He became man

General Audience - January 9, 2013

In yesterday's audience, Pope Benedict XVI went through a few more reflections on the mystery of the Incarnation.  In Jesus, God became incarnate and opened the way to heaven for all of us.

Perhaps because we say so often "God became incarnate" it has lost some of its meaning and mystery.  Let's try to re-discover it a little.

"Incarnate" comes from the Latin word incarnatio, and we use it particularly because of the Prologue of the Gospel according to John (1,14): And the Word became flesh.  "Flesh", in the way Saint John is using it here, goes back to the Hebrew understanding of human life.  It is man in his wholeness (not just the body, but vivified flesh, body and spirit).  It also encompasses the falleness of man, that is, our temporality, poverty, and contingency.

Therefore, when we talk about Jesus as the Word made flesh, we mean that salvation through and in the person of Jesus touches man in whatever situation and concrete reality he is in.  God took upon himself human life--all of it--so that he could heal everything that keeps us away from him.  This quote from Saint Irenaeus (CCC 460) sums up this idea:

St. Irenaeus, Bishop and Martyr
bio

The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pt 1,4): For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.
 

The truth of the Incarnation and the corresponding greatness of our lives is only accessible to us through faith.  In faith, Jesus continues to accompany us and allows the light of his Incarnation to illumine our lives and give them meaning, even in the most mundane, stressful, tragic, or joyful circumstances.

At Christmastime, we often exchange gifts with the people we love.  When we do this, we are imitating the gift of God's Son given to us.  Not only that, we recognize the truth that if we give a gift and give nothing of ourselves to the other, we have given him or her too little.  God teaches us to give ourselves to others because that is exactly what He did and does all the time...it's what his life is all about.

The Incarnation should drive home for us how much God loves us.  He doesn't just tell us that he loves us, although those words are in Sacred Scripture.  He dives into our history and literally takes up a human existence just like ours.  Think about how God is acting here!  This reality should be a challenge and stimulus to our faith.  If you want to understand it better, then live into the mystery.  Believe in God, pray, go to the sacraments regularly, and do his will with the help of us grace.

In the baby Jesus, we truly see the face of God.  We also truly see the face of a human being.  Only by opening ourselves to his grace and striving to follow him everyday will we understand who we are and who we are to become.  Let your faith be a reality and your life an experiment of his love!