Begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father
God has only one Son who, as the Creed says, is begotten not made. If the Creed were to speak about us, it would say that we are made, not begotten. (God) destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will… Ephesians 1:5
All men and women are creatures of God and through Jesus Christ, redeemed at the price of his blood, we are made adopted children of God. United by the same human nature, dignity is due to all human beings, without distinction of ethnicity, without exception period.
And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. Romans 8: 17 – According to the Roman law which is fundamentally the law used throughout the world, the adopted child has the same rights to inheritance as the biological child.
Jesus calls God Father, but only within the inner circle of the apostles and never outside of it. What this means is that the divine fatherhood is available only to those who accept Jesus as son of God and as brother, our elder brother, for it is only through Christ, the only begotten son of God, that we are adopted children.
The Messianic Feast
Christmas is the feast that unites mankind with God; it is the feast that unites earth with heaven. The incarnation is a marriage between the Only Begotten Son of God and humanity, and Christmas is a wedding feast that celebrates this indivisible and everlasting union. A marriage is a union of two destinies into one destiny. At Christmas, God the Father marries his Son to Humanity, that is, he unites the nature of the second person of the Holy Trinity to Human Nature.
The union of two natures into one person took place in Mary’s womb. She is, with every right, the Mother of the child to be born, because she not only lent her womb but also contributed her genetic material. God, by the work and grace of the Holy Spirit, is the Father of both the second person of the Holy Trinity and the one incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus of Nazareth who was born in Bethlehem is the result of this union, this inseparable and indivisible union of the two natures: human and divine. God became the son of Man, the only title that Jesus gives himself, so that Man, who is a creature of God, might also become a child of God.
Jesus' time among us corresponds to the messianic banquet prophesied many centuries before by Isaiah 25, and declared by Jesus in one of his parables in Matthew 22:1-14. Because it is the time of the messianic banquet, it is a fact that Jesus' public life began with a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee and ended at the Eucharistic banquet on Holy Thursday in Jerusalem, in which He was the food. Between these two banquets, Jesus participated in many others with his disciples and many of his sayings were delivered in the context of a meal.
Then the disciples of John came to him, saying, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.’ Matthew 9:14-15
Because it is the time of Jesus among us, the time of the messianic banquet, his disciples, that is, the bridegroom's friends, should not fast, but should celebrate. It is a time for feasting, a time of celebration, not a time for penitence or sadness.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. John 14:2-3
The days of fasting will come when the Bridegroom returns to the Father’s house, taking with Him our human nature redeemed in his person and by his person, sitting at the right hand of the Father.
And the Word became man and dwelt among us
After leaving his family at the Church for the Rooster Mass, a Canadian farmer returned home, fleeing from the incoming snowstorm. His wife’s insistence that he attend the Mass with the family had fallen on deaf ears. For him, the incarnation of God made no sense. As he slept in the warmth of the fireplace, he was startled by the clash of geese at the door and windows. Driven by the storm from their migratory trajectory to the South, they were completely disoriented and bewildered.
Moved with compassion, he opened the gates of the large barn and began to run, squawking, whistling, shouting and hooting for them to take shelter in the barn until the storm has passed. However, the geese flew in circles, without understanding the meaning of the open barn and the dramatic gestures of the desperate farmer (who had not even convinced them with the breadcrumbs scattered in the direction of the barn).
Defeated in his attempt to save the poor creatures, he sighed, "Ah, if only I were a goose! If only I could speak their language!" Upon hearing his own lament, he recalled the question he had asked his wife: "Why would God want to become a man?" And, unintentionally, he muttered the answer: "To save him!" ... And it was Christmas.
There have always been people with special sensitivity to communicate with God. In biblical tradition, prophets were the catalysts of God's designs for the people and of the people's petitions to God. Communication, however, was not without difficulties: just as in the field of telecommunications, there were many "interference". The prophet's personality and character, defects and prejudices, filtered the message, which did not reach the recipient as it had left the sender. On the other hand, these prophets often understood that Heaven was closed and God was shrouded in silence.
These prophets never truly managed to establish a bridge of communication between the divine and the human. This is because the Word of God, being transmitted by them (men with their personal characteristics and inserted in a certain sociocultural context), ended up being influenced by many mediating variables (personality, prejudices, stereotypes, social patterns), thus losing the meaning of the original message.
There is gold in the river sand, but not all river sand is gold. Hence, we need to sift through the sand to find the gold nuggets. The Word of God is also in the Bible, but not everything in the Bible is God's word. Since the Bible is the encounter of God as He is with Man, there is in the Bible much that is human, many anthropomorphisms, that is, examples of how to understand God in the way of man, even though in this same Bible it says, "my thoughts are not your thoughts, says the Lord" ...
In sifting through the Bible to find the word of God, we have to identify the personality of the author of the book in question, his beliefs, prejudices, stereotypes, social patterns, etc. to find the Ipsissima Dei Verbum.
Because of all this, it was necessary that God incarnates to speak directly to man without interference and, more than speaking, to demonstrate with his life and works how human beings should live in order to regain the likeness of God that was lost with Adam and Eve.
Opportunity to regain the likeness of God
It was for this reason that the Word of God became Man so that Man might become Son of God. Saint Irenaeus of Lyon
Since Christianity is the religion with the most followers, and Christmas is the most popular public holiday in the Christian world, we can easily conclude that Christmas is the most celebrated holiday of all the holidays celebrated on this planet. It is undoubtedly the one that brings together more people worldwide, not just in the Western society.
Jesus of Nazareth is the way by which God comes to us to speak in our ears, to speak to our hearts on an equal footing, not from above to below, but from brother to brother, from man to man. The creator makes himself a creature to speak from within the human nature; to speak with authority, as the men of Jesus' time have noticed, because he spoke and he did, because he spoke and he fulfilled, because he spoke and things happened.
As truly man, Christ is our opportunity to regain the likeness we had with God before the sin of Adam and Eve. Whoever wants to be authentically and genuinely human measures himself to Christ, because He is the Way, the Truth and the Life, He is the model, the prototype, the paradigm of humanity. No one in the entire history of mankind has more humanity concentrated within himself than Jesus.
John 15:16 – You did not choose me – As they say in theology, ours is not a religion, because it is not the effort that man makes to reach God, but rather it is a revelation, because it is God who first comes to us, and reveals himself to us. This is why Jesus can say to the apostle Philip, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father".
1 John 4:10 – In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Love is repaid with love, says the people; our love for God is a response to divine love, the only answer, for there is no other. Therefore, because the initiative comes from God, ours is not a religion but a revelation.
Jesus: the way by which men go to God
No one comes to the Father except through me. John 14:6
If Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of God, He is the only way by which God has come to us. For this reason, there can be no other way by which man can go to God. It would make no sense for one to be the way by which God comes to us, and another to be the way by which man goes to God. All paths are round trips, so if God came to us through Christ, then through the same Christ we will go to God.
The purpose of God’s incarnation can be read in Jesus’ entrance into and exit from the city of Jericho. Jericho is the oldest city in the world, at 8 000 years old, and is also curiously the lowest city on earth, at 500 meters below sea level. Because of these two characteristics, in the Bible Jericho represents the world in sin. This is even suggested in the parable of the Good Samaritan; the man who was assaulted by thieves and evildoers, came down from Jerusalem to Jericho, that is, he went from grace down to sin.
Jesus enters Jericho, that is, he enters the sinful world and goes to stay in the house of Zacchaeus, that is, of a sinner. Jesus stayed in the sinful world, called sinners to himself, lived with them, ate with them, and treated them with the dignity of children of God (Luke 19:1-2). When he left Jericho, a great crowd followed him on the way up from sin to grace in Jerusalem (Mark 10:46-52). Thus the reason of the incarnation was fulfilled: God, through Christ, came into the world so that the world, by the same Christ, might come to God.
Conclusion: Through Christ God came to men, through Christ men go to God. Whoever lives in Christ, is authentically human like Christ, because He is the only reference and paradigm of humanity.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
Very good!!!!
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