that something was added to the pillar by the fact that it was seen by the tourist? Or to the sun because the earth was heated by it? Of course not. Nor do we say that something was added to the Word of God through the union to human nature.

Rather, there was something very definitely added to the tourist, to the earth, and to human nature. The difference between the two is that on one side there is a real relation -- the side of the tourist, of the earth, of human nature; on the other -- that of the pillar, of the sun, of the Word of God, there is only a relation of reason. The rule of thumb by which we can distinguish one from the other is this: where dependence is found, there is a real relation; where there is no dependence, there is a relation of reason.

Perhaps all this will not seem so overpowering if we leave the world of facts for the world of possibility. After all, a huge man does not look nearly so big standing next to a man who is still bigger; an enemy does not seem nearly so deadly if, just beyond him, is an even more deadly enemy. Perhaps the hypostatic union will not seem so intellectually frightening if we look at some of the hypostatic unions that might have been.

Varieties of union

From the very fact that one of the divine Persons did assume a created nature, it is clear that any one of the divine Three can do the same. Even without this confirmation of fact, the truth is dear merely from a consideration of divine Personality. What this involves is the ability to place an act of assuming that nature and the power to complete that nature. The question really boils down to a query as to whether or not a divine Person can do directly, through His divine nature and the infinite perfection of His divine personality, what is ordinarily the work of secondary causes. Certainly a divine Person can assume a created nature, any divine Person; for any divine Person is omnipotent and each divine Person is infinite personality.

Properties of the hypostatic union

Could divine nature assume a created nature? Certainly this is not the proper work of nature, for it will give the last note of incommunicability while the divine nature itself is in fact communicated to all Three Persons. This is rather the work of personality in the full philosophical sense of the term. Looking at it from another angle, nature is the root of action but never the immediate responsible agent. By reason of His divine nature, the Son of God worked miracles but it was the Son, not the nature, Who did so; by reason of His human nature, the same Person could suffer and die, but it was the Person, not the nature, that suffered. The divine nature, then, cannot properly be the first and immediate agent in the assuming of any created nature; it must always remain the radical, not the immediate, principle of action.

Can one divine Person assume a created nature, excluding the other two Persons? If we remember that the assumption of a created nature implies the act of assuming and the completing or perfecting of the nature assumed, the answer to this question is not difficult. The principle of the action of assuming is the divine nature which is common to all Three Persons; in this, no one Person can act alone since it is precisely because of the numerically common nature that all the works of God external to the Trinity are common works. But from the angle of the completion of a created nature, a work proper to personality, not nature, the infinite personality of any one divine Person is more than adequate. This is, in fact, the precise story of the procedure of God in the Incarnation.

The Person and the union: Relation of the union to the three Persons of the Trinity

Pushing this world of possibilities still farther, could a divine Person assume two, three, four, five, a dozen created natures? Or, on the other hand, could one, or two, or three divine Persons be incarnated in the same created nature? All this may seem a little absurd, but it is not absurd. It is some little evidence of the tremendous power of that divine Personality and the mystery of the identically one common nature of the Three Persons.

The condition of the divine Persons does not exclude community of nature but only community of persons; They do in actual fact all possess the same divine nature. It is, then, quite possible for two or three of the divine Persons to be incarnated in the same created nature; in such a case, They would then possess a human nature in common as They now possess a divine nature in common.

As to the other question of a multiplicity of created natures assumed by one Person, there is no difficulty if we remember that the assumption of a created nature is possible because of the omnipotence of the divine nature and the infinite character of divine personality. To ask whether a half dozen or a dozen created natures could be assumed by one Person is simply to ask if there is a limit to the omnipotence of God and to the wide sweep of divine Personality. The answer is obvious. The Son of God could have assumed a dozen human natures.

Its relation to the Second Person

It could have been otherwise. But it was most fitting that the Son, of all the three Persons, take created nature and that that created nature be a human nature. The Son of God, as the eternal concept of God, is, in a sense, the exemplar of all creatures. Just as by participation of this exemplar things are constituted in their proper species, so through a union, not participated but substantial, of this Word to human nature, men are restored in order to an eternal and unchanging perfection. We might say that the Word of God is like the architect's plan of a house: it is by that plan that the house is built in the first place; and it is by that plan, participating in it, that the house is to be restored once it has collapsed.

The modern world and the Incarnation: Reason and the mystery

There is, too, the fact that the Word of God is the concept of eternal wisdom through which all the wisdom of men is derived. Man is perfected in wisdom by the participation of the Word, as the disciples are perfected by participation of the word of their master. For the consummate perfection of this nature of ours, then, we must have a personal union with the Word of God. It is eminently fitting, to see the thing from another angle, that men who are to be the adopted sons of God should participate through the natural Son of God in the similitude of that sonship. Again, as the first man sinned, desiring inordinate knowledge of things which should not be known, so through the Word of true wisdom, through this gift of true knowledge, can man be led back to God.

A contrast with early errors

There is reason enough for the Incarnation to leave the mind of man staggered. It does. It always has and it always will. Precisely because it is a mystery far surpassing the powers of the human mind, there has been open rebellion against this truth. In the beginning of the Church, these rebellions were gigantic; solid, thumping errors were made on an intellectual basis, errors that demanded the fine, sharp thinking of great minds to detect their fallacy, to show that there is no contradiction in the Son of God becoming man. In those first centuries, the possibilities of error were exhausted and the errors were met. Since that time, there has been a steady decline of intellectual opposition to the Incarnation. From then on, attacks on the Incarnation were really pot-shots taken with air-rifles against an impregnable fort.

In the Reformation there was a definite loss of the intellectual content of faith; indeed, faith itself was reduced to a kind of trust, confidence, a thing of the appetite. More and more, since then, Christianity outside the Church has been an easy victim of rationalistic attack. In fact, in our day that Christianity is succumbing to a scholarship that has been discredited for a generation. This Christianity has adopted a program of compromise with "progress" because it has no weapons of the intellect with which to fight. It is not surprising, then, that today, outside the Church, it is quite the ordinary thing to consider Christ as merely a man. Undoubtedly there is in this a certain shamefacedness about the supernatural; here and there, there is an open denial of the supernatural; increasingly there is a denial, not only of the divinity of Christ, but of all divinity.

The missing foundations

Today the Incarnation will gradually slip further out of the minds of men. Our world cannot accept the Incarnation because it lacks the ingredients of that Incarnation. It does not know what God is, or, indeed, if He is at all; and God plays a very important part in the Incarnation. Even less, perhaps, is known about man when we doubt his spiritual soul, intellectual powers, free will, his beginning and his goal. Under these circumstances, to accept the Incarnation is to accept the union of unknown things to no purpose whatsoever.

It might even be that we are barred from the future knowledge of the Incarnation by our modern rejection of the mysterious. That the barrier of rejection of the mysterious is beginning to break down is one hopeful sign of our times. Perhaps when its crumbling has progressed enough, we may yet know something of man, something of God, and, through the gracious kindness of God, something of the Incarnation. Certainly men are stirring to impatience at a dreamless world. Perhaps mysteries will give them back the stuff of dreams, restoring the far horizons of humanity. At the moment, our world is far indeed from the supreme and realized dream of God made man. So far that only the wisdom of God can envisage the time or manner of its return.

The Christian world and the Incarnation: The word was made flesh; Mary's realization

There is a chasm indeed between this world and the Christian world. In the Christian world, the Word, the Son of God, was made flesh. A girl of fifteen or sixteen welcomes Him into herself. Hers is the first human heart to thrill at the proof of love given in the exaltation of fallen nature and the humiliation of God. She was the first to stand aghast, yet believing, at the lengths to which God would go. She was the first to recognize the kinship of Christ, our Brother, and to feel something of the serenity, the courage, the inspiration, and recklessly responding love awakened by the presence of that divine Companion Who was man. She was the first to carry the incredible tale the length of the land.

And dwelt amongst us; the Apostles' realization

To the Christian world, the Word was not only made flesh; He dwelt amongst us. Twelve ignorant men entered into His life, ate, walked, slept with Him, sat under the stars and listened to His sublime doctrines, watched His agony, were witnesses of His Resurrection and Ascension, and, eventually, they understood that God, personally, had come to mark out the path men must travel, given authentic example of how men must love and work and sacrifice and forgive, suffer and die. Eventually, too, they took to the path, laboriously putting their feet down in the footprints He had left for them, and after them have come a host of men and women for two thousand years, treading the same path, under the same guidance, inspired by the same help, and to the same goal. At the core of their splendid lives was this fundamental truth that God became man, as it was at the core of their religion, as it is at the core of the world. For them a dream has been realized.

That dream is a star leading men to the secret meaning of the world, the charging steed upon which they crash through all the barriers of self, of society, of nature, to the realization of that other incredible dream, the dream of seeing God face to face.

REALITY—A Synthesis Of Thomistic Thought by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O. P., Fifth Part: Metaphysical Synthesis Of Thomism, CH32: INTRODUCTION

REALITY—A Synthesis Of Thomistic Thought by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O. P.


Fifth Part: Metaphysical Synthesis Of Thomism

CH32: INTRODUCTION [707]

In order to show the appropriateness of the Incarnation, St. Thomas employs this principle: good is self-diffusive, and the higher the order of good, the more abundantly and intimately does it communicate itself. The truth of this principle is seen on every level of being: in the light and heat of the sun, in the fruitfulness of vegetative life, of sense life, of intellective knowledge and love. The higher a thing stands in goodness the more creative it is, both as goal to attract and as agent to effect.

But does a thing that is good necessarily communicate itself? Yes, if it is an agent limited to one kind of activity, as is the sun to radiation. But if the agent is free, then its self-communication is also free. [708] By such free self-communication a perfect agent gives perfection, but does not itself become thereby more perfect. Now God is the supremely good thing, infinitely good. Hence it is appropriate that He communicate Himself in person to a created nature, and this is what comes to pass in the incarnation of the Word.

Does this reason prove the possibility of the Incarnation? No, because reason can simply not prove apodictically even the possibility of a mystery essentially supernatural. But, as profound reason of appropriateness, the argument just given is inexhaustibly fruitful. And on this point we find among theologians no notable controversy. Real controversy begins when we put the questions: Why did God become incarnate?

The answer of St. Thomas [709] runs thus: In the actual plan of providence, [710] if the first man had not sinned, the Word would not have be come incarnate. He became incarnate to offer God adequate satisfaction for that first sin and all its consequences. Let us listen to his argument.

A truth which absolutely surpasses all that is due to human nature, a truth which depends solely on God's will, can be known by divine revelation only. But according to revelation, contained in Scripture and tradition, the reason everywhere assigned for the Incarnation is drawn from the sin of the first man. [711] Hence it is reasonable to conclude that, if the first man had not sinned, the Word would not have become incarnate, and that, after that sin, He became incarnate in order to offer God adequate satisfaction, and thus to give us salvation.

This line of reasoning is in harmony with Scripture. [712] Among the many texts let us quote one: The Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost. [713] It is also the voice of tradition, formulated thus by St. Augustine: [714] Had man not sinned, the Son of man had not come.

Such is the answer of St. Thomas. Scotus, on the contrary, maintains that, even if Adam had not sinned, the Word would still have become incarnate. But, since He would not have come to atone for sin, He would not have a human nature subject to pain and death. [715] Suarez, [716] seeking a middle ground, says that the Word became incarnate equally for the redemption of man and for the manifestation of God's goodness. By the adverb "equally" he understands that these two motives are coordinated, as being two chief purposes, each equal to the other, whereas Thomists hold that the ultimate purpose of the Incarnation was indeed to manifest God's goodness, but that the proximate purpose was man's redemption.

Against the Scotist view Thomists use the following argument. Divine decrees are of two kinds: one efficacious and absolute, the other inefficacious and conditional. The latter is concerned with the thing to be realized taken in itself, abstracting from all actual circumstance. Thus, for example, God wills the salvation of all men. But, in fact, God permits final impenitence in a sinner (e. g.: Judas) as manifestation of infinite justice. Efficacious decrees on the contrary are concerned with the thing to be realized taken with all its concrete circumstances of place and time. Hence these decrees are immutable and infallible. [717] Now the present efficacious decree extends to the concrete circumstance of the passibility of our Savior's humanity. And Scotists themselves concede that the union between divine nature and human nature subject to passibility presupposes Adam's sin.

This reasoning, which Thomists hold to be irrefutable, supposes that the last end of the Incarnation is to manifest the divine goodness by way of redemption, redemption being efficaciously decreed as subordinated to this manifestation. Thus proposed, the argument concludes against both Suarez and Scotus. For us men and for our salvation, says the Council of Nicaea, He came down from heaven. Had man not sinned, the Son of man had not come, says tradition. [718] Scotus and Suarez would reword this sentence. They say: Had man not sinned, the Son of man would still have come, but not in a "passible" humanity. By such restatement the assertion of the Fathers, taken simply as it stands, would be false. To illustrate, it would be false to say that Christ is not really in heaven and in the Eucharist, though He is not in either place in a passible humanity.

Scotus brings another difficulty. A wise man, he says, wills first the end, then the means in proportion to their nearness to that end. [719] Thus he transfers the subordination in question from the order of different acts of the divine will to the order of different objects of those acts. Then he continues: Now Christ, being more perfect, is nearer the last end of the universe than is Adam. Hence God, to reveal His goodness, chose first the incarnation of the Word, before Adam was willed, and hence before his sin had been committed.

In answer to this objection, many Thomists, [720] following Cajetan, [721] distinguish the final cause [722] from the material cause. To illustrate. In the order of final causality God wills, first the soul, secondly the body for the sake of the soul. But in the order of material causality He wills first the body, as being the material cause to be perfected by the soul, and the soul is created only when the embryo is sufficiently disposed to receive the soul.

Applying this distinction to the Incarnation, God wills, under final causality, the redemptive Incarnation before He wills to permit Adam's sin, conceived as possible. But in the order of material causality, [723] He permits first the sin of Adam, as something to be turned into a higher good. Similarly, in the order of beatitude, beatitude itself is the final cause and man is the material cause, the subject, [724] which receives beatitude.

This distinction is not idle, verbal, or fictitious. It is founded on the nature of things. Causes have mutual priority, each in its own order: [725] form before matter, matter before form. If Adam had not sinned, if the human race were not there to be redeemed, the Word would not have become incarnate. That is the order of material causality. But in the order of finality, God permitted original sin in view of some higher good, which good we, after the Incarnation, know to be an incarnation universally redemptive.

On this last point some Thomists hesitate. John of St. Thomas and Billuart say they have no answer to the question: What higher good led God to permit original sin? But others [726] give a satisfactory answer. Before the Annunciation, they say, the question could not be answered. But, after the Annunciation, we see that the higher good in question is the universally redemptive Incarnation, subordinated of course to the revelation of God's infinite goodness.

That this is the thought of St. Thomas himself appears in the following words: "Nothing hinders human nature from being led after sin to a greater good than it had before. God permits evils only to draw forth from them something better." [727] Where sin abounded, says St. Paul, there grace super-abounded. And the deacon, when he blesses the Easter candle, sings: Oh happy guilt, which merited so great and so beautiful a Redeemer!

Thus God's mercy, goodness, and power find in the Incarnation their supreme manifestation. How does God manifest His omnipotence? Chiefly, says the liturgy, [728] by sparing and showing mercy. [729].

Hence, as the Carmelites of Salamanca so well say, we are not to multiply divine decrees, and to suppose, as did John of St. Thomas and Billuart, a whole set of conditional and inefficacious decrees. It suffices to say that among all possible worlds known by what we call God's simple intelligence, there were included these two possible worlds: first, a human race that remains in a state of innocence and is crowned with a non-redemptive Incarnation; secondly, a fallen human race restored by a redemptive Incarnation. Thus, while the fallen race is first [730] as material subject of the Incarnation, the Incarnation itself is first in the order of finality. [731] And thus, too, the ultimate purpose of the universe is the manifestation of God's goodness.

How, then, are we to conceive the succession, not in divine acts of will, but in the order of objects willed by God? Let us take an architect as illustration. What the architect aims at first is not the summit nor the foundation but the building as a whole with all its parts in mutual subordination. Thus God, as architect, wills the whole universe as it now stands with its ascending orders, nature first, then grace (with the permission of sin): then the hypostatic union as redemptive from sin. The Incarnation, though it presupposes a sinful human race, is not "subordinated" to our redemption. Redemptive by its material recipient, it remains in itself the transcendent cause of redemption, and we, as recipients, as bodies are to souls, remain ourselves subordinated to Christ, who is the author of salvation and the exemplar of holiness. All things belong to you, says St. Paul, [732] but you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

Let us conclude with a corollary, thus expressed by St. Thomas: [733]: "God's love for Christ is greater than His love for all creatures combined. By this love He gave Christ a name that is above every name, since Christ is truly God. Nor is Christ's pre-eminent excellence in any way diminished by the death which God imposed on Him as Savior of the human race. On the contrary, by this death Jesus gained the most glorious of victories, a victory which made Him the Prince of peace, whose shoulders bear the government of the world." [734] Having humbled Himself, says St. Paul, [735] having become obedient unto death, even unto death on the cross, He was exalted and given the name that is above every name.

This transcendent excellence of the Savior, thus delineated by St. Thomas, is in fullest accord with Scripture and tradition. The glory of God's Son was not diminished, was rather pre-eminently enhanced, when for our salvation He came down from heaven and was made man.

Cathechism of the "Summa Theologica" by R. P. Thomas Pegues, O.P. - Part 3, Chapters 1-3 corresponding to the Pars Tertia, Q 1-3 of the Summa Theologica

CATECHISM OF THE “SUMMA THEOLOGICA” OF SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS FOR THE USE OF THE FAITHFUL BY R. P. THOMAS PEGUES, O.P.


I. OF THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION OR OF THE WORD MADE FLESH

What is meant by the mystery of the Incarnation or of the Word made flesh ?

It is that truth, absolutely incomprehensible for us on earth, according to which the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, viz., the Word or the only Son of God, existing from all eternity together with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the same, one, and only true God, the Creator and Sovereign Master of all things, came, in time, upon this earth by His Incarnation in the womb of the Virgin Mary of whom He was born: lived moreover our mortal life and evangelized the Jewish race in Palestine to whom He was personally sent by His Father; was rejected by this people, was betrayed and delivered up to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor; was condemned and put to death on a cross; was buried, and descended into hell, and rose again from the dead the third day; ascended into heaven forty days afterwards; sits at the right hand of God the

Father, from whence He governs the Church established by Him on earth, and to which He sent the Holy Ghost, who is His as well as the Father's; sanctified this Church by the sacraments of His grace, so preparing it for His second coming at the end of time ; at the last day He will judge the living and the dead, having made the latter rise from their tombs; and this in order to make the final separation of the good from the bad ; the good He will take with Him into the Kingdom of His Father, and the bad He will curse and condemn to everlasting punishments.

II. OF THE FITTINGNESS AND NECESSITY OF THE INCARNATION

(A)

Is this coming on earth of the Son of God by His Incarnation in harmony with what we know of God?

Yes. For we know that God is goodness itself; on the other hand, we know that goodness endeavours to communicate some of its perfection to others. Now God could not communicate Himself to His creatures in a way more marvellous than by His Incarnation (I. i).

Was the Incarnation of the Son of God necessary?

No ; considered in itself the Incarnation was in no way necessary; but given the fall of the human race by the 'sin of Adam, and that God wished to reinstate the human race in the most perfect way, and that above all He desired to exact the most complete satisfaction for the first sin, then it was necessary that a God-Man should take upon Himself this sin and make reparation for it (I. 2).

It is then by reason of man's sin and for the reparation thereof that the Son of God became incarnate?

Yes, it was for this precise reason (I. 3, 4).

Why then did not the Son of God become incarnate immediately after the fall of Adam?

The reason was because God wished the human race to know fully its misery, and the need it had of a God- Saviour; and also as was meet for so great a coming in order that a great line of prophets might precede and foretell the advent of the Saviour (1.5,6).

(B)

In what does the Incarnation of the Son of God consist considered in itself?

It consists in this, that the divine nature and a human nature, each preserving what was proper to each, were substantially and indissolubly united in the unity of the one and same divine Person, which is the Person of the Son of God (II. 1-6).

Why did this union take place in the Person of the Son rather than in that of the Father or the Holy Ghost?

The reason is because the properties of the Son, who in God, has the nature of the Word, and to whom belongs by way of appropriation all that refers to wisdom through which God created all things, make the Son to be especially fitting for the restoration of the fallen human race; and also because proceeding from the Father, He could be sent by the Father, and He, in His turn, could send MS His Spirit as the fruit of His Redemption (HI. 8).

III. CONCERNING THAT WHICH THE SON OF GOD TOOK OF US AND WHICH HE UNITED TO HIMSELF IN HIS INCARNATION

(A)

When it is said that the Son of God was incarnated or that the Word was made fleshy or that He was made man, what do these different expressions signify?

All these expressions signify that the Word, or the Son of God, took, in order to unite it to Himself in His Passion, our human nature such as it is to be found in every individual human being descended from Adam (IV. 1-6).

Does it then follow that in the incarnate Word or Son of God made man there is a human individual?

Absolutely no. There is in Him an individual human nature, but not a human individual or a human person; for the nature He took was united to His divine Person, so that in the Incarnation there is only one person, and that is the Person of the Word or of God the Son (IV. 3).

Is this human nature which is united to the Person of God the Son as regards its two essential parts, exactly the same as the human nature in each of us ?

Yes (V. 1-4).

The incarnate Son of God has then a body like to ours of flesh and bone, with the same members, senses, and organs?

Yes (V. 1,2).

Has He also a soul like to ours, with the same parts and faculties y and with an intellect and a will like to ours?

Yes, He has a soul with the same parts and powers like to ours exactly (V. 3,4).

Were all the parts which constitute an individual human nature in its essence and integrity united to the Person of the Son of God at the same time?

Yes, but He united them to Himself in a certain order (VI. 1-6).

(B)

In what order did God the Son unite to Himself the human nature and its parts?

In such wise that He took the body and all its parts by reason of the soul; and the soul and its other powers by reason of the intellect ; and the body, soul, and intellect by reason of the human nature which all the above constitutes in its essence and integrity (VI. 1-5).

Was this union of the human nature and all its parts with the Person of God the Son made directly and immediately without the intermediary of any created reality whatsoever?

Yes, and this precisely because the term of this union is the very being of the Person of God the Son which is communicated to this human nature and all its parts (VI. 6).

Incarnation Reveals Glory of the Trinity by Blessed John Paul II

Incarnation Reveals Glory of the Trinity

1. "One source and one root, one form shines out in threefold splendour. From the bright depths of the Father bursts forth the power of the Son, the wisdom that created the whole world, the fruit born of the Father's heart! And there blazes the unifying light of the Holy Spirit". So sang Synesius of Cyrene in Hymn II at the beginning of the fifth century, celebrating the divine Trinity, one in source and threefold in glory, at the dawn of a new day. This truth of the one God in three equal and distinct Persons is not relegated to heaven; it cannot be regarded as a sort of "heavenly mathematical theorem" with no implications for human life, as the philosopher Kant supposed.

2. In fact, as we heard in the Evangelist Luke's account, the glory of the Trinity becomes present in time and space and finds its manifestation in Jesus, his Incarnation and his history. Luke interprets the conception of Christ precisely in the light of the Trinity: this is attested by the angel's words to Mary, spoken inside the modest home in the Galilean village of Nazareth, which archaeology has brought to light. The transcendent divine presence is revealed in Gabriel's announcement: the Lord God — through Mary and in the line of David's descendants — gives his Son to the world: "You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David" (Lk 1: 31-32).

God manifested his love by sending the Son

3. Here the word "son" has a twofold sense, because the filial bond with the heavenly Father and with the earthly mother are closely united in Christ. But the Holy Spirit also shares in the Incarnation, and indeed it is his action which makes that conception unique and unrepeatable: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God" (Lk 1: 35). The angel's words are like a short Creed which sheds light on the identity of Christ in relation to the other Persons of the Trinity. It is the Church's unanimous faith which Luke already places at the dawn of the saving fullness of time: Christ is the Son of the Most High God, the Great One, the Holy One, the King, the Eternal One, whose conception in the flesh takes place through the power of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, as John will say in his First Letter, "no one who denies the Son has the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also" (1 Jn 2: 23).

4. At the centre of our faith is the Incarnation, in which the glory of the Trinity and the Trinity's love for us is revealed: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us ... we have beheld his glory" (Jn 1: 14). "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son" (Jn 3: 16). "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 Jn 4: 9). Through these words of the Johannine writings, we can understand how the revelation of the Trinity's glory in the Incarnation is not a flash of light dispelling the darkness for a moment, but a seed of divine life sown in the world and in human hearts for ever.

In this regard a statement by the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Galatians is emblematic: "When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!'. So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir" (Gal 4: 4-7; cf. Rom 8: 15-17). The Father, the Son and the Spirit are present and active, then, in the Incarnation in order to involve us in their life. "All men", the Second Vatican Council stressed, "are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and towards whom our whole life is directed" (Lumen gentium, n. 3). And, as St Cyprian stated, the community of God's children is "a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" (De Dom Orat., 23).

Trinity is central mystery of Christian faith and life

5. "To know God and his Son is to accept the mystery of the loving communion of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit into one's own life, which even now is open to eternal life because it shares in the life of God. Eternal life is therefore that life of God himself and at the same time the life of the children of God. As they ponder this unexpected and inexpressible truth which comes to us from God in Christ, believers cannot fail to be filled with ever new wonder and unbounded gratitude" (Evangelium vitae, nn. 37-38).

In this wonder and acceptance we must adore the mystery of the Holy Trinity, which "is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 234).

In the Incarnation we contemplate the Trinitarian love which is revealed in Jesus: a love that does not remain closed in a perfect circle of light and glory, but shines forth in human flesh and in human history; it pervades man, giving him new birth as a son in the Son. For this reason, as St Irenaeus said, the glory of God is the living man: "Gloria enim Dei vivens homo, vita autem hominis visio Dei". He is not so only because of his physical life, but especially because "man's life consists in the vision of God" (Adversus Haereses IV, 20, 7). And to see God is to be transfigured in him: "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (1 Jn 3: 2).

To the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors the Holy Father said:

I am happy to welcome to this audience the many school groups, as well as the parish and diocesan pilgrimages, especially from Denmark, Finland, Australia, the Philippines, Japan and the United States. As you pray at the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul, may you be strengthened in your faith and in your resolve to serve Christ in others. Upon you and your families I invoke the joy and peace of the risen Saviour.

Trinity Is Mysteriously Present in Creation by Blessed John Paul II

Trinity Is Mysteriously Present in Creation


1. "How greatly to be desired are all his works, and how sparkling they are to see!... He has made nothing incomplete.... Who can have enough of beholding his glory? Though we speak much we cannot reach the end, and the sum of our words is: "He is the all'. Where shall we find strength to praise him? He is greater than all his works..." (Sir 42:22, 24-25; 43:27-28). With these words full of wonder, Sirach, a biblical sage, contemplated the splendour of creation and sang God's praises. It is a tiny piece of the thread of contemplation and meditation which runs throughout Sacred Scripture, from the first lines of Genesis when creatures, summoned by the powerful Word of the Creator, spring from the silence of nothingness.

God's majesty is exalted above the heavens

"God said, "Let there be light'; and there was light" (Gn 1:3). In this part of the first account of creation the Word of God is already seen in action; John will say of him: "In the beginning was the Word ... the Word was God ... all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (Jn 1:1-3). Paul will emphasize in the hymn in the Letter to the Colossians that "in him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities — all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together" (Col 1:16-17). But at the very first moment of creation the Spirit also seems to be foreshadowed: "the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters" (Gn 1:2). The glory of the Trinity — we can say with Christian tradition — is resplendent in creation.

2. We can see in the light of Revelation how the creative act is appropriated in the first place to the "Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (Jas 1:17). He shines resplendently over the whole horizon, as the Psalmist sings: "O Lord, our Lord, how glorious is your name over all the earth! You have exalted your majesty above the heavens" (Ps 8:2). God "has made the world firm, not to be moved" (Ps 96:10), and as he faces nothingness, symbolized by the chaotic waters which lift up their voice, the Creator arises, giving firmness and safety: "The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice, the floods lift up their roaring. Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty" (Ps 93:3-4).

3. In Sacred Scripture creation is also often linked to the divine Word which breaks in and acts: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.... He spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth.... He sends forth his command to the earth; his word runs swiftly" (Ps 33:6, 9; 147:15). In the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament it is divine Wisdom personified that brings forth the universe, carrying out the plan God has in mind (cf. Prv 8:22-31). It has been said that in God's Word and Wisdom John and Paul saw the foretelling of the action of Christ "from whom are all things and for whom we exist" (1 Cor 8:6), because it is "through [Christ] also [that God] created the world" (Heb 1:2).

4. At other times Scripture stresses the role of God's Spirit in the act of creation: "When you send forth your Spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the earth" (Ps 104:30). The same Spirit is symbolically described as the breath of God's mouth. He gives life and consciousness to man (cf. Gn 2:7), and brings him back to life in the resurrection, as the prophet Ezekiel announces in an evocative passage where the Spirit is at work breathing life into dry bones (cf. 37:1-14). This same breath subdues the waters of the sea at Israel's exodus from Egypt (cf. Ex 15:8, 10). Again the Spirit regenerates the human creature, as Jesus will say in his night-time conversation with Nicodemus: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (Jn 3:5-6).

God's invisible reality can be perceived in creation

5. So, in beholding the glory of the Trinity in creation, man must contemplate, sing and rediscover wonder. In contemporary society people become indifferent "not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder" (G. K. Chesterton). For the believer, to contemplate creation is also to hear a message, to listen to a paradoxical and silent voice, as the "Psalm of the sun" suggests: "The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world" (Ps 19:1-5).

Nature thus becomes a gospel which speaks to us of God: "from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator" (Wis 13:5). Paul teaches us that "ever since the creation of the world his [God's] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made" (Rom 1:20). But this capacity for contemplation and knowledge, this discovery of a transcendent presence in created things must lead us also to rediscover our kinship with the earth, to which we have been linked since our own creation (cf. Gn 2:7). This is precisely the goal which the Old Testament wished for the Hebrew Jubilee, when the land was at rest and man ate what the fields spontaneously gave him (cf. Lv 25:11-12). If nature is not violated and degraded, it once again becomes man's sister.

To the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors, the Holy Father said:

I extend a warm welcome to all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors, in particular to the group from St Denis Parish in Hanover, New Hampshire, and to the Chapman University Choir from Orange, California. I wish to assure the pilgrims from Seton Hall University that I have prayed for the dead and the injured in last week's tragic fire at the university. Upon you all I invoke the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ.