to ourselves, to each other and to the whole creation. And so we become imperfect copies of the image of God.
What happens in Christ is that God takes on our nature. So what? So two things. First, human nature is exalted by the exchange. As the Vatican II passage already quoted makes clear, ‘Human nature, by the fact that it was assumed, not absorbed, in him, has been raised in us also to a dignity beyond compare’ (Gaudium et Spes, 22). For the first time in many years, there is a human being living in love with the Father. Jesus relates fully to the Father, so he can relate fully to other human beings. Because our nature is relational, connecting us all together in chains of love or of hate, Jesus’ nature affects the rest of us. In him, the human and divine meet in amity and in union, and so if we relate to Jesus, we also relate to the Father. One such relationship can begin to leaven the whole world, because of the fact that we are all interacting across space and time. That is our shared nature, now shared with him.
But secondly, a human being has at last said a full ‘yes’ to God. This is not just an example, it is an opening of the world to the power of the Creator. It is also a ‘yes’ said by the Son of God, a loving return of love for love that is the Holy Spirit unleashed on the creation to mend and to heal. The purpose of creation is at last fulfilled and man and God are made one. Nor is this simply a unity at a level where nothing goes wrong. It is easy to live in love when all is rosy and bright. But Jesus plumbs the full depths of human misery, as well as sharing our joys. For this reason, the Cross has central importance in Christianity. Note, as well, what love it is of which we are speaking. On the Cross the Father and Son exchange the love of the Trinity; it is this image to which we are restored. Our life, from now, can be part of the life of God. To paraphrase St Paul:
Out of the Father’s infinite glory, he has offered you the power, through his Holy Spirit, for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted on love and built on love you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.
Ephesians 3:16–18
God has done what we could never do, but in such a way that it was done by one of us. This is, perhaps, a better idea than punishing you. We now have to ask how it actually comes about in our lives, and try to discover how to avoid stopping it.
Here are some texts which further illustrate some of the ideas contained in this chapter:
The light does not fail because of those who have blinded themselves; it remains the same, while the blinded are plunged in darkness by their own fault. Light never forces itself on anyone, nor does God use compulsion on anyone who refuses to accept his artistry.
St Irenaeus, Against the Heretics, VI.39.3
Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, became our reconciliation with the Father. He it was, and he alone, who satisfied the Father’s eternal love, that fatherhood that from the beginning found expression in creating the world, giving man all the riches of creation, and making him ‘little less than God’ (Psalm 8:6), in that he was created ‘in the image and in the likeness of God’ (Genesis 1:26). He and he alone also satisfied that fatherhood of God and that love which man in a way rejected … The redemption of the world – this tremendous mystery of love in which creation is renewed – is, at its deepest root, the fullness of justice in a human Heart – the Heart of the First-born Son – in order that it may become justice in the hearts of many human beings, predestined from eternity in the First-born Son to be children of God, and called to grace, called to love.
John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 9
In his intimate life, God ‘is love’, the essential love shared by the three divine Persons: personal love is the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the Father and the Son. Therefore he ‘searches even the depths of God’ (1 Corinthians 2:10), as uncreated Love-Gift. It can be said that in the Holy Spirit the intimate life of the Triune God becomes totally gift, an exchange of mutual love between the divine Persons, and that through the Holy Spirit God exists in the mode of gift. It is the Holy Spirit who is the personal expression of this self-giving, of this being-love. He is Person-Love. He is Person-Gift. Here we have an inexpressible deepening of the concept of person in God, which only divine revelation makes known to us. At the same time, the Holy Spirit, being consubstantial with the Father and the Son in divinity, is love and uncreated gift from which derives as from its source all giving of gifts vis-à-vis creatures (created gift): the gift of existence to all things through creation; the gift of grace to human beings through the whole economy of salvation.
John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem, 10
By calling God ‘Father’, the language of faith indicates two main things: that God is the first origin of everything and transcendent authority; and that he is at the same time goodness and loving care for all his children. God’s parental tenderness can also be expressed by the image of motherhood, which emphasizes God’s immanence, the intimacy between Creator and creature. The language of faith thus draws on the human experience of parents, who are in a way the first representatives of God for man. But this experience also tells us that human parents are fallible and can disfigure the face of fatherhood and motherhood. We ought therefore to recall that God transcends the human distinction between the sexes. He is neither man nor woman: he is God. He also transcends human fatherhood and motherhood, although he is their origin and standard: no one is father as God is Father.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 239
Then I shall give you the gift of my love.
Song of Songs 7:13
The last two chapters contained a lot of ideas and perhaps you found them rather abstract. That is a challenge with doctrines, and an important fact about them. No teaching of the Church is meant to stand alone. Each one is meant to be applied in life, each one has a bearing on our need of God and his answer to that need. If you are becoming impatient for answers to pressing questions of ‘real life’, please bear with me a little longer. Life will get real soon enough, and we must gather enough resources to cope with it.
It is a little surprising that the Church has not attempted to define how we are saved by Christ. You can find plenty of models and theories, but no formal definition in the same way as the Trinity or the nature of Christ is defined. Most of the doctrines we have were evolved to support the claim that we are saved in Christ. For example, the dogma of the Assumption is all about Mary as Mother of God. This ancient title was thought up to bring home the divinity of Christ in popular Marian devotion. By bearing the God-child, Mary’s body was made specially holy. From earliest times, some Christians had believed that Mary was assumed into heaven (hence the marked lack of Marian relics), and Pope Pius XII chose to promulgate this officially at a time when many people were coming to wonder if Jesus was anything more than a gifted guru, a very holy man with good ideas. The special status of Mary was intended to underscore the very special status of her son.
The Assumption can seem to non-Catholics, and indeed to some Catholics, to be a bit of window-dressing: not really necessary, and a matter of taste to take or leave. But not so the claim of salvation. This is central to our faith. In fact, it is our faith; everything else is just corollary. Yet Christians have never been able to do more than come up with images and stories to try and describe this most important part of our religion. In some ways this is a failure, but in other ways it is quite encouraging. The reconciliation between God and human beings in Christ goes deeper than words can. It penetrates our human nature
