Nativity : Another word for human birth. The Church celebrates the nativity of Jesus (Christmas) on December 25. We also celebrate the nativities, or birthdays, of our Lady (September 8) and of Saint John the Baptist (June 24).
Incarnation : The truth that God became man. The Incarnation refers to the conception and birth of Jesus, the Son of God become man through Mary.
Miracles : Events that are far above the natural powers of either man or nature. They are supernatural happenings, done by God in order to prove some truth (such as Christ’s teachings) or to show the holiness of someone (such as a saint). Sometimes an extraordinary event can be worked by the devil in order to fool Christians and to lead us away from God. It is important that we listen to the decisions of the Church before we believe in any modern-day miracles.
Evangelists : The title given to the four authors of the Gospels: Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It comes from the Latin word evangelium, which means “good news” or “gospel.”
Hypostatic Union : This is the mystery that in Christ the divine and human natures are united in the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
Heresies : Religious beliefs that corrupt the true teachings of Christ and the Church. Those who teach or believe these false ideas are called heretics.
Docetism : The heresy which denied the truth that the Son of God became a real man, Jesus Christ. Docetists believed that salvation consists in freedom from matter. Therefore, God would not have become man.
Arianism : The heresy which denied the truth that Jesus is God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.
1 Ecumenical Council : The gathering of all the world’s bishops together with the Pope for a special reason. The councils are named after the cities or churches in which they have taken place. The very first council of the Church was that of Jerusalem, about A.D. 49. The first ecumenical council was the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325. The latest was Vatican II, 1962–1965.
Nicene Creed : The Profession of Faith which we say at every Sunday Mass. Dating from the year A.D. 381, it contains the major beliefs of Christians. Along with the more ancient Apostles’ Creed, it is a very important prayer for Christians.
Fun facts: Here are 2 examples of heresies: 1. Arianism: Arianism was a belief in the early Christian church that denied the full divinity of Jesus Christ. Followers of Arianism believed that Jesus was a created being, not equal to God the Father. This idea was considered a heresy because it went against the core Christian belief in the Holy Trinity - that God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit are all equally divine and one God. The Church declared Arianism a heresy at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. 2. Gnosticism: Gnosticism was another early Christian heresy that believed in special secret knowledge (gnosis) for salvation. Gnostics claimed to possess a higher understanding of spiritual truths that was only revealed to a select few. They often rejected the physical world as inherently evil and believed that only the spiritual realm mattered. This contradicted the Christian belief in the goodness of God's creation and the importance of Jesus' physical incarnation and resurrection. The Church condemned Gnosticism as a heresy because it distorted the central teachings of Christianity and undermined the universal message of salvation offered to all believers.
2 Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten Son from the Father. (John 1:14)
You will remember that God promised Adam and Eve that he would send a Redeemer, someone who would make up for Original Sin and the separation it caused between man and the Creator. We have seen how God began his plan for our salvation by choosing a community of people, the Jews or Israelites, to whom he gradually revealed his plan. He sent prophets to these people to prepare them for the coming of the Messiah, the “Anointed One” of God.
The various prophets had told the Jewish people that the Messiah would indeed come to them, but they never said exactly who he would be. Most of the people expected a great and powerful military leader who would free them from political oppression. That this Savior would be God himself, come down to liberate them from their spiritual slavery to sin and the devil, was not what they expected.
But the prophets did give the people some clues about the Messiah, ways to recognize him once he came. They said that he would be a member of the tribe of Judah (Gen 49:8–10); he would be born of a virgin (Is 7:14) in the town of Bethlehem (Micah 5:2–4). A great star would shine in the sky to announce the Messiah’s birth (Num 24:17), and he would live for a time in Egypt (Hos 11:1). This Redeemer would preach God’s Good News to the
3 poor and the lowly (Is 61:1–3), but he would be rejected by the people who would cause him much suffering (Is 53:1–12).
You probably recognize the life of the Lord Jesus in the above prophecies; many of the Jews did, and they accepted him as the Messiah sent from God. But many others did not.
The Incarnation of Our Lord
From among all the women of the chosen people, God selected one through whom he would fulfill his promise of salvation: the Virgin Mary of Nazareth. God had prepared her to cooperate with his plan of salvation. Mary was free from Origina Sin from the moment of her conception. This is called the Immaculate Conception.
One day, he sent the angel Gabriel to her, saying:
Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you! . . . Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father [ancestor] David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his Kingdom there will be no end (Lk 1:28, 30–33).
Now Mary, as the Church has always taught, was a virgin, as her response to this angelic messenger reveals: “How can this be, since I have no husband?” (Lk 1:34).
The angel told her that God, in his almighty power, would work this great wonder within her. By the power of the Holy Spirit the child would be
4 conceived in her womb. Joseph, to whom she was betrothed, would seem to be the baby’s father but he was actually the Lord’s foster father and protector. Mary, ready to do whatever God asked of her, replied to the angel: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).
With these words Mary showed how dedicated she was to God’s plan for her life and for our salvation. She called herself the “handmaid” of the Lord, which is another way of saying that she was God’s servant or slave, ever ready to do whatever he asked of her.
As soon as Mary expressed her consent to God’s will, Jesus was conceived in her womb; this is the Virginal Conception. Nine months later he was born in the little town of Bethlehem, and his nativity (birth) was announced by the appearance of the miraculous star, just as had been foretold. We call the event by which the Son of God took on our human nature the Incarnation.
The Divinity of Jesus
The Second Person of the Holy Trinity came down from heaven in order to share our human life. Even more, he freely chose to be born in poverty and to live a poor life, so that we could learn that wealth and worldly pleasures do not give us true happiness. He became man so that we, by being freed from sin and reunited with God by Baptism, could become like him, the children of the Father. Saint Irenaeus, a holy bishop of the second century, once said: “The Word of God, Jesus Christ, on account of his great love for mankind, became what we are in order to make us what he is himself.” For thirty years Jesus lived a normal human life with Mary and Joseph, working as a carpenter in the village of Nazareth. He did this in order to
5 teach us that even such ordinary things as work and family life are very important to God. This first part of Christ’s life is called his “hidden life,” because during this time the people did not know who he really was and because we do not know very much about it.
When our Lord was about thirty years old he began what is known as his “public life,” that is, the three years he spent preaching, teaching, and working miracles. These miracles were signs and proofs of his divinity; they showed that he was truly the Son of God. A miracle is some event or happening that is beyond the powers of man or of nature. It can only be worked by God, who is the Lord and Master of all creation.
The public life of Jesus began with his baptism in the Jordan River by Saint John the Baptist. At this time, the evangelists (writers of the Gospels) tell us that the Holy Spirit came down upon Jesus and the Father’s voice was heard to say: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17). This was the first time that Jesus of Nazareth was publicly revealed as the Son of God. (Of course, Mary and Joseph already knew who he was.) It was also the first time that the mystery of the Holy Trinity was revealed. During his ministry our Lord spoke of himself as the Son of God, saying: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM” (Jn 8:58). (Remember that “I AM” is the name God revealed to Moses in the burning bush.)
So we see from all of these events recorded for us in the Gospels that Jesus Christ is both God and man at the same time! This is a great mystery of faith that we believe because God has revealed it. We call this mystery the hypostatic union. This phrase comes from a Greek word which tells us that
6 our Lord is the Son of God and the son of Mary, fully God with all of the divine powers, and fully man like us in everything except sin.
The Humanity of Jesus
Jesus had everything that makes someone a human being: a physical body with all of its various functions, and an immortal soul with its powers of intellect and will. As a man he had to grow daily in acquiring human knowledge, and he experienced the joys and sorrows of life just as we do.
The Gospels remind us that he felt hunger and thirst (Lk 4:2); he loved children (Mk 10:13–16); he knew sorrow and cried over the death of a friend (Jn 11:32–36); he experienced loneliness (Mt 26:37–46); he enjoyed friendship (Lk 19:1–10); felt joy and gladness (Lk 10:21); he went through suffering and death (the accounts of the Passion in all four Gospels). We noted that Jesus was like us in all things except sin (Heb 4:15). This is because, as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, he is all-holy. But this does not mean that Jesus was free from temptations to sin; the Gospels make it very clear that he was tempted (Mt 4:1; Mk 1:13; Lk 4:2–13). Since he was a human being like us, this means that we too can live free from sin, with the help of his grace which is always available to us through the Sacraments. Jesus has made it possible for us to live a sinless life by being united to him.
Errors about the Incarnation
Throughout the history of Christianity heresies, or errors, about the
mystery of the Incarnation have been taught by various mistaken followers of the Lord. Heresies are very dangerous to the faith because
7 they corrupt or destroy man’s understanding of the truth which leads to salvation.
The first heresy to attack the truths taught by the Church happened in the days of the Apostles of the Lord; it was called Docetism. It corrupted the truth that Jesus is human. This heresy said that Christ only seemed to be a man. Some people believed this because they believed that salvation consists in freedom from matter; so according to their way of thinking, God would not take on a real human body! The Magisterium of the Church condemned these teachings of the Docetists as heresy, and Saint John wrote his Gospel partly to show that the Docetists were wrong. But this heresy lives on in our own day among those who think that the human body is sinful and not something which God created as good. It also affects those Christians who see Christ only as the Son of God, and not as a true, full human being.
Another terrible heresy sprang up among Christians in the beginning of
the fourth century. It was started by a priest who denied the truth about Christ’s divinity. The priest’s name was Arius, and so his false teaching was called Arianism. Arians believed that our Lord was the Messiah sent from God, that he was the greatest of teachers and holiest of men, but they did not believe that he was divine. An unfortunate thing about this heresy is that it attracted thousands of Christians, including many bishops! We can learn from this that even priests and bishops can be led astray from the Gospel if they do not remain united to the Pope, for at that time the Holy Father and a few faithful bishops were the only ones teaching the truth about Jesus’ divinity. As you can well imagine, things got so out of hand that the first ecumenical council (meeting of all the bishops of the Church in union with the Pope) was held in order to condemn this false teaching officially. It is called the Council of Nicaea
8 (A.D. 325), and from this and another later meeting (A.D. 381) we received the Nicene Creed, which we recite every Sunday at Holy Mass.
Unfortunately, Arianism can still be found today among those who call Christ a “great man” and “moral leader” but who refuse to acknowledge his full divinity. These people place Jesus on the same level as the founders of other religions (such as Buddha or Muhammad), and consider Christianity to be simply one religion among all the others. They fail to see that God has become man for them, for all of us, so that we can truly live with him on this earth and forever in heaven.
Catechism Practice
Q. 59 What was the Annunciation?
The Annunciation was the holy event of the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she was to be the Mother of the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of God (CCC 494).
Q. 60 Who is Jesus Christ?
Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, is the Son of God made man in the Incarnation (CCC 461).
9 Q. 61 How was the Son of God made man? The Son of God was made man by the power of the Holy Spirit in the pure womb of the Virgin Mary (CCC 497).
Q. 62 From whom was Jesus Christ born?
Jesus Christ was born of Mary, ever virgin, who is therefore the Mother of God (CCC 495).
Q. 63 Who is the father of Jesus Christ?
God the Father is the father of Jesus Christ (CCC 496, 502).
Q. 64 Who was Saint Joseph?
Saint Joseph was the foster father and guardian of Jesus, and the spouse of Mary (CCC 497).
Q. 65 Did the Son of God cease to be God when he was made man? When the Son of God was made man he did not cease to be God, but while remaining true God, he became true man (CCC 469, 479).
Q. 66 Are there two natures in Jesus Christ?
Yes, in Jesus Christ there are two natures: divine and human (CCC 470, 481).
Q. 67 With the two natures in Jesus Christ are there also two persons? With the two natures in Jesus Christ there are not two persons, but only one, the Divine Person of the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity (CCC 467, 481).
Q. 68 Did Jesus Christ always exist?
Jesus Christ has always existed as God; he began to exist as man from the moment of the Incarnation (CCC 479). Q. 69 Where was Jesus Christ born? Jesus Christ was born in a stable at Bethlehem (CCC 525).
10 Quiz
Q1: The --------------- was when the angel Gabriel told Mary she was to be the Mother of God. Visitation Assumption Presentation Annunciation
Q2: Jesus Christ is the Son of God made man in the ---------------. Visitation Incarnation Presentation Transfiguration
Q3: God the Son is the --------------- Person of the Holy Trinity. First Only Third Second
Q4: The Son of God was made man by the power of --------------- in the pure womb of the Virgin Mary. Man The saints The angels The Holy Spirit
11 Q5: Saint --------------- was the foster and guardian of Jesus, and the spouse of Mary. John Joseph Joachim Zechariah
Q6: When the Son of God was made man, He ---------------.
Could no longer be God Did not cease to be God Chose not to be God anymore Became a new nature, neither fully God or fully man
Q7: Jesus Christ has always existed as ---------------; he began to exist as
--------------- from the moment of the Incarnation. Man...God God...man An angel...God God...an angel
Q8: Jesus Christ was born at a stable in ---------------.
Bethlehem Jerusalem Nazareth Galilee
Q9: Jesus Christ has --------------- nature(s).
1 2 3 4
12 Q10: Jesus Christ is --------------- Divine Person(s) Not a 1 2 3
Q11: Jesus Christ has always been God; He ---------------.
Is now also man, and will never stop being man. Once became a man, but is no longer man. Took the appearance of a man for a time Stopped being man at the Resurrection
Q12: On Christmas day, December 25, the Church celebrates the ---------------. Visit of the Wise Men Beginning of the liturgical year Annuciation of the angel Gabriel Nativity (human birth) of Jesus Christ
Q13: --------------- is the mystery that in Christ the divine and human natures are united in the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. The Communion of Saints The Consubstantiation The Hypostatic Union The Transfiguration
Q14: The --------------- Creed is the Profession of Faith which we say at Sunday Mass; it dates from AD 381. Nicene Apostles' Athanasian People of God
13 Q15: --------------- are events far above the natural powers of man or nature; they are supernatural happenings worked by God to prove the truth or show the holiness of someone. Creeds Parables Miracles Sacramentals
