God the Son

Refer to our Sunday Experience pages to find different prayers to pray as a family sometime during the week as well as setting up a prayer space and other activities as a family.

For the Learn do the following:

1. Watch Video at the top of the page. (if you want more resources, or are interested in learning more about the topic click on the Extra tab).
2. Click on the appropriate grade for your child.
3. Read the "relates to..." section at the beginning.  This is helpful to understand what to convey to your child is important about this lesson.  It will        help make the lesson both an intellectual and a lived lesson.
4. Read through and familiarize yourself with the sample script. 
5. Teach your child the lesson, either using your own words or the sample script.
6. Either discuss the questions with your child (best option), or have your child write out answers to the questions.
7. Have your child do the activities and/or do the activities with them.  
8. If working with a parish return the appropriate material in the way they have requested.

All Content for "The Way", Learn, is original content and copyright of the Diocese of Kalamazoo and may not be copied, reproduced, or used without prior written consent of the Diocese of Kalamazoo.   © 2020 Diocese of Kalamazoo

Relates to Jesus: Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, we know there is a trinity because of Jesus’ revelation.  This shows us that God must be love (that is what binds the trinity) and reveals all of Jesus’s actions within a familial relationship of God.

Relates to my faith: God truly cares for us, that is why He became man.  We can know that we have a God who is not only infinite and created everything, but is intimate and condescended to us.

Sample Script:

Jesus is the second member of the Trinity. He is the Son of God the Father who exists forever and in all eternity. God the Father loves Jesus the Son and Jesus the Son loves God the Father. The eternal back-and-forth of love that is shown between the Father and the Son is the same love that God desires you and me to experience and share in our lives.

Jesus the Son of God was sent by God the Father so that all people could see and touch and come to know more fully how much God loves each and every one of us just as the Father loves the Son. God reaches out to all people at all times (referring to the Old Testament heroes before Jesus’ Incarnation and to the Church today); Jesus came at a time chosen by God the Father to live, to teach, and to heal. While Jesus came at a particular time in history, we still encounter Him in a number ways. Perhaps most simply we see Jesus in the face of each other when we show concern and act kindly towards them.

Jesus’ ultimate mission is found in His death on the Cross. Since the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, all humans have a broken relationship with God. Any man or woman on their own could not repair the damage done by Adam and Eve, and by being human as they are, our own sins prevent us from fully healing the rejection of God when we don’t choose Him. Jesus saves us as He is fully God and fully man (hypostatic union) and so is Himself free from sin as God and thus able to make a perfect offering of Himself while also taking on the sins of all humankind as a man and appropriately win the reunion of relationship between God and man.

To close, Jesus is the Son of God. He is the second member of the Trinity and thus being God, wants us to know how much God loves us. He showed this love in how He lived, what He taught, and how He healed, but most importantly, in the way that He saved us by suffering and dying on the Cross. Jesus is fully God and fully man and thus perfectly restores the relationship between God and people that was broken by sin.

Questions:

Jesus is the Father/Son/Holy Spirit (please choose one)? Jesus is the first/second/third member of the Trinity (please choose one)?

Jesus was sent by God the Father to show us God’s what?

Name a couple ways that Jesus shows us God’s love?

How did Jesus save us?

What are some things that you can tell me about Jesus?

Activities:

Draw and color a time where you experienced the love of Jesus.
 

List together some people that you could show love and concern for just as Jesus does for you. What are some things you could do for them?

Relates to Jesus: Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist and through a number of other means reminds us of His words in Scripture in which He told his disciples, and ultimately us, that He remain with us always, even until the close of the age (cf. MT 28:20).

Relates to my Faith: The Church’s desire for us to stay close to her by living lives built on faith and morals gives us the confidence that, while the many voices of the world and of the Evil One will say otherwise, we are never alone in our pursuit of holiness.

Sample Script:

God’s everlasting love for His people is something that is well documented throughout the Old Testament. Through Abraham and Moses to the Psalms and the Prophets, God loves His people so much and wants what is best for them. He wants people to know what full love is; that being in right relationship with God puts on the path to happiness and peace.

Jesus comes as the fulfillment of God’s desire for His love to be ever-present to His people. Jesus’ life and work on earth reminded people of the gentle and loving presence of God. Having faith in Jesus, Scripture shows us, brought many to change the way they were living and to worship God, realizing that the presence of God’s love was the answer to all of their questions.

Now, while we don’t Jesus explicitly walking among us today, He is still present to us and calling us to be in a loving relationship with Him. When we pray, we can hear the voice of Jesus inspiring us and guiding us in a certain decision. When we talk to or play with our friends, we act like Jesus by being polite and showing kindness in sharing our toys. When we talk to mom or dad or grandma, we feel the presence of Jesus in the loving attention or hug shared. When we go to church to attend Mass, we listen to the words of Jesus and either watch people receive Jesus in Holy Communion or respectfully go to receive Jesus ourselves in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, allowing Jesus to be so close to us.

To close, God has always desired to be in relationship with His people so that they can encounter and live in His love. Jesus is the fulfillment of this desire, being the face of the loving God as God’s Son. Jesus, while coming at a certain historical moment, is ever-present with humanity in a number of ways, most especially in the Eucharist. This faithful knowledge of the presence of Jesus active in our lives is a great source of comfort knowing that our loving God is always near.

Questions and Activities:

Why does God want to be in a relationship with us?

Who best shows us what this relationship looks like?

What are some ways that we see Jesus today?

Why is the Eucharist the best way to experience Jesus?

Is there ever a time when Jesus is not with us?

Activities:

Think of some ways that you can show Jesus to someone in your family and with the help of your parents, decide what this could look like.

As a family, spend some time visiting your parish tabernacle in prayer. Share ways that you each felt Jesus’ presence during this time.

Relates to Jesus: By following Jesus through His commandment of love for God and neighbor, He leads us to the love of the Father for which we were created. Without Jesus, the task of salvation is impossible. With Jesus, and His proclamation of the Kingdom of God, it is a joy for He makes all burdens lite.

Relates to my faith: Jesus teaches us how to live as members of His Kingdom through the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. We become Christ's hands and feet in the world and bring His love to others.

Sample Script:

Jesus, while fully God as the second person of the Trinity, entered our human history fully man as well. Jesus came to us just as we all do; namely being carried for nine months by His mother and born into a family. Jesus’ family consisted of His mother Mary and His adopted father Joseph. Joseph is called Jesus’ adopted father because Jesus, who is fully God, is first the Son of God the Father. Jesus became the son of Mary and Joseph so that He could show the blessing that exists in the family home and to help all people come to know the love and care that God has for each of us.

Throughout Jesus’ life, He was obedient to both God and His family. We are called to do the same. Jesus, once He was grown and began to teach about God, encouraged people to follow His example so that we each might come to know the love of God and become His children. In following Jesus’ example, an example that includes loving and worshiping God with our entire self, loving and caring for our brothers and sisters just as we love ourselves, and practicing a life of prayer and making good choices, we enter into and show the reality of the Kingdom of God.

In His life, Jesus was solely focused on doing the will of God. The will of God asks us each to be holy, which means to follow the commandments of God to love Him and love our neighbor, to listen to and be respectful of our parents, to treat friends and classmates with kindness, and help people in need. It is also important to do our best to pay attention at Mass and to pray every day to listen to what God is calling you to. Jesus, who is our example of living this way, carried the will of God out perfectly. We should ask Jesus to help us do the same.

To close, Jesus is a member of our human family and shows us the great love, respect, and kindness that families are called to support. Jesus learned to be obedient to God’s will from being obedient to His family. Entering His public ministry to proclaim the Kingdom of God’s love and mercy, Jesus showed the example of what it means to follow after God and to be His disciple. Let us pray to be a disciple of Jesus each day.

Questions:

What are the names of Jesus’ Mom and Dad?

Name some of the things Jesus learned from his parents?

What are some things you notice about Jesus’s teaching and the Kingdom of God? What does the Kingdom of God look like?

Describe what holiness looks like.

How are you a disciple of Jesus?

Activities:

Find a picture of a manger scene. What are some things you notice about it? Ask your mom and dad how Jesus’ birth compares with your birth.

Draw a picture of yourself. Label the parts of your body (brain, heart, hands, feet, etc.) and mark how you can use each part to be a disciple.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus wants us to be one with Him. When we hear His voice in the Scriptures, when we meet Him in the Sacrament, when we see Him in the face of others; Jesus is offering us an opportunity to listen, experience, encounter a loving relationship as intimate as the first disciples.

Relates to my Faith: An active prayer life invites us and allows us to come to a greater place of clarity in hearing the voice of God. Our minds and hearts become landing spots to more richly receive instruction from above so that we might live our faith here below.

Sample Script:

In a number of encounters with Jesus throughout the Gospels, we hear a common theme for being a disciple includes turning in one’s current state of life, repenting for past sin and omission, and following the Lord Jesus Christ. These particular moments in the life of the disciple are important to consider.

When Matthew the tax collector heard the Lord’s call to follow Him (MT 9:9), Matthew promptly got up and followed Him. When Jesus calls us, we need to be ready to respond. So when we feel the urge to pray while we are playing soccer, as an example, we should not ignore the urge or say I’ll get to this later, but rather should offer Jesus a brief prayer of thanks and mention what is on our heart and mind.

When asking forgiveness for our sins (that which is hurtful towards God and others) and our omissions (not doing the good that we ought to do), we acknowledge that we are following a way that is not Jesus’ way, and thus not being the disciple He wants us to be. Thankfully, our returning to Jesus to receive His love and mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation restores our friendship with Jesus and puts us back on the path He has for us.

Following Jesus is also not always easy. There are tough times and challenges to work through, but we are never alone. Jesus carried the Cross that He would eventually die on and while this was a physical burden, attached to this was the spiritual burden of all of our sins. So too as disciples of Jesus, we encounter the struggle against sin in our lives and the lives of those we interact with. These times are not to run from but are to be walked alongside Jesus so that His love and guidance can help us and others see how the grace of God can work in any situation.

To close, the life of a disciple of Jesus requires a response of turning, repenting, and following. These requirements take a life time and will be something that you’ll cycle through many, many times and will make mistakes on many, many times. But it is worth it, for Jesus will be walking with you every step of the way and your life will be all the better for it.

Questions and Activities:

How have you felt the call to be a disciple?

What was most striking to you about the story of Matthew (if you didn’t read it, it is Matthew 9:9-13)?

Name some things in your life that you need to ask forgiveness for. Is there someone that you need to forgive?

How can you follow Jesus more than you already are?

What can you do to reach out to Jesus when you are struggling with something?

Activities:

Find a time when, together as a family, you all can go to Reconciliation together. Share any stories and/or fears you each may have.

As a family, discuss things that are a struggle, what you can do to support one another, and how can you invite Jesus to be part of the situation.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus desires that all may be one; united together as being united with God in the Church. The Sacraments communicate Christ’s presence which consistently calls the names of all to gather together under God’s care.

Relates to my Faith: Faithfully knowing that God is reaching out to us, we need to do our best to listen for God’s call by reducing or even eliminating anything that would hinder us from the voice of Jesus in our life.

Sample Script:

At our baptism, we receive the necessary grace (through the washing of Original Sin and the reception of the Holy Spirit to be marked as a child of God) to live as we are called to live. God’s plan for humanity has always been to be one of union with Him. With baptism, this unity is realized again as we become permanently sealed as a child of God. This seal, while it can be damaged and broken due to sin, can never be removed and marks us as belonging to Jesus Christ not only in this life, but in the life to come.

Now, Jesus Christ, through His saving work that culminates in His passion, death, and resurrection, has at the central point of His mission the task of uniting the divide that exists between God and man. To begin His public ministry, Jesus initiated an important and necessary step in the life of the Christian; namely to be baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, while not in need of baptism Himself, makes present another example of God’s desire for humanity to be one with Him. When we are baptized, we leave behind the ways of man and put on the ways of God.

Jesus shows us that God wants to accompany His people through each of our own personal journeys throughout this life. To put it another way, God isn’t going to ask us to do something that He hasn’t already done. He wants to walk along side of us so that we can come to know Him more fully. The Son of God wants us each to be sons and daughters of God who are united to Him in a loving relationship that not only brings our own personal lives to a place of happiness, but also encourages and invites others to do the same.

Questions and Activities:

Based on this lesson, what is part of God’s plan for humanity?

Who does baptism unite us to?

Why did Jesus get baptized?

Does God want to be a part of your life? How do you know?

What does God want you to get out of life?

Activities:

Ask you parents/godparents about your baptism. Ask them to share with you anything they felt or experienced that day and why it was such a special day for you.

Consider some ways that you act or live that tell others that you are a baptized child of God. How do you think Jesus is being communicated to others by the way you are living?

Relates to Jesus: Jesus is the face of God in the world. His human nature enables us to see how God is and gives us a glimpse into the reality of divine love.

Relates to my faith:  The Hypostatic Union also shows us our intrinsic value in the eyes of God and likewise should direct us in seeing that same value in all others.

Sample Script:

Jesus Christ is pretty special. One of the most special things about Jesus is that He is both fully God and fully man. The term for this “fully God, fully man” reality in Jesus is called the Hypostatic Union. This union of the divine nature of God and the human nature of man truly exists in the one person of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

This make up of the person of Jesus Christ tells us a couple of things about both humanity and God while also helping us to understand the mission of Jesus Christ. We as people, created beings made up of body and soul and thus have the capacity and truly the necessity to operate in both the physical and spiritual realms, are hardwired for relationship. In order to truly be who we are called to be and to find fulfillment in life, our body and our soul need to find a certain harmonious relationship together. When this is continually attended to and strived after, we find order in our lives.

Being made in the image and likeness of God, we find that our order and fulfillment ultimately resides in uniting ourselves back to our Creator. Peace and harmony belong to God so it is no wonder that ordering ourselves to Him bring us to a similar place of peace and harmony in our life. God desires us to be with Him and this becomes all the more clear with the sending of Jesus His Son. Man is created to be with God in a harmonious relationship that not only brings us through our earthly journey but points to the reality of our existence after we die; namely heavenly union with God for all eternity.

Questions and Activities:

What is the Hypostatic Union?

As humans, what do our bodies consist of?

Do we need to be in relationship with our soul? Why?

Where do we ultimately find peace in life?

Jesus coming as fully God, fully man tells us some things about this life and the life to come. Please name two or three things.

Activities:

Talk about what it means, from our Catholic Christian viewpoint, to have our body and soul in a harmonious relationship.

Considering some of the Gospel stories of Jesus’ life and work, pick one of your favorites and describe some of the characteristics in the scene that you see in God, in humanity, in both.

Relates to Jesus Jesus embodies the Kingdom of God through His teachings and miracles. He calls us to embody the loving and merciful practices of the Kingdom in our lives as His disciples.

Relates to my Faith Being a disciple of Jesus carries with it many graces and blessings and offers a life of walking alongside our Lord. It also calls us to bear burdens patiently and to encourage our fellow men and women to live similar lives.

Sample Script:

At the prompting of Mary at the Wedding Feast in Cana, Jesus performed His first public miracle and thus inaugurated His ministry. Imagine Jesus, spending roughly the first 30 years of His life, quietly praying and waiting for God the Father to show Him how and when to begin His outreach to the people. Jesus’ preparation paid off, recognizing the voice of God coming through His mother, knowing that this was the time to act.

Jesus spent the next three years preaching to the various groups of people throughout Israel. Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God, a kingdom that was not in the model of any earthly kingdom, but a model that was founded on love, mercy, reconciliation, obedience, and service to the needs of others. It is a Kingdom that speaks to the very nature of God and what He truly wants for His people; namely to live as children of God after His own heart.

The revelation of this Kingdom further showed that God does not deal in exclusion; Jesus came to preach and to heal all people and thus invite every person to be part of this divine offer. Jesus taught the people with words and parables, He cured the sick and injured that saw with the eyes of faith, He cast out demons to free tortured souls from the grips of evil, Jesus even raised the dead and brought life-giving grace to those in need.

These and many other examples show the active presence of God in the life of humanity. God is present up and down through the ages, even to this very day, seeking to encounter you and calling you to receive and proclaim the same Kingdom as handed on by the Son of God.

Questions and Activities:

How do you hear God speaking to you?

What do you think about Jesus’ life before His public ministry prepared Him to carry out God’s will in His life?

Describe your favorite attribute of the Kingdom of God.

Which one or two of Jesus’ teachings/healings speaks most to you? Talk about some of the reasons why.

How could you be more present to showing others that God is active in your life?

Activities:

Talk to your family about your favorite teaching/healing of Jesus and together, set-up a plan to actively live out a certain aspect to grow closer to Jesus and stronger in your faith.

Talk to your family about how, as a family, you can live some aspect of the Kingdom of God so your neighbors can encounter the Kingdom.

Relates to Jesus Life in Jesus affords us the roadmap necessary to carry out God’s plan for us. Following Jesus, we can be sure not to go astray if we stay close to Him.

Relates to my Faith Our life of faith as Jesus’ disciple is one that will not necessarily be easy, but will find fulfillment as we operate under the care and concern of our Shepherd.

Sample Script:

One of Jesus’ many titles is that He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. He shows us He is the way by role modeling for us a life lived with one’s entire self focused in on the ways of God the Father. He shows us He is the truth by saying the things men need to hear, saying the things that truly help them (cf. Ephesians 4:29); building people up with the truth of God. He shows us He is the life by His presence through the moments of our own life and accompanying us through prayer and the Sacramental life.

In following Jesus with our entire person, we offer ourselves to walk with the author of life. We invite and allow Jesus to be a part of everything; our morning routine before school, our friendships, our speech, our study habits, our free time, our brush of our teeth, etc. We offer the Son of God everything, our good times, our bad times, our bored times, our sinful times, our joyful times. We ask for His help and direction and when we do, making every effort to keep Him in our life, we will find peace, fulfillment, and happiness in a life well lived.

Further, if we are preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation, we are preparing our hearts to receive the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. These gifts afford us a special grace to participate in the life of the Trinity that keeps us both connected more intimately with the Trinity and allows us to be a greater witness of the presence of God in our life. We become better suited to adhere to the will of God and live the life that He has planned for us.

Questions and Activities:

How is Jesus “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”?

Why do we need Jesus to walk with us during our life?

Why do you think Jesus wants you to talk to Him about your sins?

What do the Gifts of the Holy Spirit do to help us in our life of faith?

Why is it so important to be a good role model of the faith for others?

Activities:

Brainstorm together as a family the various ways that you could practice the faith at home. Commit to an option, perhaps a new option, and routinely practice supporting each other in living out this particular aspect of the faith (i.e. praying together before meals).

As you get comfortable practicing the particular aspect of faith at home, consider practicing this aspect out in public.

Relates to Jesus: Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. We know that God is a trinity of persons because Jesus revealed this to the apostles, revealed He was God's Son, and left us the Holy Spirit who came in power at Pentecost transforming the apostles into courageous witnesses. Jesus' total gift of himself illustrates to us that God must be total love - what binds the Trinity - and reveals all of Jesus' actions within a familial relationship of God.
Relates to my Faith: The presence of Jesus on earth makes not only God himself, but shows me how much God loves me, and to what lengths God is willing to go to draw me to Him. It reinforces all that the Scriptures teach us about the reality of God, of His creation, of Original Sin and its devastating effects on the human condition, and the necessity of a Savior as its remedy sine non qua.  Jesus teaches us that, He is "the Way, the Truth and the Life, that no one comes to the Father except through (Him)" (John 14:6).

 

Scripture references: Gen 3:15; Is 52: 13-15, 53:1-12; Mt 1:18-23; Mt: 3:13-17; Mk 15:62; Lk 1:26-38; Lk 2:8-14; 25-38; John 1:1-18; 6:34-40, 45-58; 8:37-42; 14:6; 18:37; 20:28-29; Acts 2:23-36; Col 1:15-22; Heb 1:1-10:39, Rev 22:6-21

Videos: 

Bishop Barron answers the question, “Who is Jesus?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y4xacvLUXo (6:36)

Bishop Barron discusses ,“Who Jesus Truly is” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG77k-xLpz8&t=30s (9:48)

Jimmy Akin answers the question, “How can we know that Jesus Christ was a historical figure?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkqIYtMqKU0; (6:45)

Tim Staples answers the question: “Has the Church always taught that Jesus is God?” (6 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HOc29-Z1Lk (6:02)

Fr. Daniel J. Mahan, STL, Archdiocese of Indianapolis, presents an in-depth look at Jesus Christ as presented in the Catechism of the Catholic Church,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcDvHGc5e5I (32:36)

Additional Narratives

In the first 18 verses of the Gospel of John, known among Scripture scholars as “the Prologue of John”, the Evangelist establishes the identity of the Messiah (Jesus, the Son of God) in terms of his ontological reality (i.e. what he is), as the Second Person of the Trinity. He refers to him throughout these verses in the Greek in which he writes, as “the Logos”, “the Word”. His narrative takes us to “the beginning” (verse 1). Here he deliberately invokes the words in the opening of Genesis: “In the Beginning…”. And by the third verse, we read, “And God said… .” This is God’s word, but it is not just a statement of fact, but none other than his “Word”, the Logos of God at work in the Creation.^[1] John is fully aware of what he is doing and where he is taking the reader. He is establishing that Jesus is, without a doubt, divine in being, the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, what the Church will formally define later at the Council of Nicea (325 A.D.) as “homoousias”, that is, consubstantial (one in being), with the Father.

There are those, even some non-Catholic Christian communities, who deny Jesus is divine, equal with the Father, or that he even ever claimed to be, and to be fair, there is Scripture in the New Testament that seems to support the idea (He is the firstborn of all creation, the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), but if we read more carefully, the Gospels, especially John and Matthew are both very clear about Jesus’ divinity. They make it clear that this is why Jesus was put to death by the religious authorities of his day—“Because he made himself equal to God” (John 5:18).  

While the right doctrine and tradition of the early Church consistently held that Jesus is both fully God and fully man, the lack of defined teaching on Jesus’ being led to confusion and erroneous teachings (heresies) in the early Church. There were those who taught Jesus was not divine, but some sort of demi-god who was created before man; and those that taught he was divine and human, but that his divinity left him while he was on the cross; and those who taught he was partially human and partially divine, or only divine. Nearly all of these erroneous ideas still persist to this day in the minds of many people who do not know the actual teaching of the Church. In fact, it took the Church nearly 400 years to straighten out the question of Jesus’ being. The Church dealt with these in what were called the Ecumenical Councils (Article here:  The Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church).

In the end, the Church formally defined that before Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary, he existed with God eternally in spiritual form, fully one in divine being (“consubstantially”) with the Father and the Spirit. The Father “generates” the Son from all eternity. Together, their eternal love generates the Spirit, again, from all eternity such that all three have always existed as a community of divine persons. (Mind blowing, isn’t it?)

At the moment of his conception in the womb of Mary, the Church defined that Jesus was, and remains even now, both fully human and fully divine from the moment of his conception. He exists in one divine person with two natures, one human and one divine, with two wills (not one), one human and one divine. Theology calls this union of Jesus’ two natures, “the hypostatic union”.  This union is such that there is no separation between the two.  Much like we see the unity in the Trinity, the obedience of the two wills creates a unity of them.  

It is fully remarkable, and says everything about God’s love that he gave us his Second Person, his divine Son that existed in spiritual form from all eternity, to become human in time, and then for the rest of eternity, that he took on the physicality of human form that would add to his divine nature forever. (It is theorized in some classic theological literature that this is what caused Lucifer to reject God, that God would stoop so low as to become a human being, having been revealed to them what humans would be capable of).

Apart from the technicalities of Jesus’ being, perhaps a more personal question is who is Jesus to us and why is his coming to earth “to dwell among us” even relevant to our lives? Again, the answer to this question goes back to Genesis, but is reinforced in various places in the Old Testament and throughout the entirety of the New Testament. The short answer is simple.

We were created by God, for God. Our original destiny in being created was to be united with God forever. But our first parents (i.e., Adam and Eve) disobeyed God (Original Sin), and by that sin, separated all who would come from them and their progeny from God. Furthermore, their sin had a devastating effect on all of creation and brought with it all the ills of creation from sickness, to corruption of people’s thoughts and actions, to people’s weaknesses of will, inability to do make anything that brings good perfectly (i.e., without some evil that is attached to it), doubts about God’s reality, rebellion against God, spiritual blindness, natural disasters, all tragedy, all human conflict, and death. Original sin opened this floodgate and our sins continue to bring all this upon ourselves.

To bridge this gap and give mankind the possibility of reconciliation to God while still giving us the perfect freedom to reject him, God had another plan, that he would send mankind a Savior, a Messiah, “his only begotten Son”, to take on fully human form while remaining fully divine to act in complete obedience to God unto death, thus reversing Adam and Eve’s disobedience in order to reconcile man back to God.  Scripture scholars from the beginning saw the first hint of this plan as revealed in the language of Genesis 3:15 as the Woman (or her Offspring—the Messiah) “crushing the head” of the serpent while the serpent “bruises or strikes her (or his) heel”.  God crafted our way back to him from the start, while at the same time, enabling human freedom to accept or reject him.^[2] This Messiah (Christ in Greek), the Savior, would be God incarnate (embodied in human form), his “Word made flesh”.

Jesus had to be fully God because there would need to be a perfect sacrifice to be offered to overcome the imperfect nature we had acquired. Likewise, Jesus had to be fully man, capable of everything that humanity is capable of, even sin, in order to redeem every aspect of humanity. This is not to say Jesus sinned, but that he was capable of it, fully subject to all its temptations. If he was not, he could not have redeemed humankind. Thus, by offering himself as a sacrifice of perfect obedience, giving voluntarily to his Father the most precious gift that God gave humankind—life—he reversed the disobedience of our first parents, and opened the way for mankind (redemption) to obtain that for which we were originally created, a full participation in God’s divine being.^[3]

Finally, above all, Jesus is the fullness of God’s love revealed to us. It should give us great joy that God so fully loves us that he was willing to take on our very nature that we cannot say to God, “What do you know of being human?” The fact is, he knows every aspect and suffered through it, even in ways that many of us will never have to go through. That said, as Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, “there is no Easter Sunday without a Good Friday”. By that he meant that as Jesus suffered death, so must everyone who aspires to eternally participate in God’s love. Jesus called all us to “take up our cross and follow him” (Mt 16:24), by that he meant that, like him, we must offer our very lives and all we do, live, and suffer to Christ, uniting it with him and accepting our difficulties as our unique path to salvation. 

^[1] The reader will also note that in the previous sentence, we read, “a mighty wind swept over the waters.” The word for “mighty wind” here is “Ruah”. It is the same word the Hebrew Scriptures use for God’s Spirit. Thus we see the action of God in all his three persons at work in creation, and that God reveals himself as a trinity of persons in a very subtle way in the opening words of the entire Bible.

^[2] Perfect love requires that the subject of that love has perfect freedom to respond for or against the subject offering the love. Remember, God does not create because he is lonely, or bored, because he needed someone to worship him or for some reason we cannot know, but out of his perfect love. Perfect love desires the perfect good of the subject loved. Thus, God created us because he knows the perfect joy and love of his Trinitarian family and his perfect love desired that he share that love with his creation. Perfect love cannot turn inward, but must turn outward because it seeks the good of the other. This is the reality of God’s being.

^[3] We often use the terms “salvation” and “redemption” interchangeably. However, there is a difference. The theological term, “Redemption” refers to Christ’s saving action on the cross which opens the way to salvation. “Salvation” refers to our final state after our earthly life is completed. We are all redeemed, but how we respond to God’s grace determines whether we are saved or not. This is why we, as Catholics, cannot definitively answer the question, “Are you saved?” We cannot know this until the end of our life. If we are asked, “Are you redeemed?” The answer is always a definite “yes” for even the most hardened atheist while he is still alive.