The depth of the mystery
21. The word and the flesh, the divine glory and his dwelling among us! It is in the intimate and inseparable union of these two aspects that Christ’s identity is to be found, in accordance with the classical formula of the Council of Chalcedon (451): “one person in two natures”. The person is that, and that alone, of the Eternal Word, the Son of the Father. The two natures, without any confusion whatsoever, but also without any possible separation, are the divine and the human 10
We know that our concepts and our words are limited. The formula, though always human, is nonetheless carefully measured in it’s doctrinal content, and it enables us, albeit with trepidation, to gaze in some way in to the depths of the mystery. Yes, Jesus is true God and true man! Like the apostle Thomas, the Church is constantly invited by Christ to touch his wounds, to recognize, that is, the fullness of his humanity taken from Mary, give up to death, transfigured by the Resurrection: “ Put your finger here and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side” (Jn 20:27). Like Thomas, the Church bows down in adoration before the Risen One, clothed in the fullness of his divine splendor, and never ceases to exclaim: “ My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28)
22. “ The Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). This striking formulation by John of the mystery of Christ is confirmed by the entire New Testament. The Apostle Paul Takes the same approach when he affirms that the Son of God was born “ of the race of David, according to the flesh” (cf. Rom 1:3; cf. 9:5). If today, because of the rationalism found in so much of contemporary culture, it is above all faith in the divinity of Christ that has become problematic, in other historical and cultural contexts there was a tendency to diminish and do away with the historical concreteness of Jesus’ humanity. But for the Church’s faith it is essential and indispensable to affirm that the Word truly “became flesh” and took on every aspect of humanity, except sin (cf. Heb 4:15) From this perspective, the incarnation is truly kenosis—a “self-emptying”—on the part of the Son of God of that glory which is his from all eternity (Phil 2:6; cf. 1Pt 3:18).
On the other hand, this abasement of the Son of God is not an end in itself; it tends rather towards the full glorification of Christ, even in his humanity: “ Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9-11).
23. “ Your face, O Lord I seek” (Ps 27:8) the ancient longing of the Psalmist could receive no fulfilment greater and more surprising than the contemplation of the face of Christ. God has truly blessed us in him and has made “his face to shine upon us” (Ps 67:1). At the same time, god and man that he is, he reveals to us also the true face of man, “fully revealing man to man himself”. 11
Jesus is “the new man” (cf. Eph 4:24; Col 3:10) who calls redeemed humanity to share in his divine life. The mystery of the Incarnation lays the foundations for anthropology which, reaching beyond it’s own limitations and contradictions, moves towards God himself, indeed towards the goal of “divinization”. This occurs through the grafting of the redeemed Christ and their admission into the intimacy of the Trinitarian life. The Fathers have laid great stress on this soteriological dimension of the mystery of the incarnation: it is only because the Son of God truly became man that man, in him and through him, can truly become a child of God.12
The Son’s Face
24. This divine-human identity emerges forcefully from the Gospels, which offer us a range of elements that make it possible for us to enter that “frontier zone” of the mystery, represented by Christ’s self awareness. The Church has no doubt that the evangelists an their accounts, and inspired from on high, have correctly understood in the words which Jesus spoke the truth about his person and his awareness of it. Is this not what Luke wishes to tell us when he recounts Jesus’ first recorded words, spoken in the Temple in Jerusalem when he was barely 12 years old? Already at that time he shows that he is aware of a unique relationship with God, a relationship which properly belongs to a “son”. When his mother tells him how anxiously she and Joseph had been searching for him, Jesus replies without hesitation: “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s affairs?” (Lk 2:49). It is no wonder therefore that later as a grown man his language authoritatively express the depth of his own mystery, as is abundantly clear both in Synoptic Gospels (cf. Mt 11:27; Lk 10:22) and above all in the Gospel of John. In his self-awareness, Jesus has no doubts: “ The Father is in me and I am in The Father” (Jn 10:38).
However valid it may be to maintain that, because of the human condition that made him grow “in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Lk 2:52), his human awareness of his own mystery would also have progressed to its fullest expression in his glorified humanity, there is no doubt that already in his historical existence Jesus was aware of his identity as the Son of God. John emphasizes this to the point of affirming that it was ultimately because of this awareness that Jesus was rejected and condemned: they sought to kill him “because he not only broke the Sabbath but also called God his Father, making him equal with God” (Jn 5:18). In Gethsemane and on Golgotha Jesus’ human awareness will be put to the supreme test. But not even the drama of his Passion and Death will be able to shake his serene certainty of being the Son of the heavenly Father.
A face of sorrow
25. In contemplating Christ’s face, we confront the most paradoxical aspect of his mystery, as it emerges in his last hour, on the Cross. The mystery within the mystery, before which we cannot but prostrate ourselves in adoration.
The intensity of the episode of the agony in the Garden of Olives passes before our eyes. Oppressed by foreknowledge of the trials that await him, and alone before the Father, Jesus cries out to him in his habitual and affectionate expression of trust: “Abba, Father”. He asks him to take away, if possible the cup of suffering (cf. Mk 14:36). But the father seems not to want to heed the Son’s cry. In order to bring man back to the Father’s face, Jesus not only had to take on the face of man, but he had to burden himself with the “face” of sin. “For our sake he made himself to be sin who knew sin, so that in him we might come to the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21).
We shall never exhaust the depths of his mystery. All the harshness of the paradox can be heard in Jesus’ seemingly desperate cry of pain on the cross: “ ‘ Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? Which means ‘My God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ ”( Mk 15:34). Is it possible to imagine a greater agony, a more impenetrable darkness? In reality the anguished “why” addressed to the Father in the opening words of the Twenty-second Psalm expresses all the realism of unspeakable pain; but it also illumined by the meaning of that entire prayer, in which the Psalmist brings together suffering and trust, in a moving blend of emotions. In fact the Psalm continues: “ In you our fathers put their trust; they trusted you and you set them free…Do not leave me alone in my distress, come close there is none else to help” (Ps 22:5,12).
26. Jesus’ cry on the Cross, dear Brothers and Sisters, is not the cry of anguish of a man without hope, but the prayer of the Son who offers his life to the Father in love, for the salvation of all. At the very moment when he identifies with our sin, “abandoned’ by the Father, he “abandons” himself into the hands of the Father. His eyes remain fixed on the Father. Precisely because of the knowledge and experience of the Father which he alone has, even at this moment of darkness he sees clearly the gravity of sin and suffers because of it. He alone, who sees the Father and rejoices fully in him, can understand completely what it means to resist the Father’s love by sin. More than an experience of physical pain, his Passion is an agonizing suffering of the soul. Theological tradition has not failed to ask how Jesus could possibly experience at one and the same time his profound unity with the Father, by its very nature a source of joy and happiness, and an agony that goes all the way to his final cry of abandonment. The simultaneous presence of these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects is rooted in the fathomless depths of the hypostatic union.
27. Faced with this mystery, we are greatly helped not only by theological investigation but also by that great heritage which is the “lived theology” of the saints. The Saints offer us precious insights which enable us to understand more easily the intuition of faith, thanks to the special enlightenment which some of them have received from the Holy Spirit, or even through their personal experience of those terrible states of trial which the mystical tradition describes as the “dark night”. Not infrequently the Saints have undergone something akin to Jesus’ experience on the Cross in the paradoxical blending of bliss and pain. In the Dialogue of Divine Providence, God the Father shows Catherine of Siena how joy and suffering can be present together in holy souls: “Thus the soul is blissful and afflicted: afflicted on account of the sins of its neighbor, blissful on account of the union and affection of charity which it has inwardly received. These souls imitate the spotless lamb, my Only-begotten Son who on the Cross was both blissful and afflicted”. 13 In the same way Thérèse of Lisieux lived her agony in communion with the agony of Jesus, “experiencing” in herself the very paradox of Jesus’s own bliss and anguish: “In the Garden of Olives our lord was blessed with all the joys of the Trinity, yet his dying was no less harsh. It is a mystery, but I assure you that, on the basis of what I am feeling, I can understand something of it”. 14 What am illuminating testimony! Moreover, the accounts given by the evangelists provide a basis for this intuition on the part of the Church of Christ’s consciousness when they record that, even in the depths of his pain, he died imploring forgiveness for his executioners (cf. Lk 23:34) and expressing to the Father his ultimate Filial abandonment” “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46).
The face of the One who has Risen
28. As on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, the Church pauses in contemplation of this bleeding face, which conceals the life of God and offers salvation to the world. But her contemplation of Christ’s face cannot stop at the image of the Crucified One. He is the Risen One! Were this no so, our preaching would be in vain and our faith empty (cf. 1 Cor 15:14). The resurrection was the Father’s response to Christ’s Obedience, as we learn from the letter to the Hebrews: “ In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear. Son though he was, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (5:7-9).
It is the Risen Christ to whom the church now looks. And she does so in the footsteps of Peter, who wept for his denial and started out again by confessing, with understandable trepidation, his love of Christ: “ You know that I love you” (Jn 21:15-17). She does so in the company of Paul, who encountered the Lord on the road to Damascus and was overwhelmed: “ For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21).
Two thousand years after these events, the Church relives them as if the had happened today. Gazing on the face of Christ, the Bride contemplates her treasure and her joy. “Dulcis Iesus memoria, dans vera cordis gaudia”: how sweet is the memory of Jesus, the source of the heart’s true joy! Heartened by this experience, the Church today sets out once more on her journey, in order to proclaim Christ to the world at the dawn of the Third Millennium: he “ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb 13:8)
Footnotes
*10. " following the holy Fathers, unanimously, we teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in his divinity and perfect in his humanity, true God and true man...one and the same Christ the Lord, the only-begotten, to be recognized in two natures, without confusion, immutable, indivisible, inseparable...he is not divided or separated in two persons, but he is one and the same Son, the only begotten, God, Word and Lord Jesus Christ" :DS301-302.
*11. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes,22.
*12 Saint Athanasius observes in this regard: "man could not become divine remaining united to a creature, if the Son were not true God": Oratio II contra Arianos, 70:PG26, 425 B-426 G.
*13. Cf.n. 78.
*14. Last Conversations. Yellow Booklet (6 July 1897): Oeurvres Complètes (Paris, 1996), p.1025
© Vatican 2001