1)
Colossians 1, 16: “All things have been created
through and unto him, and he is before all creatures, and in him all things
hold together… For it has pleased God the Father that in him all his fullness
should dwell, and that through him he should reconcile to himself all things
whether on earth or in heaven. By making peace through the blood of his cross.”
2)
Robert Barron comments: “In this Jesus, all
things have come to be; he is the prototype of all finite existence, even of
those great powers that transcend the world and govern human affairs. …
Individuals, societies, cultures, animals, plants, planets and the stars – all will
be drawn into an eschatological harmony thorough him. Mind you, Jesus is not
merely the symbol of an intelligibility, coherence, and reconciliation that can
exist apart from him; rather, he is the active and indispensable means by which
these realities come to be. This Jesus, in short, is the all-embracing, all-including,
all-reconciling Lord of whatever is to be found in the dimensions of time and
space.”
In this regard, consider Ephesians
1, 4 that speaks of Christ as pre-existing the world: “Even as he chose us in
him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without
blemish in his sight in love. He predestined us to be adopted through Jesus
Christ as his sons…”
3)
And then, there is sin, and we make ourselves
into God and separate ourselves from Him to death.
4)
But Love as Mercy is more powerful than death.
And Christ appears in time and space for the recreation of all things in Him.
And as Christ Who is the second Person of the Trinity and, with the Father and
the Spirit, is Being Itself giving reality as being to the world, receives a
body from the Virgin to become a being in the world. But
as it is the humanity of the eternal Person of the Son, the humanity and the
Virgin who gave it to him, also exist outside of time – although the birth
takes place in time and space.
5)
Joseph Ratzinger notes: “The question arises in
our minds: What kind of history must it have been that truly created at last
the “space,” the conditions, for the incarnation of God! What kind of human
beings must they have been who traveled the final stretch of the journey! What
integrity and maturity of spirit must have been attained at the point at which
this supreme transformation of man and the world could take place! But if we
approach the text with these kinds of expectations, we shall find ourselves disappointed.
The history of which Jesus becomes a part is a very ordinary history, marked by
all the scandals and infamies to be found among human beings, all the advances
and good beginnings, but also all the sinfulness and vileness – an utterly
human history!
“The only four
women named in the genealogy are all four of them witnesses to human sinfulness:
Among them is Rahab the harlot, who delivered Jericho into the hands of the
migrating Israelites. Among them, too, is the wife of Uriah, the woman whom
David god for himself through adultery and murder. Nor are the males in the
genealogy any different. …
The
point: “Is that the context into which the Son of God could be born?
And the Scriptures answer: Yes. But all this is a sign for us. It tells us that
the incarnation of God does not result from an ascent on the part of the human
race but from the descent of God. The ascent of man, the
attempt to bring forth God by his own efforts and to attain the status of
superman – this attempt failed wretchedly back in Paradise. The person who
tries to become God by his own efforts,
who highhandedly reaches for the stars, always ends up by destroying himself.”[1]
6)
The last step to the God-man is the Virgin
conceived without sin, and therefore says Yes! to the call to make of self to
the Revealing God: And the Word became flesh and re-creates the world in
Himself. (to be continued)
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