Word and Flesh

The Incarnation refers to the spiritual mystery of the Word made flesh through the birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph. The tangential human mind cannot grasp the absolute workings of this, but it can understand the why. In taking on human form and becoming like one of us in all ways but sin, God emptied Himself as an act of mercy. His merciful sacrifice justified the imbalance in our relationship with God caused by sin. The Incarnation was justice acting as mercy, a seemingly contradictory action that only God could achieve.

We understand human birth, and we can grasp the historical authenticity of the man, Jesus. With certainty, we can believe his name was "Jesus," as Humphrey Carpenter points out in his book, Jesus (Oxford University Press, 1980), because the name was so common in first-century Palestine that the early Church would not have used it otherwise. By the same logic, we can safely believe Jesus was a carpenter by trade, since the Church Fathers would not have invented such an ordinary occupation for the Messiah. Even biblical critics accept this.

History Weighs In
Moreover, in addition to the Gospels, there are independent references to Jesus, such as by the historian Josephus.

Flavius Josephus was born in 37 A.D. and lived to 98 A.D. His great work was the volume Jewish War: Antiquities of the Jews, informally referred to as The Antiquities. The massive history covers the history of the Jewish nation up to 66 A.D. Josephus devotes six books of the 20-volume opus from the reign of Herod the Great to the year 66.

In these books, he mentions Jesus two times. He also refers to the Pharisees, the Sadducees, Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate, and John the Baptist. In the first reference to Jesus (Book 18 of The Antiquities), Josephus writes:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, for he was a performer of wonderful deeds, a teacher of much men as are happy to accept the truth. He won over many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. When Pilate, at the suggestion of the leading men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those who loved him at the first did not forsake him, and the tribe of Christians, so named for him, are not extinct to this day.



Josephus's second reference to Jesus, in Antiquities 20, describes how the high priest Annas "convened the Sanhedrin. He then brought before them the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ, who was called James, and some other men, whom he accused of having broken the law, and handed them over to be stoned."

Acceding to the Mystery
Clearly, there can be no reasonable doubt about the historical existence of Jesus Christ. My human grasp of the nature of Jesus must end there. Beyond that, I accede to the mystery of the Incarnation.

Jesus wasn't the kind of Messiah many Jews had expected. He made no claims to political power or temporal office. Rather, he spoke of the "kingdom of God" (Mt 3, 2 and Mk 1, 15) and referred to Himself as the "Son of Man," a tautology with a messianic meaning stemming back to the prophet Daniel:

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days [that is, God], and to him was given domination and glory and kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed (Dan. 7, 13-14).



By the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus was conceived. Mary gave birth to Him in a manger in Bethlehem. In this moment, divine intervention intersected human history. It was also bisection, one the world would acknowledge with the designations of B.C. (before Christ) and A.D. (anno domini, the years after His birth). In effect, the Incarnation took humankind into a post-historical, post-temporal dimension, one eternal and outside of time that would be revealed to us as the place of redemption and salvation.

Round-the-Clock Deliverer
Christmas, of course, provides a "built-in" opportunity to meditate on this mystery of the Word made flesh, and who cannot do so when presented with the traditional story of His birth in Bethlehem? As a long-term topic of reflection, however, the Incarnation is also a round-the-clock deliverer.

In that light, I'd like to share a "most qualified" meditation on God becoming Man. The following essay has been excerpted from the October-December 1962 issue of Marian Helpers Bulletin, a precursor to Marian Helper magazine. Our guest author is none other than Blessed Michael Sopocko, St. Faustina's spiritual director and confessor:

The power of God is shown in the working of miracles; the wisdom, in the choice of the best possible means of achieving the highest possible end. In the Incarnation, we see this highest possible end - the union of two natures in one Person, that other men might be adopted as the sons of God.

And what could be more marvelous than that God should become man, and Man, God? It is the marvel above all marvels. Through the Incarnation, satisfaction is made for the infinite offense against God's majesty - made not by any creature but by God-Man: we see, too, the infinite malice of sin, in that it needed the Son of God to blot it out and bring about a just settlement and reparation for the insult offered to God.

But above all, it is through the Incarnation that the mercy of God is most clearly revealed. There is no gift that could show the great mercy of God towards human misery so well as the gift of His dear Son. Nothing more could have been done for us; nothing dearer or more efficacious offered for our salvation.

It may seem to some that it would have been an even greater act of mercy if our sins had been freely forgiven, and all men admitted into heaven. But in fact there is an even greater compassion in the gift of the Son of God, just as the redemption that satisfied justice was more precious than a redemption without any such satisfaction.

If a king takes the status of a servant to save a man who has been condemned to death, he shows more mercy than if he merely spared his life by exercising his royal prerogative.

Finally, through the Incarnation, God ordained an inexhaustible source of salvation for all men, in all ages; and this, but for the Incarnation, we should probably never have possessed.

From the Mystery of the Incarnation there flows forth to us a great outpouring of merciful goodness, precious alike for the sublimity of the gift itself, for the way in which this gift is given, and for the results that follow it. On this three-fold basis, the benefits of the Incarnation are boundless. This gift of this Incarnation is infinite, for it is the only-begotten Son of God.

If the most perfect angel had become incarnate and dwelt among us, teaching us, guiding us, leading us on to salvation, this, too, would have been a great act of mercy. But behold, God sends His Son. He gives Him to us as our own, solely for our good.

We should admire a king who, to deliver a servant from bondage, laid aside the dignity of his rank and sold himself, of his own free will, to his enemies. How much more should we admire the infinite mercy of God in the Incarnation of His only-begotten Son!

This surpasses all understanding.



Blessed Michael's words suggest that by the very act of Incarnation, God demonstrated that we are worthy of redemption. We do have a proper claim to our inheritance as God's adopted sons and daughters. Not even sin and the weaknesses of human nature can rob us of this legacy of love.

Dan Valenti writes for numerous publications for the Marians of the Immaculate Conception, both in print and online. He is the author of "Dan Valenti's Journal" on this website.

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