Last week we heard our Lord
speak approvingly of John the Baptist. Today, it is John's turn to
testify about him in return. He describes him as “He who is to come
after me, who has been set above me, the strap of whose sandal I am
not worthy to loose.”
Clearly, he is trying to make a comparison which shows the
difference between the very highest, and the very lowest.
This Gospel reminds us, then,
of something which is fundamental to our Catholic Faith—the Divinity
of Christ. If we are traditional Catholics, we take this Divinity
for granted. Yet there are people who call themselves Catholics or
Christians, while denying this essential part of the Faith. In
actuality, they are Arians, rather than Christians. The Arian heresy
developed in Egypt during the fourth century, and spread to much of
the Christian world. Essentially, the heresy held that Christ was
simply another of God's creatures—perhaps the most excellent
creature, but nothing more than a creature, and not God. While the
heresy was condemned at the Council of Nicaea and at the Council of
Constantinople, and died out eventually, it made a comeback after
the Protestant Reformation.
We have seen its resurgence again in our time, with scripture
“scholars” who claim that the real Christ—whom they call “the Christ
of History” worked no miracles and was nothing more than a great
philosopher. They claim that “the Christ of Faith” is simply an
invention of Christians in the years after Christ's death.
However, from many sources,
we know that Jesus Christ is God the Son, equal to the Father. It is
revealed to us in Sacred Scripture:
In the book of Isaias, we
learn that he is to be “Emmanuel,” which means “God with us.”
The same book speaks of Him as “God the mighty, Father of the world
to come,”
and Jeremias tells us that He would be “The Lord, our just one.”
Jesus Himself tells us of the
relationship he shares with the Father: When asked by the High
Priest if He was “the Christ, the Son of the Living God?” He
answered, “Thou hast said it . . . hereafter you shall see the Son
of Man sitting at the right hand of the Power....”
Even more plainly he tells us (Jn. x) “I and the Father are one.”
and “. . . the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.”
He is the “Word,” to which
St. John refers at the beginning of his Gospel—the one read at the
end of almost every Mass—“In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God; and the Word was God. . . And the Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us.”
And certainly the miracles credited to our Lord in each of the
Gospels serve to confirm His statements about Himself, and to
demonstrate the power of His Divinity.
Particularly as we approach
Christmass time, it might be appropriate to point out that our Lord
did not come into existence with His birth at Bethlehem. As St. John
tells, “He was in the beginning with God, [and] all things were made
through Him, and without Him was made nothing.”
This means that, through Him, everything in the universe was
created; matter, energy, spirit, even time itself. It is hard for us
to think of an existence without time. As we try to do it, we use
time laden words like “before,” and “until.” But just like the
Father, and the Holy Ghost, the Son had no beginning; but always
existed in eternity.
We speak of Him as the
“only-begotten Son of the Father.” But this “begetting” is not
something which took place at a certain point in time. The
theologians tell us that it is more like God the Father's eternal
knowledge of Himself—sort of a Divine Idea in the mind of God. And,
unlike the human mind and human ideas, an Idea in the mind of God is
actual, it is real. The theologians also venture that the love of
these two Divine Persons for one another is also real and actual;
that it gives rise—again, eternally—to the Holy Ghost.
Thus, our Lord existed
eternally before He took human flesh to dwell amongst us, some nine
months before His birth, after asking and receiving the consent of
the Blessed Virgin Mary. We should also recognize that in becoming
man, he united the body and soul of human nature with His Divine
nature. Thus we can say that the Second Person of the Trinity has
two natures; human and divine.
It is important to call the
Divinity of Christ to mind frequently. It is the foundation of our
Christian Faith. It will serve as an aid to our humility, as it did
for John the Baptist. It should serve as an aid to our gratitude,
knowing that God condescended to come from on high to adopt our
lowly nature; knowing that He comes to be with us at each and every
Mass; knowing that He dwells with us wherever the Blessed Sacrament
is reserved in our churches and chapels.
Perhaps most importantly, we
are called upon to witness to the Divinity of Christ—as much now as
when Christians were called during the time of the Arian heresy. And
our Lord promises a reward for this witness. He tells us that
“Everyone that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him
before My Father who is in heaven.”
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