Truly God And Man

Word Made Flesh March 25, 2025

This day, this most critical of solemnities, was supposed to take place in a castle or palace, or some really important place in Israel. The Messiah was imagined to be conceived in an independent Israel, and that Messiah, the natural son of a king and queen was supposed to grow up and amass a great army and go out and conquer every other kingdom and bring such an era of material peace and prosperity that everyone would have a wonderful life on this earth.

But there was that pesky little tradition and Scripture in Isaiah we first read today: as it was read in the Greek Scriptures, “the virgin will conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel, meaning God with us.” And at the moment Mary conceived the true Messiah, in a nothing burg called Nazareth, the so-called “king” was an amoral butcher named Herod, who was given the rule of Israel by the Roman emperor and who enforced his rule by shedding much blood, even that of his own children. The emperor is supposed to have said, “It is better to be Herod’s pig than son.” Old Herod was not even a Jew, but he sometimes paid attention to Torah, since he was “king of the Jews,” He even thought of himself as the true Messiah. If adherence to God’s will, as taught in Torah, was the prerequisite for bringing to the world a reign of peace and love, the virgin Mary of Nazareth was very much more the candidate than anyone in Herod’s palace.

To understand what really happened over two thousand years ago in Nazareth, we must recall what had happened many thousands of years ago at the creation of the first man and woman. They heard the plan of God and a couple of simple commands, and through the envy of their Adversary, called Satan in the original language, they turned their back on that divine plan and decided to become god-like in their own way. That’s the temptation of every generation of humans. Most recently, we got it in our heads to invent tech to make us live longer, ignoring God’s will for us. I understand that over half of young men and women in our country, having heard the command to increase and multiply, form families, steward the earth, are considering marriage and childbearing too constricting for the pleasurable life they imagine for themselves. But as the psalmist says, happiness comes when we delight in learning and following God’s will. That brings delight.

The real problem, of course, is sin. What to do about sin? The Fathers of the Church saw Adam and Eve as sinless in the beginning, and Christ and Mary as sinless at the conception of Jesus, but all of us are afflicted with sin. If we are in sin, we cannot be happy, either in this life or the next. Killing bulls and goats won’t take away sin; only a perfect human offering can satisfy the infinite justice our sin represents before God. Because of this, Jesus offered Himself, saying through every moment of his earthly life, “Lo, I have come to do thy will.” Mary started that off when, by grace, she answered, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” to the invitation of the angel. Let’s take that miraculous word as our watchword today. If defeating sin and death is still our task, then through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Our Lord, the task may seem impossible, but “with God nothing will be impossible.”

One of the practices associated with this day is also done on the consequent feast of Christmas. As a Solemnity, the Annunciation/Incarnation is one of those days orthodox Christians recite the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed, or profession of faith. This year is the seventeen hundredth anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which was summoned by emperor Constantine to resolve the Arian heresy. To make it simple, Arius was the priest who taught that Jesus, the Messiah, was not a person co-equal with God the Father. In other words, he was “kind of like God,” but not really divine by nature. That also deep-sixed the Holy Ghost. The Council of Nicaea was having none of that. They gave us the word “homoousios” or consubstantial for the relationship between Father and Son in the Trinity. There was a difficult period in the Church after the council, because the barbarian tribes coming into the Roman Empire were largely Arian and had to be converted all over again. It’s true that our vocation in Christ is to become divinized, but that was not true about Christ, who was divine to begin with, as both St. Paul and St. John taught.