Jesus Our Hope
Fully God, Fully Man
In his sermon on New Year’s Day which is the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, Fr. Paul Gousse taught on the identity of Jesus Christ. Pointing to our manger scene, he asked, “Who is this child? He is the Mystery of God which He has revealed to us. It took 500 years of the Church to sort out all of the stuff we believed to be true from all of the stuff we believed about Jesus Christ that wasn’t true.”
Fr. Paul went on to say, “It (the Church) tells us first and foremost that we don’t discover, we don’t find these things out for ourselves on our own. It has to be revealed to us. And so the truth is that in the year 431 at the Council of Ephesus, after 500 years, the Church finally declared that Jesus Christ, the 2nd Person of the Blessed Trinity, Son of God, is fully God and fully Man. That just because He is God He is also fully man. That just because He is fully man He is also fully God. Jesus is not a human person. Jesus is a divine Person with a human nature. And that is a big difference.” One might ask why Jesus came, and though the answers may be many and complex, the simplest is perhaps this: to show us the way to be fully human through His Divine Mercy.
God’s Promise to Us
Fr. Paul went on to say, “You and I are human persons that are promised to share in the divine nature.”
John Paul II who was the Pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church from 1978-2005 adds to our understanding of who Jesus is.
“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.
“It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”
“Let Christmas Into Our Lives”: A Witness
’If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful, and great.” Pope Benedict XVI
Why would Pope Benedict feel the need to say this? To some it is so self-evident, so obvious. More than 2000 years after Jesus came into this world He is still feeding people spiritually, still shining as an example of what it truly means to be fully human, and is still a beacon of hope to those who come from a world where there is none. I know because I came from such a world. And that is the world of pop culture, of the media driven culture that so permeates American society today. And that, I believe, is to whom Pope Benedict speaks.
This is because in that world religion and morality is seen as a hindrance, as getting in the way of ‘what we really want’ e.g. financial success, the adoration and envy of others, power and influence, gadgets, the latest fashion, new cars, and all kinds of accessories, not to mention satisfying our urges, and doing it as quickly as possible. In that kind of world, taking the time to follow Jesus is an empty pursuit. He can’t give us any of ‘those’ things valued by that culture.
But having gone down ‘that’ road–satisfied my urges, gotten all of the things that I wanted, and more, I still felt hollow and lacking. Those things didn’t make me feel the way that the commercials told me I would. Being able to tell people what to do and how to do it didn’t make me feel any more whole and complete. And satisfying all of my urges just left me feeling more and more hollow inside.
There was something missing, and there wasn’t a thing that world could sell me to fill the void. And it wasn’t from lack of trying, either! Without going too deep I would like to share what Jesus gave me. In a word, Jesus gave me Love, He softened a heart that was reduced to its physical function of pumping. And through His Love–Love and acceptance of His Truth, love of myself and everyone and all that is in this world–Jesus has changed my life and has shown me what it truly means to be Human.
You see, to be fully human you have to love Him and everything in this world as you would Him. When you realize this you are truly set Free–Free from bondage of addiction, of ego and materialism. When we let Christ into our lives we enter into a reality full of Love, full of Opportunity, full of Beauty and Greatness. We are whole and complete and we are ready to face anything. And this is something which cannot be bought. And to come full circle, this is what I believe Pope Benedict meant when he said that we lose nothing by allowing Christ into our lives.
This witness was given by David who experienced the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) and entered the Roman Catholic Church in April of 2011. For more information on the RCIA, contact us.
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