20220103 THE SALVIFIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INCARNATION
03 January, 2022, Monday After Epiphany
First reading | 1 John 2:29-3:6 © |
Everyone must try to be as pure as Christ
You know that God is righteous –
then you must recognise that everyone whose life is righteous
has been begotten by him.
Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us,
by letting us be called God’s children;
and that is what we are.
Because the world refused to acknowledge him,
therefore it does not acknowledge us.
My dear people, we are already the children of God
but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed;
all we know is, that when it is revealed
we shall be like him
because we shall see him as he really is.
Surely everyone who entertains this hope
must purify himself, must try to be as pure as Christ.
Anyone who sins at all
breaks the law,
because to sin is to break the law.
Now you know that he appeared in order to abolish sin,
and that in him there is no sin;
anyone who lives in God does not sin,
and anyone who sins
has never seen him or known him.
Responsorial Psalm |
Psalm 97(98):1,3-6 © |
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Sing a new song to the Lord
for he has worked wonders.
His right hand and his holy arm
have brought salvation.
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
All the ends of the earth have seen
the salvation of our God.
Shout to the Lord, all the earth,
ring out your joy.
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Sing psalms to the Lord with the harp
with the sound of music.
With trumpets and the sound of the horn
acclaim the King, the Lord.
All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.
Gospel Acclamation |
Alleluia, alleluia!
A hallowed day has dawned upon us.
Come, you nations, worship the Lord,
for today a great light has shone down upon the earth.
Alleluia!
Or: | Jn1:14,12 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.
To all who received him he gave power to become children of God.
Alleluia!
Or: | Heb1:1-2 |
Alleluia, alleluia!
At various times in the past
and in various different ways,
God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets;
but in our own time, the last days,
he has spoken to us through his Son.
Alleluia!
Gospel | John 1:29-34 © |
'Look: there is the Lamb of God'
Seeing Jesus coming towards him, John said, ‘Look, there is the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. This is the one I spoke of when I said: A man is coming after me who ranks before me because he existed before me. I did not know him myself, and yet it was to reveal him to Israel that I came baptising with water.’ John also declared, ‘I saw the Spirit coming down on him from heaven like a dove and resting on him. I did not know him myself, but he who sent me to baptise with water had said to me, “The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and rest is the one who is going to baptise with the Holy Spirit.” Yes, I have seen and I am the witness that he is the Chosen One of God.’
THE SALVIFIC SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INCARNATION
SCRIPTURE READINGS: [1 JN 3:22-4:6; MT 4:12-17, 23-25]
The feast of the Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of God in man to all the world, including the Gentiles represented by the Magi who came from Persia. In Jesus, God came to us in our humanity to show us the face of God. But the incarnation is not something we can prove except to believe in faith, like the three wise men who found Jesus in the manger and worshipped Him in faith. Could they prove that the baby Jesus is God? Of course not, but they knew from their astrological studies and confirmed in the Jewish scriptures that the baby Jesus was someone extraordinary whom they called the Infant King of the Jews.
To say that the Word of God became flesh, as St John wrote, was a claim that neither the Jews nor the Greek Gentiles could accept. For the Jews, God and man cannot be reconciled. God is the transcendent, all holy and all mighty. We cannot even see Him face to face, otherwise we will die. God, for the Jews, is therefore the inaccessible one. There is no question of God assuming human flesh. Not only could the Jews not accept the doctrine of the incarnation, but the Greek Gentiles also could not. They believed that God and matter cannot mix simply because matter is evil. Only the Spirit is good. The body is evil. Our souls are trapped in the body. Upon death, our souls will be released and then return back to God. So the Gnostics, a particular branch of which is Docetism, taught that the Christ was not truly man. He was only God and took on the apparent body of Jesus the man at His baptism and the Christ left Him upon death. In this way, Christ who is God did not die on the cross. His divinity was safeguarded.
However, the denial of the central doctrine of Christianity, the foundation of faith in His salvific death on the cross would lead to serious implications for the Christian Faith. If we remove the incarnation, we cannot speak of Christ’s death on the cross for our salvation or even the reality of His resurrection. For Christ to die on the cross, it presupposes that Jesus was truly a man. For Christ to rise from the dead, it presupposes that He really died. For Christ to save us from our sins, it presupposes that He truly died on the cross for our salvation. Indeed, without the incarnation, we cannot speak of Christ as our Saviour because He cannot even be for us a moral example, to say the least, of living an authentic life of God. We would say that Jesus was God and He pretended only to be a man. So He did not really suffer. He was not tempted by the world, the flesh and the Evil One. He does not know our pains, our weaknesses and our temptations. If that were so, how can we as human beings live the life that Jesus showed us how to live? We are weak, sinful and with a fallen nature, there is no hope we can be saved.
But Christ is truly God and man. Only because He is God, can He reconcile us with Him. Otherwise, God and man will always remain divided since God is beyond the reach of man. But because Jesus is God and man, we can be reconciled with God. We do not become God just as Christ, although God, did not lose His humanity even at the resurrection. But we are not separated from God either because God lives in us in His Spirit. In Jesus, we see that it is possible to remain distinct between God and man, and yet undivided but united in Christ. This is why we say that we are God’s adopted sons and daughters in Christ. Only Christ is the eternal Son of the Father. But because we share in His humanity, we too are adopted as sons and daughters of God, without becoming divine but remaining human. Hence, we can truly say, in Christ, God and man are reconciled. It is thus important for us to maintain the doctrine of the incarnation when God assumed our humanity. As Athanasius said, “God became man so that man can become god.” Of course, this is to be understood in terms of participation of His divine life.
For this reason, St John makes it a criterion of orthodoxy for Christians to profess this doctrine of the Incarnation without compromise. “Every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus the Christ has come in the flesh is from God; but any spirit which will not say this of Jesus is not from God, but is the spirit of Antichrist, whose coming you are warned about.” Indeed, we must be careful of theories that swing between two extremes, pantheism on one hand, and materialism on the other. In some new age theories, we are all gods. The divine is in us waiting to be released from our bodies. Hence, salvation is to get in touch with the divine in us. Salvation is reduced to some form of enlightenment which is our god-consciousness in us. We all have the power to save ourselves. We do not need any Saviour. Jesus is just one of the eons who showed us the way to enlightenment, just as other founders of other religions. At the other end of the spectrum is to deny the spiritual dimension of man and reduce him to mere matter, a creature, albeit the highest, but remains only matter, returning to dust when he dies, at which his existence will disappear from the face of the earth.
This is why discernment is necessary. Today, some Catholics are falling into syncretism. They are picking up all kinds of novelties from other religions and seeking to impose on the Christian Faith. In the name of inculturation, they unwittingly import not just the practices of other religions but also the theology or philosophy behind it. Trying to be ecumenical or inter-religious minded, and to appear non-triumphalist, they make compromises in their beliefs about Jesus so that they can be more acceptable to the world. St John in no uncertain terms says, “It is not every spirit, my dear people, that you can trust; test them, to see if they come from God, there are many false prophets, now, in the world. You can tell the spirits that come from God by this: every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus the Christ has come in the flesh is from God; but any spirit which will not say this of Jesus is not from God, but is the spirit of Antichrist, whose coming you are warned about. Well, now he is here, in the world.”
Indeed, we must not try to gain false recognition and acceptance by the world. We must take our direction from Christ who is the light of the world. Jesus fulfils the scriptures that foretold His coming. Matthew, citing from the prophet of Isaiah, said, “In this way the prophecy of Isaiah was to be fulfilled: Land of Zebulun! Land of Naphtali! Way of the sea on the far side of Jordan, Galilee of the nations! The people that lived in darkness has seen a great light; on those who dwell in the land and shadow of death a light has dawned.” (cf Isa 9:1f) He is the light not just for the Jews but also for the Gentiles where many lived in Galilee. It is appropriate that Matthew and the prophet Isaiah mentioned Galilee of the Gentiles because after the fall of Israel to Assyria, the Assyrians imported Gentile peoples to the area of Zebulun and Naphtali, the area of Galilee. The Samaritans largely lived in Galilee during the time of Christ. It was also a major international highway, a crossroads of international travel, “the way of the sea.”
It is significant that Jesus would begin His ministry in Galilee, the land of the Gentiles where the Jewish people were a minority. Jesus came for the Gentiles too. When Jesus rose from the dead, the Risen Christ the angel said “has gone before you into Galilee.” It was at Galilee that St Matthew records that Jesus sent out His disciples to the nations to proclaim the Good News. “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Mt 28:10; 19) We too must announce Jesus as the Incarnation of God, our Saviour to the world, to those who do not know Him. But in the process of transmitting the gospel in the language of the peoples we are sent to, we must be careful that we do not compromise our faith in Jesus as the Son of God, truly God and truly Man in one person. He is the Saviour of all. “For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all.’ (1 Tim 2:5)
Written by The Most Rev William Goh, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved.
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