“The most important thing of all is to get some realization of what God is doing in your soul.”
Thomas Merton, What is Contemplation?
In a recent course on Christology, the class was asked to respond to the following question:
Identify the most important information contained in the gospels that bear on the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
I was quite excited about this because it offered me a chance to share an insight from something I heard from a Scott Hahn lecture on the gospel of John. Below was my response to the class assignment:
The virginal conception reveals that in his divine nature,…Jesus has only God as his father. It reveals that he is the natural son of God so he is fully divine.
At the same time, he’s born of the Virgin Mary. So he receives his human nature from Mary, his mother. So he is naturally the son of his mother.
In other words, Jesus is (NATURALLY) the son of the Father, according to his divine nature, and he is (NATURALLY) the son of his mother Mary, according to his human nature. Fully human, …Fully divine.
The virgin birth speaks of Jesus Christ in whom is united full deity and full humanity – and the atoning action of (full deity and full humanity) on the cross for the reparation of the broken covenant.
Surprisingly, I received quite a bit of push-back from my classmates who were challenging my use of the word “naturally.”
Classmate 1
I get your point but I think we need to be very careful in the use of the word “naturally.” As Jesus was begotten which is of course not natural perhaps it would be better to say He is undeniably Son of God and son of Mary.
Classmate 2
When I read your post I thought of the word”supernatural” when it came to the incarnation. Something”natural” in the spiritual realm, such as an action of the Holy Spirit with the Blessed Mother, strikes me as “supernatural.” CCC1998/1722 defines supernatural as surpassing the power of created beings; a result of God’s gracious initiative.
To my further dismay, my two professors failed to defend or clarify the issue as it is supported by Church teaching (CCC 503), as follows:
Jesus has only God as Father. “He was never estranged from the Father because of the human nature which he assumed . . . . He is naturally Son of the Father as to his divinity and naturally son of his mother as to his humanity, but properly Son of the Father in both natures.”
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I am sure every one has moments when someone shares an innovative perspective on some issue and it cause you to realize, “I never thought about it that way.” It resets the mental or spiritual point of view to a fresh way to see and understand. Well, that is what Scott Hahn’s comment along with its validation in the catechism about the mystical conception of the Incarnate Word: Jesus Christ, did for me.
Contrary to the groupthink of my classmates and professor, I held my ground. I suspect there is a reason the Church uses the term “naturally” equally to both the full divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ. Supernatural and Natural suggest two radically distinguished realms: one of the created order and the other of God; one of nature and the other of grace. In essence, supernatural suggest a sphere of reality that is sharply opposed to nature suggesting a stark duality in Christ and ignoring our able participation with the universal divine immanence in humanity and in the creation.
This may all seem a bit foolish or abstract so I will get to the point: The words we choose to communicate are simply pointers that direct our intellectual reasoning. When our reasoning is misdirected so is our walk in faith and contemplation of Truth.
As scripture points us to faith of being created in the image or likeness to God. So, to what ever degree we get God “wrong,” we get ourselves “wrong.” When we divide God into parts, we also divide (or fracture) ourselves into parts. This is the condition for sin in our lives and simply not our true identity In Christ, With Christ, and Through Christ.
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are. (1 Cor 3:16-17)
Phillip Sherrad’s “Christian Understanding of Man,” unpacks it well:
[M]an is not merely other than God, irreducibly alien to God, but is on the contrary the specific expression of God’s creative energy and participates in this energy as a condition of having any existence whatsoever. Grace, that is to say, is not something extrinsic, not something added to man’s nature; it is inherent in the conditions of his birth…the idea of divine immanence – of the indwelling of God in the creature is foreshadowed…In this thought the presentiment of the immanence of the divine principle is expressed above all through the concept of participation.
With a confidence that God is With Us, let us meditate upon a most important thing of all:
to get some realization of what God is doing in our soul. Not what I am doing but what God is doing.
It is the action verb that precedes our proclamation:
My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour
The featured image is from the icon of the Annunciation that I wrote a few years back. I am particularly drawn to the representation of Jesus positioned near the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Allow it to help you see this same “Christ-mystery” indwelling within you.
