Why Was Jesus Born?

8/3/2019 Why Was Jesus Born?

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(Deacon-Elect) Matthew G. Hysell, MA MTh

St Marks Community of the Deaf

Community Catechesis, Delivered 15 January 2012 (in ASL)

Part of the Treatisede Incarnatione Verbi

Pursuant to canon 823 1, 2 of theCode of Canon Law

, the following text wassubmitted to the Most Reverend +Richard W. Smith MA STD DD, Metropolitan

Archbishop of Edmonton, and was judged to be in conformity with Catholic doctrine

and approved for publication in a communique dated 30 January 2012.

This text forms the basis of the video catechesis, Why Was Jesus Born?, deliveredto St Marks Community of the Deaf. Please see www.deafcatholicedmonton.org/catholic-

teachings.htmlfor the original broadcast.

Why Was Jesus Born?

I. The Priority of Easter Over Christmas

Today we will answer the question, Why was Jesus born? Whether or not 25December was in fact the birthdate of Jesus (and there are certain Fathers of the Church who

insist it in fact was1) is not important here; what is important, rather, is that2 Jesus was born. But

again: Why is this important?

First of all, let us look at the official title of the commemoration. Christmas is anEnglish term; different languages have different words for the birthday of Jesus. The French, for

example, haveNol. But in the Latin language, the official language of the Holy Roman Church,

we call itNativitas Domini nostril Iesum Christum secundum carnem, The Nativity of our LordJesus Christ according to the Flesh.

3 Christmas isnt simply about the birth of Jesus; its aboutthe birth of the humanity and thefleshliness of Jesus Christ. As we will see, there were two

births of the Son of God.

Lets put this on hold and ask another question: Which commemoration is moreimportant, Christmas orEaster? Clearly, Easter is more important, because it is the climax of

Jesus life and it is the completion of His work of salvation here on earth. Each of the four

gospels end with the story of Jesus crucifixion, burial, and resurrection, and this is the recurringtheme in His preaching; only two gospelsMatthew and Lukehave anything to say about the

birth.

However, Easter and Christmas are mirror commemorations. This is our first point. Inorder to understand this, we need to look at the icons of each commemoration: the icon of the

Nativity and the icon of theEmpty Tomb. There are features in each iconas in the gospel

narratives of Jesus birth and rising from the deadthat point to each other. In both His birth

and resurrection, He is announced by angels; in both, he is wrapped in linen; in both, he is placed

1See JOSEPH F.KELLY, Creating Christmas Day and the Christmas Season, in The Origins of Christmas (Collegeville,

MN: The Liturgical Press, 2004).2

In ASL, indicative statements beginning that (conceptually equivalent to Latin utor Greek , is signed

idiomatically with HAVE. To sign THAT would be conceptually erroneous because is THATin fact a determiner, which

is not what that means when it prefaces an indicative statement.3See, for example, the Christmas Proclamation and the titulus for the commemoration on 24/25 December in

the Roman Missal.
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in a grotto; in both, he is venerated, especially by women; and in both, He begins and ends his

life on wood: the wood of the manger, and the wood of the cross.This is related to our first point: because Jesus could not suffer and die for our salvation

without a fleshly body, it follows that the birth of Jesus looked towards Easter. The fleshliness

of Jesus is the means by which we are saved; it is one of the stuffthe building blocks, if you

willwhich makes possible His Passion and Resurrection. In theEpistle to the Hebrews, whichtalks about the sacrificial death of Jesus, we read:

[] For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.Consequently when Christ came into the world, He said, Sacrifices and offeringsthou has not desired, but a body thou hast prepared for me; in burnt offerings and

sin offerings thou has taken no pleasure. Then I said, Lo, I have come to do thy

will, O God. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering

of the body of Jesus Christ once for all (Heb 10:5-7, 10).

The bodyliness of Jesus, the fleshliness of Jesus, is the means by which we are saved. This is

why the Archangel Gabriel announced to St Joseph: [D]o not fear to take Mary your wife, forthat which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a Son, and you shall call his

name Jesus,for He will save His people from their sins (Mt1:20-21).4

2. Synopsis of Triadology

In order to understand this more, we need to grasp more carefully the nature of the Son of

God. The bodyliness of Jesus was necessary, yes, but it was not only His bodyliness, Hisfleshliness, but also his Godhead, His divinity. In the Creed, we profess:

the Only-Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages,God from God,

Light from Light,

true God from true God;

begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father

We need to understand this very carefully and as thoroughly as possible. God, as you know,

exists in a Trinity of Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while remaining one God.5

However, it is God the Father who is the fountain of divinity: both the Son and the Holy Spirit

derive their personhood and divinity from the Father. The Son is Only-Begotten which means

that in the Trinity, only the Second Person is begotten and therefore only the Second Person is

Son.6 The Creed emphasizes that the Son is from the Father, and this from-ness means that

what the Father is, the Son is also: God from God, Light from Light, true God from true

4 Moreover, this is the reason for one of the Magis gift: Myrrh was an oil used to embalm a corpseindeed an

unusual gift for a newborn baby. The gifts of the Magi hint at the sort of person that Jesus is, as we hear in the

Christmas carol: Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume, / breathes a life of gathering gloom; / sorrowing, sighing,

breathing, dying, / sealed in the stone-cold tomb!5Cf. Tome of Damasus, in J. Neuner and J. DuPuis, The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic

Church, 7th

rev. ed.(Staten Island: Alba House Publishers, 2001), nn. 306/1306/24. Henceforth, ND, with the

corresponding reference from Denzinger (henceforth DS) with their respective reference numbers. Thus ND

306.1306.25/DS 153-155, 162xxx. Cf. ND 308/DS 525.6Symbol of Faith, Eleventh Council of Toledo: ND 309/DS 526.


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GodThis is the meaning of the word consubstantialit is an important word and one over

which had caused the Church much grief during the fourth century. We must understand itclearly. The substance of the Son is the sameas that of the Father. Not similar, not like theFather, but the same substance as the Father, andfrom the Father.

7We can see it like this:

Son consubstantial with FatherGod from God

Light from Light

True God from True God

Howeverand this is majorthe Son differs from the Father in one way only: Whereas

the Son is begotten, the Father is unbegotten. To be begotten is to be a son, necessarily;

to beget is to be a father, necessarily.8

But the Father is the son of no-one; the Father wasalways Father of the Son. This means, by extension, that the Son had no grandfather! Again:

the Son is exactly the same as the Father in everythingmajesty, glory, divinity, eternality, and

so forthexceptthat the Son is begotten and the Father is unbegotten.9

We also say that the Son

is generated from the Father and the Father is ingenerate, generate from no-one.

10, 11

One more point to understanding this. How can we say, on one hand, that the Father is

the origin of the Son, that the Father begat the Son, on one hand, and that the Son of God

always existed? In the famous words of St Athanasius of Alexandria, Always Father, always

Son. Are we not contradicting ourselves here?

No, we are not, for the simple reason that God, the Holy Trinity, exists outside of time.

The timelinessquestions of whenis simply inapplicable to God. This is why the Church

teaches the doctrine of the Eternal Generation of the Son of Godwhich is to say that, since

eternity past, the Father has always generated or begotten the Son. The Father was neverGodand then generated the Son, thus becoming Father. No; the Father always is begetting the Son.

This is why the Arius was condemned as a heretic. He said of the Son: There was a time when

7Cf. n. 3 above. In ASL, we sign carefullywith the sign SAME-AS such that there is reciprocityin the sameness of

substance between Father and Son but that the Sons substance is the same as that of the Father. So we sign

SAME-ASonce,fromSon to Fatherto emphasize that the consubstantiality of the Son is with that of the

Father, strictly and exclusively, because the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father is asymmetrical. To sign

symmetrically would imply that the Father is consubstantial with the Son, in which case the Trinity is reduced to

both the Father and the Son being each others Son and Father and that the distinguishing properties of

paternity/ingenerateness and filiation/generation break down.8It will be necessary to distinguish beget from birth; whereas to beget pertains to paternity, to give birth

pertains to maternity, generally speaking. Hence it is more accurate to translate

as begotten of the Father before all ages rather than born of the Father before all

ages; thisEnglish translation comes from the Latin version of this same line, de Patre natum ante omnia

saecula. Natum can be either translated as origin or birth. With the new English translation of the Creed, a

caveat will be necessary here.9

Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, 4.13, in Enchiridion Patristicum, n. 634, henceforth, EP; St Basil the Great, Epistle

38, in EP 915; St Gregory the Theologian, Third Theological Oration, n. 12, in EP 1009; St Augustine of Hippo, On the

Trinity, 4.20, in EP 1657, and 15.26, in EP 1681; St John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith , 1.8, in EP 2342.10

St Bonaventure, Breviloquium, I.2.2. Henceforth, St Bonaventure, Brevil.11

Consider, also, the last verse of St Thomas Aquinas Eucharistic hymn Pange, lingua, gloriosi: Genitori,

Genitoque


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He was not.12

The Church responded, in the words of St Athanasius, Always Father, always

Son. This is why at the very beginning of the Gospel According to John (1:1, 2), we have:

, ,

. .

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God; He was in the beginning with God

The Greek verb behind the English was means much more than a past tense. The verb here,13 or n, comes from , which is roughly equivalent to am, but in the imperfect tense,which means an ongoing and uncompletedaction. This means, as Biblical scholars tell us, that

even at the beginning, the Word of God was always there; the Word was always with God;the Word always was God; more importantly, he alwayswaswithGod.

Immediately after this sentence of the Creed weve just quoted, we meet anothersentence: For us men and for our salvation...

For us men and for our salvation, He came down from heaven:by the Holy Spirit He was Incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became Man.

For us men and for our salvation Why do we need a saviour? This is our next question.

3. Why a Saviour?

The answer is found at the very beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, in the story of Adam and

Eve. The story of Adam and Eve is the story of each of us: they had disobeyed God andwithdrew from His friendship, thereby disfiguring the souls of their descendants. This

disfigurement we call original sin, which means a condition in which we are born in a state of

alienation from God. What, exactly, was the root of the sin of disobedience? It waspride.

Satan had convinced Eve that if she were to disobey Gods commandment, she would become

like God, knowing goodand evil (Gen 3:5). In other words, the heart of the first sin was the

illegitimate desire to be like God, even to usurp those prerogatives which are Gods alone.

Unfortunately, the sin of Adam and Eve infected the entire human race. As a result, the entirehuman race fell out of friendship with God, as St Paul wrote:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,and death came through sin,

and so death spread to all because all have sinned (Rom 5:12)

Consequently, each and every one of us are liable to sin and to punishment for sin.14 By no merehuman power can we be reconciled to Godthe offence given to God far outweighs any effort

we can make in winning His forgiveness. In other words, salvation cannotbe earned. We are

simply incapable of repairing the damage caused by refusing Gods friendship. Because of our

12This would be signed, roughly, as HAVE WHEN SON NOT-YET.

13Third person singular, imperfect, active indicative.

14POPE INNOCENT III, Letter to Humbert, Archbishop of Arles (1201), in ND 506/DS 780.


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limitation, we cannot afford to save or to redeem ourselves.15

Not only that, but an infinite gap

yawns between God and humanity, a gap that is unbridgeable by human effort. See how we, ashumans, compare with God:

Human Race Almighty God

Created UncreatedFinite, Infinite

Limited Unlimited

Mortal ImmortalSinful Sinless, Holy

Now we come to the question: how can God and humanity be reconciled? Humanitycannot reconcile itself with God, because it is beyond human capability. God cannot simply

ignore human sin, because justice cannot be left undone. There is a gap or a chasm betweenGod and humanity. The gap or the chasm must be closed. How?

This gap or chasm can only be closed by none other than the God-Man: as a God-Man,

the Man would certainly be capable repairing the damage of lost friendship because He isHimself God.16

This is exactly why the Son of God and Word of the Father was incarnate and

became a human being, so that He can share our human nature and thus heal our human

condition. The infinite gap that separates Almighty God and the human race must be bridged by

what the Fathers called the communicatio idiomatum or the communication of properties or,

more poetically, the admirabile commercium or wondrous exchange. It simply means bringing

together the opposites belonging to humanity and divinity. Recall the contrasting lists I gaverecently between the human race and almighty God. Now, the Son of God and Word of the

Father, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, God the Father willed to be joined to a human

nature and to become a human person. Thus:

Human Race Incarnate Word: Jesus Christ Almighty God

Created Created andUncreated Uncreated

Finite Finite andInfinite InfiniteLimited Limited andUnlimited Unlimited

Mortal Mortal andImmortal Immortal

Sinful Holy, Sinless Sinless, Holy

In the Incarnation, the Son of God becomes one of us. God becomes a member of the human

race. As the beginning of the Gospel According to John says, And the Word became flesh, anddwelled among us (1:14). This means that the Son of God and Word of the Father, came

from heaven and joined Himself to our human nature in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Again, as

the Creed says, For us men and for our salvation,He came down from heaven; by the Holy

Spirit He was Incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became Man. This is our third point: In JesusChrist is the coming together of humanity and divinity. Here we introduce the all-important

word: Incarnation. It comes from three Latin words: in and carnatus, the adjectival form ofcaro, meaning flesh.

15SIXTEENTH COUNCIL OF CARTHAGE, canon 1, in ND 501/DS 222; Indiculus, n. 1, in ND 503/DS 239; Second Council of

Orange (529), nn. 1, 2, in ND 504-505/DS 371-372.16

ST BONAVENTURE, Brevil., IV.1.4 and IV.2.5.


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Now the Son of God and Word of the Father, as we have already said, is consubstantial

with the Fatherin everything exceptwhat? Except that whereas the Son is begotten, the Fatheris unbegotten. Now, with the Incarnation, the Son of God and Word of the Father has become

consubstantial with us17with flesh and blood, with our human nature. But just as the Son

differs from the Father in one way, so too does He differ from us in one way. The Son, who took

on flesh and blood and became a human being, and was like us in every way except sin. AsJesus challenged His opponents, Which of you can convict Me of sin? (Jn 8:46). Jesus was

the perfect human being, and because He was perfect, He alone would be able to save us. He

could, in other words, afford to redeem us because of His moral perfection; He alone couldbridge the infinite gap between Almighty God and the human race because he was both God andhuman in onePerson. This is precisely why we say in the Creed, I believein one Lord Jesus

Christ With two naturesGod and humanhe remains one Person. The nature of God

and the nature of human in the one Person of Christ are not fused, or mixed, or commingled,but simply joined together in the one Person

18, more specifically in the soul of Jesus Christ.

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This is why we see so many contrasts in the life of Jesus: He suffers, because He is human yet

works miracles because He is God; He dies, because He is human yet is risen because He is God.

Yet in boththe suffering, wonderworking Jesus is oneLord Jesus Christ; the dying andresurrected Jesus is one Lord Jesus Christ.

It is precisely because of the union of the two natures in one Person that we are able tobe savedJesus Christ, the God-Man, is able to bridge God and man. In the words of many of

the Fathers, God became man so that man may become God. In the Incarnation, then, we seethe lifting-up of the human person and the humiliation of the devil. Why?

Because God is joined to the human race, and because God thereby communicates Hislife, His grace, His truth to the human race, the human race is thereby exalted. But God also

humiliates the devil because whereas the devilfalsely promised our First Parents that they can

become like God, the Incarnate Word of God calls the devils bluff and really makes possible the

divinization of the human person. God, in other words, took the devils false promise andfulfilled it, thus showing the world the liar that the devil really is. What the devil could not

really promise, God could. How embarrassing must that be for the devil!

But there is more. Adam and Eve, at the root of their sin, were dissatisfied with beingmerely humanthey wanted to pursue the devils promise to be like God. But the pride of ourFirst Parents was met by the humility of God. Whereas our First Parents had the pride to become

like God, in the Incarnation, God had the humility to become like us! Thus, at the Incarnation,the very root of sinpridewas reversed. God had the humility to become what Adam and

Eve, by their pride, wanted to repudiate! This is our last point: Jesus was born because God

willed to reverse the pride that stood at the root of original sin: What Adam and Eve, in pridewanted to leave behind (their mere humanity), God possessed the humility to embrace. The

humility of God in becoming human broke the pride of man who wanted to be God.

IV. The Incarnation and the CrossWe can only state briefly that the Cross is what saves us; we will discuss this more during the

Easter Season. But it is important to understand that the bodyliness and fleshliness of Jesus

17COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON, Definition (451), in ND 614/DS 301; FIRST LATERAN COUNCIL (649), in ND 627.5/DS 505;

ELEVENTH COUNCIL OF TOLEDO, Symbol of Faith (675), ND 634/DS 539.18

COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON, ND 613-614/DS 300-301; ELEVENTH COUNCIL OF TOLEDO, ND 629/DS 534.19

PETER LOMBARD, Sentences IV, Dist. II, Chap. 2; ST BONAVENTURE, Brevil., xxx


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Christ, the Incarnate Word and God-made-Man, was oriented towards the Cross: it was at the

Cross where the damage of alientation from God was repairedJesus gave Himself wholly andunreservedly to the Father, whereas Adam and Eve had withdrawn themselves from God and

rejected His friendship. This is precisely why the Creed jumps so immediately from the

Incarnation and Nativity to the Passion and Cross: The Son of God came in order to die and rise

again.

V. Summary and ConclusionBack to our question: Why was Jesus born? We must remember that there are two

births of the Son of God: in His Eternal Generation from the Father before all ages and histemporal birth from the Virgin Mary in these last days (Gal 4:4).

1. Jesus was born because the life and ministry of Jesus was oriented towards the Cross: Inorder to suffer and die, a body was necessary. Thus Christmas and Easter are mirror

commemorations, the priority being given toEaster.

2. Original sin and death infected our human condition; in Jesus, God entered our human

condition and broke the power sin and death.

3. Jesus Christ, who is God, shared in our human condition, becoming Man; as the God-Man, Jesus Christ bridged the infinite and unfathomable gap that separated humanity from God;

because He was one Person, the friends of Jesus are able to receive divine benefits which Godalone could give;

4. Jesus Christ, as God among us, was made Man in order to divinize humanity (whichthe devil falsely promised) and to break human pride by humbling Himselfas Godto become

a human being, even a baby.

To summarise all we have looked at, Id like to introduce you to yet anothercreedthis

one is called the Quicunque vult. Its a long creed and it focuses on the Trinity and Incarnation.

One paragraph goes like this:

Furthermore it is necessary to everlasting salvation that he also believe

rightly the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the right faith is that we

believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man.God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; and man of

substance of His mother, born in the world. Perfect God and perfect man, of a

rational soul and human flesh subsisting. Equal to the Father according to HisGodhead [/Divinity], and inferior to the Father according to His manhood. Who,

although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ. One, not by

conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God.One altogether, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. For as the

rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ; Who suffered

for our salvation (29-38).