In other words, MERRY CHRISTMAS!
It is the day of Christ's Mass. (Yes, originating with the Catholic church... one more reason, among many, to be grateful for the 2,000 year old rock upon which western civilization was founded.)
For those who don't believe in God, He still loves you. (Also, God exists, whether you believe or not.)
“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." - John 3:16
God is in everything, and yet nothing can contain him fully, except for one who contained the Word of God...
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. - John 1:14
The Word of God, the Only-Begotten Son
God could have come into this world in flesh without any use of man, His creation. He made Adam and Eve and could as well have formed his own body with a thought. However, He is the God of perfect virtue and chose the most humble of forms through the most perfect of His creations by making Mary and preparing her throughout her life to be the perfect ark of the new covenant.
The Word of God was given flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary when the Holy Spirit came upon her and sparked that conception into being. God chose to join with His creation in the most humble and meek way He could... as a baby. That is the first lesson of being holy. The other is that He created and molded the perfect parents so that He could demonstrate perfect obedience, even as they showed deference to Him as God made flesh. Imagine the honor and the light in His presence that would inspire perfect virtue. Mary and Joseph are far beyond in virtue and meekness what any other people could be. They were in the presence of God and knew it. They weren't ordinary people.
I can hardly conceive of what they must have felt but come close every time I accept the Eucharist worthily (in reverence and contrition and without grave sin) in Holy Communion.
God created all the heavens and the earth and everything in them by speaking it (His Word) into being. He can do whatever He wants.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. - John 1:1-5
![]() |
The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us...
Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem for Joseph to complete the census ordered by the Roman emperor of that time. God chose Joseph and guided his life for this, not only because of his line to David and the promise of an eternal throne (there could have been many others) but for many other reasons we may never know. (And Joseph was not the father of Jesus but the stepfather by our definition, yet the male line was the recognized line in the culture of the time, and his lineage is recorded in the Bible in Matthew 1:1-17.)
One thing we do know is that God does nothing without meaning. Take the name of the city of Bethlehem. The old Hebrew name bĂȘth lehem, meaning "house of bread", has survived till the present day. In its Arabic form, however, bĂȘt lahm, it means "house of meat". (Catholic Encyclopedia) Jesus is the Bread of Life, made available to us in the Holy Eucharist since his implementing this sacrament in the Passover meal before his passion and death, his last supper.
"I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” - John 6:48-51
His flesh is the bread of life (eternal life, not life on this world). The bread at the mass is made into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ upon the priest saying the words of consecration.
Jesus also came for the purpose of being the final sacrifice to redeem the sins of man, which started in the Garden of Eden. That's a whole other explanation, which you can find online (and which many Protestants, without the guidance of the authority of the 2,000 years of Catholic doctrine and tradition from the apostles carried down through the ages, lack in full understanding, so I invite you to research Catholic sources).
Jesus came to complete the sacrifice, which is why He instituted Communion through the simple form of bread and wine before his passion and death. God gave us Him in this so we could continue to be close to Him to have everlasting life and mold our sinful hearts into his Sacred Heart. It purifies us and prepares us for eternal life... and we go deeper into that in Lent and Easter.
In the Beginning
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. - John 1:1
Then God said [...] - Genesis 1:3
The Word of God was made flesh and given a unique human identity while still remaining wholly God, and every word Jesus spoke and His every deed are for our benefit--God is speaking directly to us on our level.
However, not everything was recorded. It couldn't be. Every moment of thirty-three years of life and the events even before could not have been humanly possible to record. This is even noted at the end of the gospel of John, the beloved apostle who cared for Mary after the death of Jesus (because there were no other sons or daughters to care for her, and under Jewish tradition, a blood relative would have been duty-bound to care for their widowed mother):
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. - John 20:30-31

No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.