Msgr. Peter J. Vaghi
Title of Series: "What Catholics Believe: The Faith Professed"

Part 4: "Jesus Christ: Son of God and Son of Mary"

January 4th, 2007
First Thursday

In December, I spoke at great length about angels "in the air." As we begin a new calendar year, 2007, on this First Thursday of January, it is Jesus Christ Who is clearly "in the air." Not only have we just celebrated His birth on Christmas, His circumcision on New Year's Day, but we will celebrate His Epiphany three days from now on Sunday and His Baptism the following day. This is the Christmas season. Liturgically, the Christmas season will be over after the Baptism of the Lord, but theologically it continues until the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple on February 2.

By happy providence, we also turn to articles 2 and 3 of the Apostles Creed -- our belief “...in Jesus Christ, His only Son Our Lord " and our belief that “He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and was born of the Virgin Mary.” The title of this morning’s meditation is: “Jesus Christ: Mary’s Son and Son of God.” There are six articles on Jesus Christ. In today’s meditation, we treat two of them. By far, the christological articles (i.e. those dealing with Christ) occupy the most substantial portion of the creed -- paragraphs 422-682 of the catechism.

This should not surprise us for "at the heart of catechesis we find, in essence, a Person, the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son from the Father…who suffered and died for us and who now, after rising, is living with us forever." CCC 426 "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." Jn 14:9. Speaking of Jesus, in the first Preface of Christmas, we hear: “In him, we see our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see.”

Now who is this Jesus? Paul VI once said: “I can never cease to speak of Christ for he is our truth and our light.” USCCA 87 I certainly feel the same way about Jesus. Like you, we have pinned our life and our very hope on Him. We see the world through Christological eyeglasses, if you will.

A Christmas bulletin insert entitled "One Solitary Life" describes Him aptly in this way:

“He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in still another village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn’t go to college. He never visited a big city.

He never traveled more than two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He did none of the things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but Himself. He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away.

He was turned over to His enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While He was dying, His executioners gambled for His clothing, the only property he had on earth. After he died, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone, but today He is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind’s progress. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life.”

For us, it is not enough simply to understand the historical life of Jesus as important as that is. “We ponder Christ’s person and his earthly words and deeds in term of mystery. His earthly life reveals his hidden divine sonship and plan for our salvation.” USCCA 79 He preached the Kingdom of God, the breaking through of Jesus into our very life and existence today and everyday. “The Kingdom of God is his presence among human beings calling them to a new way of life as individuals and as a community.” USCCA 79

The catechism teaches that "catechesis aims at putting people...in communion...with Jesus Christ: only he can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity." CCC 426 But it is not just the historical Jesus. It is bringing you and me into the new life of Christ, the Christ of faith. Jesus of history is, after all, the Christ of faith.

Now focus with me on some themes of this section in the catechism on the creed -- Chapter 2: “I believe in Jesus Christ, the Only Son of God."

I.) Four Titles: Jesus, Christ, Son of God, Lord -- What do they reveal about our God? They tell us much.

JESUS -- in Hebrew means "God saves." It was the angel at the Annunciation who told Mary that she would bear a son "and you shall name him Jesus." (Lk l:31) It reveals both His mission and His identity. In His very name, His whole purpose is revealed -- to save us.

As Pope Benedict said in his Christmas homily this year, responding to the question whether modern man still needed a savior: “...in this post-modern age, perhaps he needs a Savior all the more, since the society in which he lives has become more complex and the threats to his personal and moral integrity have become more insidious.” And what is the object of salvation? It is to save us from our sins. Thus to speak of Jesus without understanding the linkage to sin is simply to miss His whole reason for becoming man. Because sin is always an offense against God, only God can forgive sin. In the New Testament, the term “savior” is only used about God (eight times) and Jesus (sixteen times). No one else is called “savior” but Jesus. The name of Jesus is at the heart of all Christian prayer. “...nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” Acts 4:12

CHRIST -- it is not the last name of Jesus. No, He is Jesus, the Christ -- from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Messiah that means the Anointed One. As you and I were anointed at Baptism, He was anointed with the Holy Spirit to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim a year of favor to the Lord. Again, it was an angel who announced to the shepherds on Christmas Eve that He was the Messiah, the Christ: “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” Lk 2:11

THE ONLY SON OF GOD -- the gospels report that at two solemn moments, Christ's Baptism and the Transfiguration, the Father's voice designated Jesus as His beloved Son. Jesus also called Himself the only Son of God and by this title affirmed His eternal preexistence. The title “Son of God” signifies the
unique and eternal relationship of Jesus Christ to God His Father: He is the only Son of God. You and I are "adopted" sons and daughters of God, which takes place when we were baptized.

In their book entitled "Believing" (Understanding The Creed), Fr. O'Collins and Mary Venturini write, regarding the title "Son of God":

“In all their simplicity these few words contain the essence of Christianity, the point where Christians are forced to leave their Jewish heritage behind. It is just possible that the old covenant could have embraced Jesus the savior as the longed-for and long-heralded messiah. But there was no room for the Son of God. God for the Jews, then and now, was and is without form or physical substance. God could not therefore become man without revolutionizing the whole Jewish faith. That God should have a Son was folly enough; that the son should take human form was madness; that he should be both man and God was blasphemy.” (p. 55)

LORD -- the Hebrew name Yahweh is translated Kyrios in Greek which means Lord. The title Lord, used for both the Father and Jesus, 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.” (1Cor12:3)

II.) Why Did the Word Become Flesh -- Our God Who is Truly Human and Truly Divine?

Or as St. Augustine asked the question: Cur Deus Homo? Why did God become Man? It is the quintessential Christmas question and it is a question we often ignore or simply fail to ask.

With the Nicene Creed, we answer by confessing: "For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven; by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man.”

In my Christmas homily this year, I answered this question in the following way: “In a word, He came to pitch His tent among us, to be with us forever, to demonstrate our inestimable worth and dignity as humans, to feed us on His life, to save us out of love that we might forever be with Him.”

The catechism gives us four reasons:

l.) The Word became flesh for us in order to save us by reconciling us with God, who “loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 Jn 4:10

2.) The Word became flesh so that we might know God’s love for “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.” Jn 3:16. I will always remember the ending to John Paul II’s Christmas homily a few years ago with the following words: "Dio ci ama."

3.) The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness. "I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Jn l4:6 Jesus is the norm of the new law: "Love one another as I have loved you." Jn 15:l2

4.) The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature." 2 Pet1:4 Speaking of this "wondrous exchange," St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote: "God takes on the poverty of my flesh so that I may receive the riches of his godhead.” He became man without ceasing to be God so that we might be divinized without ceasing to be man. In a certain sense, He united Himself with each of us.

Our faith teaches us that "the unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God -- the Christmas mystery -- (“incarnation” is from the Latin which means "in the flesh") does not mean that Jesus Christ is partly God and partly man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true Man. During the first centuries, the church had to defend and clarify this truth of faith against the heresies that falsified it. CCC 464

The first heresies denied not so much Christ's divinity as his true humanity (Gnostic Docetism). The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God's Son assumed it.

The catechism teaches clearly that: “...Jesus is inseparably true God and true man.” In his book on the
catechism, Cardinal Shoenborn teaches that underlying the catechism, indeed our entire faith, only next to the mystery of the Trinity, is the importance of this church teaching that Jesus Christ is true God and true man. The Council of Chalcedon (451) taught that "we confess that one and the same Christ, Lord, and only-begotten Son, is to be acknowledged in two natures (human and divine) without confusion, change, division or separation."

His human nature was assumed, not absorbed. He worked with human hands, thought with a human mind, acted with a human will and with a human heart he loved. He grew up physically and mentally, thought, made decisions, felt deep emotions, wept, ate, drank, entered into personal relationships, talked, suffered and eventually died. These and further facts about Him justify us in recognizing Him as fully human, even if His conception through the Holy Spirit and what it pointed to (His personal identity as Son of God) show that He was not and is not merely human. “The Incarnation is therefore the mystery of the wonderful union of the divine and human natures in the one person of the Word.” CCC 483 “Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God who became man in the womb of Mary. The one who was born of Mary is the same one -- the same person -- who has existed with the Father and the Holy Spirit from all eternity.” USCCA 82

III.) “He was Conceived by the Power of the Holy Spirit, and was Born of the Virgin Mary.”

In his book on the catechism, Cardinal Shoenborn writes that: "the catechism does not treat Mary's role
in the plan of salvation in a separate chapter. It does so here in the pages devoted to Christ, [in the
section we are now discussing] inasmuch as she enjoys the unique privilege of being the Mother of God.” (p. 72) The catechism says as much: “What the Catholic faith believes about Mary is based on what it believes about Christ, and what it teaches about Mary illumines in turn its faith in Christ.” CCC 487 To Him she always leads us.

“The Holy Spirit, ‘the Lord, the giver of Life,’ is sent to sanctify the womb of the Virgin Mary and
divinely fecundate it, causing her to conceive the eternal Son of the Father in a humanity drawn from her own.” CCC 485

From all eternity, God chose for the mother of His Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, "a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary." Lk l:26-27

Through the centuries, the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, filled with grace by God, was redeemed from the very first moment of her conception. In the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, proclaimed in 1854, Pope Pius IX wrote that she was “preserved immune from all stain of original sin.” The Church often speaks of Mary as the “Second Eve” but whereas Eve helped usher death into the world, Mary ushered life in the world.

And she did so with the obedience of faith -- fiat voluntas tua. She gave herself entirely to the Person and work of her Son.

At Ephesus this past year, on November 29, 2006, Pope Benedict taught beautifully: “Mary’s motherhood, which began with her fiat in Nazareth, is fulfilled at the foot of the Cross. Although it is true -- as Saint Anselm says -- that “from the moment of her fiat Mary began to carry all of us in her womb”, the maternal vocation and mission of the Virgin towards those who believe in Christ actually began when Jesus said to her: “Woman, behold your son!” (Jn 19:26)” from the cross.

In a beautiful homily on this section of the catechism, Cardinal O’Connor, the late Archbishop of New York, wrote: "We must remember that Mary was invited to become the Mother of the Son of God. She
was a virgin. She could have said, 'I can't do this. It's going to be terribly inconvenient. What will
Joseph say? What will my parents say?' She was invited. What would have happened if Mary had said
'no' to the angel? Would there have been a Christmas, a Crucifixion? Would we be here today? Doesn't the Holy Spirit say the same to every woman, to every couple whom He invites to bear the Child whose life can only come from God? ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you. Do not be afraid.’”


The catechism teaches that Jesus was conceived solely by the power of the Holy Spirit and that Mary was ever-virgin: real and perpetual. Mary's virginity manifests God's absolute initiative in the Incarnation. St. Augustine, writing of Mary's virginity but the preeminence of her faith, said: "Mary is more blessed because she embraces faith in Christ than because she conceives the flesh of Christ."

IV.) The Mystery of Christ’s Life: Sacrament of His Divinity

For more than a century, historians and biblical scholars have assiduously attempted to reconstruct every detail of the biography of Jesus' life -- a quest for the historical Jesus. Some of the "mysteries" of His life have been successfully resolved by use of the historical critical method.

The catechism, especially this section on the mysteries of Christ's life, approaches these mysteries from a different perspective. The word "mystery" comes from the Greek Mysterion (in Latin: Sacramentum) which means a “secret revealed by God,” a religious truth.

For like the Gospels themselves, the catechism seeks to communicate not the biography of Jesus but the real meaning of every event and action of His life, even those events passed over in silence, as it nourishes the life of faith. The Gospels were written, after all, by individuals who were among the first to have the faith and they wanted to share it with others. The Gospels were written "that you may [come to] believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name.” Jn 20:31

"The whole of Christ's life was a continual teaching: his silences, his miracles, his gestures, his prayer,
his love for people, his special affection for the little and the poor, his acceptance of the total sacrifice on the Cross for the redemption of the world, and his Resurrection..." CCC 561

In pondering the life of Christ in our prayer and each time we celebrate the sacraments, our question must always be -- what does this action of Jesus, this preference of Jesus, this word of Jesus -- reveal (communicate) to us about the Father, about our God. In effect, what is the religious truth about the birth of Jesus, about His hidden life, about His baptism, about His solitude and temptation in the desert, about His miracles and signs, about the transfiguration, about His death and resurrection? It is not just an intellectual exercise either.

We grow in Christ by identification with the mysteries of His public life, such as His Baptism, the Temptation, his preaching and witnessing of the Kingdom. We are being affected, being transformed into Him, experiencing on-going redemption. All Jesus did, said and suffered had as its aim the restoration of fallen humanity to its original vocation. Christ enables us -- here and now -- to live in Him all that He lived. He lives in us anew. He continually reveals Himself to us today, transforming us in and through the mystery of His life.

As we begin a new year, 2007, I would encourage you to read and re-read this section in the catechism on the life of Christ, CCC 522-570, and chapter 7 of the new United States Catholic Catechism for Adults. Jesus is, after all, not just the Jesus of history. He is the living Christ of our faith. The Jesus of history is the living Christ of faith.

Amen