May the angels' song of long ago
Ring in our hearts again
And bring a new awareness
That the fate of every nation
Is sealed securely in the hand
Of the MAKER of CREATION...
For man with all his knowledge,
His wisdom and his skill,
Is powerless to go beyond
The Holy Father's Will...
And When we fully recognize
The helplessness of man
And seek the Father's guidance
In our every thought and plan,
Then only can we build a world
Of peace, good will and love,
And only then can man achieve
The life he's dreaming of......Helen Steiner Rice
When we speak of the "mystery" of Jesus in Saint Paul's sense, we are thinking of him as a sacrament--a "sign" that reveals as well as hides. He is the self-revealing of God through the sign of a human body.
He is a mystery in another way also, in that there is something beyond understanding in his makeup.
He is truly God. He is truly human. He is one person. Jesus is not two persons cooperating in harmony. He is not God with a human facade, and he is not merely a human being with a very close relationship with God.
JESUS, TRUE MAN
In the course of history just about every possible heresy has been advanced by somebody. Regarding Jesus, a heresy called Docetism (from the word for "seem") held that Christ only seemed human.
Sometimes in our determination to preserve the divinity of Jesus we verge toward Docetism. We downplay Jesus' humanity, as if it were somehow absorbed into his divinity. But it is just as incorrect to deny Jesus' full humanity as it is to deny his divinity. As a four-year-old boy, Jesus did not have all future scientific and theological knowledge in his head. Like all human beings, he had to develop his body, his mind, his emotions, his character. Saint Luke tells us, "Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man" (2:52).
If Jesus were not truly man, the Bible could not say: "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).
We can identify with Jesus because he is one of us. He knew what it was to be hungry and thirsty, to be worn out physically with work or travel, to suffer the pain of heat or cold, of a splinter in his finger or the bite of an insect. The gospels show him with all the human emotions: He enjoyed the company of friends, the innocence of children and the support of his followers. He could be fully angry, troubled, frustrated. He could be so humanly afraid and terrorized that "his sweat became like drops of blood" (Luke 22:44b)
He had a human mind unspoiled by narrowness or selfishness, one that was simply open to all reality, especially to his Father's self-giving. He had a free human will to decide to strive and give. He loved as no one has ever loved, yet as everyone was made to love.
What was different about Jesus, of course, was that he had no sin, nor any of the heritage or "momentum" of sin that we have. He was not only a true human but also a pure human. His humanity was not cramped or bent, but had only the normal limitations of space and time and finiteness. Therefore he could enjoy the song of a bird or the brilliance of a sunset or the face of a human being more deeply than we who are distracted by our own selves. The truth was more thrilling to him. To love was more intense and wholehearted.
JESUS' HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
There are people who are shocked by some theologians' treatment of Jesus' human knowledge. They hold that since Jesus was God he knew everything.
The answer does not seem to be quite that simple. If Jesus was truly a human being, his mind had to work like a human mind. It had to grow from ignorance to knowledge, from known to unknown, from depth to greater depth of understanding. Because he was human he had to grow and learn from experience--just as we do.
Jesus was one person, but his divine consciousness was not his human consciousness. His divinity and humanity were not mixed together, like wine and water.
But why didn't his divine knowledge simply flood his human mind with all possible information? We must answer that he would not then have been truly human. To be human is to face reality, seek truth, choose what is good. This means looking for the facts, considering alternatives, weighing consequences and then making decisions. That is how a human being takes responsibility for his or her life.
Jesus came among us to be fully human in every way except sin. He could not be characterized as human if as a four-year-old boy he was already aware of the intricacies of nuclear fission and the potency of penicillin.
The noted biblical scholar Father Raymond Brown, treating the knowledge of Jesus in an excellent book, Jesus, God and Man, spoke to the common objection raised to the view that Jesus had limited, human knowledge:
But when all is said and done, the great objection that will be hurled again against any exegete (or theologian) who finds evidence that Jesus' knowledge was limited is the objection that in Jesus Christ there is only one person, a divine person. And so, even though the divine person acted through a completely human nature, any theory that Jesus had limited knowledge seems to imply a limitation of the divine person. Perhaps the best answer to this objection is to call upon Cyril of Alexandria, that Doctor of the Church to whom, more than to any other, we are indebted for the great truth of the oneness of the person of Christ. It was that ultra-orthodox arch foe of Nestorianism (two persons or powers in Christ) who said of Christ, "We have admitted his goodness in that for love of us he has not refused to descent to such a low position as to bear all that belongs to our nature, included in which is ignorance."
Perhaps the clearest statement of the meaning of Jesus' true humanity is found in Hebrews: "Surely he did not help angels but rather the descendants of Abraham; therefore, he had to become like his brothers in every way, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest before God to expiate the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested through what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested" (2:16-18, emphases added).
Jesus was not "tempted" as we are, by an itch or impulse toward evil. Yet to give his bread away meant that he was hungry, to work hard meant that he was tired, and to be faithful to his Father meant that he would be killed. It cost Jesus something to be the trusting child of his Father.
JESUS' VOCATION
So Jesus' growth in knowledge was gradual, as well as his growth in the love of God and his understanding of his own identity and mission. By prayer and meditation on the Scriptures, by the world and example of his parents, Jesus experienced the self-revealing love of his Father--similar to the revelation given to all human beings, but also unique: He is the Anointed One, the Messiah long promised.
How and when his Father revealed this to Jesus we do not know. What we must say is that Jesus accepted his vocation with full freedom and loving obedience. It was a responsible choice. He took his life and put it at the disposal of the Father. He let himself be totally possessed by the Father's love and power.: "My food is to do the will of the One who sent me and to finish His work" (John 4:34b). He is the new Adam, not denying his fully human response to the Father's call, but opening himself completely.
His relationship with the Father is tender, intimate. His word of address is Abba--no doubt an imitation of the earliest sounds made by a baby to its parents. It is the word little Jewish children used for their father; on adult tongues it expressed warm affection. Our association with the English word Daddy may be hard to transfer to God, but that is the closest translation we can have for Abba. "Abba!" was Jesus' life.
The purpose for discussing the humanity of Jesus and all it means is to keep Jesus from being "way up there," far above the pains and pleasures and worries of ordinary mortals. We have the absolute conviction and unquestioning faith that Jesus is true God, the eternal Son of the Father. But it is equally true that he is a real human being like us in everything but sin. "Everything" must apply to knowledge, conscience, body, emotions, memory, imagination, conversation, sleep, meals--there is no area excluded except the sinful.
It is only by keeping the human Jesus along with the divine that we can really believe that he knows from experience what our experience is. We can then join his prayer in pain or joy, in failure or success, in frustration or anger or serenity and have his empathy and sympathy--and his power to be childlike before his Father.
JESUS, TRUE GOD
Christians do not try to "prove" to anyone that Jesus is God. If Peter could not know Jesus was the Messiah unless the Father revealed it (see Matthew 16:17), the gigantic step to belief in his divinity is infinitely less possible. We believe because we have the gift of believing. And again, we must say, if that seems to the world naive and unscientific, so much the worse for the world.
So we pray the Scriptures with joy and admiration rather than with questions and concern. And there is no better place to do this than the magnificent prologue of John's Gospel:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it...He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him...And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son...No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father's side, has revealed him. (John 1:1-5, 10, 14, 18)
Passages like this are like prisms of eternity. Theology will do its best to explain, but in the end these simple and infinitely profound statements are the best way to express the mystery. The crux of the mystery is that the love of God appeared in Jesus. Not just that God made the divine love known, but the love of God appeared. Jesus is the love of God, and the love of God made visible...[It is Jesus] who is the refulgence of [God's] glory, the very imprint of his being, and who sustains all things by his mighty word. (Hebrews 1:3a)
'THE FATHER AND I ARE ONE'
John's Gospel shows the Church's sixty or seventy years of reflection on the mystery of Jesus and leads us to the mystery of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God. In John, Jesus' suffering humanity is not stressed as it is in Mark; his divinity shines through more clearly. He speaks as the God who has destroyed evil and saved his loved ones: "If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him...Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:7, 9b).
Three times Jesus says, "I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. Believe me!" (John 14:10, 11, 20)
The union of the Son and the Father is one of being--and of love. To this union of divine love Jesus brings a perfect, childlike human love: "The father and I are one" (John 10:30)
What is the meaning and purpose behind all this? It is the final reason why God initiated his great plan of salvation. Just as there is a perfect union of the love in Father, Son and Spirit, so there is a perfect divine-human love between Jesus and his Father. And this is the kind of love God in Jesus and the Spirit wants for us! Jesus says, referring to his resurrection: "On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you" (John 14:20).
We who like to think of God as stern and remote should be humbled and chastened by these overwhelming words:
Whosoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him...Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. (John 14:21, 23b)
Jesus concludes his profound and touching discourse at the Last Supper with these words, addressed in prayer to his father: "I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them" (John 17:26).
So the final purpose of Jesus' coming is not just to give us knowledge of the Father, but also to fill us with the Father's love and join us in a living union with Jesus and with the Father, through the presence of the Spirit. Jesus showed us what divinity is, and he showed us what true humanity is. He is God in a human way and human in a divine way. His human love is the embodiment of God's love for all of us to see and absorb.
The above post is information from Catholic based writing. I would hope that readers will take from this what I have, a deeper understanding of Jesus Christ, what He stood for and how much he sacrificed because of his deep love for all of us. I have also posted a photograph of the Shroud of Turin, which is believed to be the burial cloth that Jesus was wrapped in after he was crucified, with the picture on the right being a likeness of that shroud that wrapped Jesus Christ. Whether you believe this to be true or not, it warrants reflection. I have more information worthy of another post and will do so as soon as possible.
There are those among us who are non-believers and blasphemers, who take the Word of God and writings from the Bible to push themselves forward and to try to dominate other human beings in a satanic and demonic way. True believers of the Bible and of Jesus Christ the Son and God the Father, are not concerned with falsely showing themselves to be supreme beings, all the while using scriptural passages to lead people to certain destruction. God sometimes requests us to relay His message to people, but when we relay messages to others as an instrument of God, it is with His Divine Will and not our own! Be careful of how you use scriptures and how you "interpret" the Bible. The Bible is meant to guide us closer to Jehovah, understand God's Laws and Principles, and make us instruments of His Holy Word.
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