The arrival of Christ (Messiah) and His Mission was fulfilled in the New Testament
through the Incarnation of the Word. Prior to the Word becoming human, the Word preexisted and acted invisibly and incorporeally. Jesus is the Word in the flesh.
God is one and trine, which means there is one singular God Who is threefold in forms, effects, and powers. The Thought (the Father), the Word (the Son), and the Holy Spirit, each working differently, and yet not working in contrary fashion, united as one because They are the same Essence: Love, equal in all respects as regards Divinity, Eternity, Immensity, and Omnipotence, but not confused in relation to one another, but, rather, quite distinct, and One is not the Other, and yet there are not three gods, but a single God, Who in and of Himself has given being to the individual Divine Persons in generating the Son and, by that very act, originating the procession of the Holy Spirit.
God had to be the Christ (Messiah), Redeemer, because He is the perfect sacrifice, but He couldn't do it in His invisible and incorporeal form. That's why the Word, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, was sent by the Thought (the Father) to become human to be the Christ (Messiah), the Redeemer, and that was done by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary.
The Father and the Holy Spirit are invisible and incorporeal, as was the Word until that Person of the Holy Trinity became human: Jesus. Human sight or any other human sense never saw God before He became incarnate and cannot physically see the First and Third Persons (the Father and the Holy Spirit), but sees Them in the works which were or are carried out by Them.
[N: 45-50]
Since the earthly creation has instead yielded Adam and Adam's race, Mary witnesses to the merciful superlove of God towards man,
for through Mary, Mother of the Redeemer, God has worked the salvation of the human race. Jesus is the Christ because Mary conceived Him and gave Him to the World.
One may say that God could overcome the need to take flesh in a woman's womb. He could do all, it's true. But reflect on the law of order and goodness which lies in His annihilation in mortal clothing.
The sin committed by man had to be expiated by man and not by the nonincarnate divinity. How could the Divinity, incorporeal Spirit, redeem the sins of the flesh with the sacrifice of Itself? It was, then, necessary that God should pay for the sins of flesh and blood with the agony of an innocent Flesh and Blood, born of an innocent woman.
God's mind, God's feeling, and
God's spirit would have suffered for our sins in mind, feeling, and spirit. But to be the Redemption of all forms of concupiscence inoculated into Adam and
his descendants by the Tempter, the One Immolated
for them all had to be endowed with a nature like ours, made worthy of being given as a ransom to God by the Divinity hidden in it, like a gem
of infinite supernatural value hidden under common, natural clothing.
God is order, and God does not violate or do violence to order, except in very exceptional cases, judged useful by his Intelligence. Such was not the case with His Redemption.
God had not only to cancel sin from the moment it occurred until the moment of the sacrifice and annul
in those to come the effects of sin by having them be born unaware of evil. No. With a total sacrifice God had to make reparation for Sin and the sins of all mankind give the men already dead absolution of sin, and give those living at that time and in the future the means to be helped to resist evil and to be forgiven for the evil which their weakness would lead them to do.
God's sacrifice thus had to be such as to present all the necessary requisites, and it could be such only in a God made man: a
host worthy of God, a means
understood by man. In
addition, He was coming to bring the Law.
If His Humanity had not existed, how could we—His poor brothers and sisters, who labor to have faith in Him, who lived for thirty-three years on the earth, a Man among men—have believed? And how could He appear, already an adult, to hostile or ignorant peoples, making them convinced of His nature and His doctrine? He would then have appeared, in the eyes of the world, as a spirit who had taken on a human likeness, but not as a man Who was born and died, shedding real blood through the wounds of a real flesh as proof of being a man—and rose again and ascended to Heaven with His glorified body—as proof of being God returning to His eternal dwelling.
Isn't it sweeter for us to think that He is really our brother, with the destiny of creatures who are born, live, suffer, and die, than to conceive of Him as a Spirit superior to the exigencies of humanity?
It was necessary, then, for a woman to give birth to Him according to the flesh, after having conceived Him above the flesh, for from no
marriage of creatures, no matter
how holy they were, could the God-Man
be conceived, but only from a
wedding of Purity and Love, the Spirit and the Virgin, created without stain so as to be the matrix
for the flesh of a God, the Virgin the thought of Whom was God's joy, since before time existed, the Virgin in Whom there is a compendium of the Father's creative perfection, the joy of Heaven, the salvation of the Earth, the most beautiful flower of Creation of all the flowers of the Universe, a living star before whom all the suns created by the Father seem dull.
[N: 43]
Here are some yes–no questions:
John said, "the Word flesh became and dwelt among us" (
1:14). Is John saying that the Word
became flesh, and indicating that
prior to becoming human, the Word preexisted as
not a human?
John said, "The Word became flesh, and lived among us. [...] John testified about him." (Jn. 1:
14-
15). Is John referring to the one begotten by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin, and named "Jesus" (the Son) (
Matt. 1:20,
Lk. 1:31;
35)?
“If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple." (
Lk. 14:26)
Jesus means "hate in a holy manner." If within your heart you are saying: "Hatred, as He taught us, is never holy. So He is contradicting Himself." No. He's not contradicting Himself.
He's saying that we must hate the heaviness of love, the sensual passionateness of love for your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and for your very life, on the contrary He orders us to love relatives and life with the light freedom of spirits. Love them in God and for God, never postponing God to them, endeavouring and taking care to lead them where the disciple has already arrived, that is to God, the Truth. We will thus love God and relatives in a holy manner, safeguarding each love, so that family ties will not be a burden but wings, not a fault, but justice. We must be prepared to hate even our lives in order to follow Him.
He hates his life who without fear of losing it or making it sad from a human point of view, uses it to serve Him. But it is only an appearance of hatred. A feeling erroneously called "hatred" by man who cannot elevate himself, as he is entirely earthly, by little superior to brutes.
In actual fact such apparent hatred,
which consists in denying sensual satisfaction to one's life in order to give a more and more intense life to the spirit, is love. It is love, of the highest degree and the most blessed. To deny oneself base satisfactions, to reject sensual affections, to risk unfair reproaches, criticism and punishment, being rejected, cursed and perhaps persecuted, all that is a sequence of grief. But it is necessary to embrace such grief and take it upon ourselves, like a cross, a scaffold on which all past faults are expiated to be justified by God, from Whom we can obtain every true, mighty, holy grace for those whom we love.
He who does not carry his cross and does not follow Him, he who cannot do that cannot be His disciple. (PV3)
