"Jesus is God, Himself."

"The person of Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the Son or the Word of the Father, Who "was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man." Jesus Christ is truly man, He is truly God, and the Godman, Jesus Christ, is one and the same person. (Catholic Encyclopedia, "Christology")

Christ is also the one Who reveals man to himself. For man was made in the image of God, and God is love. "Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer "fully reveals man to himself". If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the Redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity."(Redemptor Hominis)

"The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly-and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being-he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must "appropriate" and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself. How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he "gained so great a Redeemer"65, and if God "gave his only Son "in order that man "should not perish but have eternal life" (Ibid)

CATHOLIC CATECHISM

The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity:98 The Son of God. . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.99

But at the same time, this truly human knowledge of God's Son expressed the divine life of his person.104 "The human nature of God's Son, not by itself but by its union with the Word, knew and showed forth in itself everything that pertains to God."105 Such is first of all the case with the intimate and immediate knowledge that the Son of God made man has of his Father.106 The Son in his human knowledge also showed the divine penetration he had into the secret thoughts of human hearts.107

474 By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal.108 What he admitted to not knowing in this area, he elsewhere declared himself not sent to reveal.109

Jesus Christ, the Person
by Gerard M. Gaskin
Diocesan Director Religious Education
EWTN Faith Teachings

"Often today, when asked the question "Who is Jesus?" Catholics reply: "Jesus is the son of God". While such a statement is true as far as it goes, it does not explain fully enough who Jesus really is. The problem is that we are all sons and daughters of God yet we are not God. So, while Jesus is the son of God, He is also God the Son. It is the second part of the statement "...God the Son..." which gives the real clue to understanding the person of Jesus. Unfortunately, some theologians today have downplayed Jesus' divinity. They stress His human qualities; His compassion, love, justice, social conscience and so on. In doing so they deny the fact that Jesus was not just a good man, not just someone chosen by God to do a special mission in Palestine. In fact, Jesus is God Himself.

"Because Jesus possesses fully the nature of a man, He has a human body and soul. Furthermore, His human soul, like ours, has intellect and will. (He is like man in all things but sin). But Jesus has the infinite intellect and will of God as well as the intellect and will of a man. He is one divine person having two natures, the human and the divine. As the fifth century Athanasian Creed put it:

"He is perfect God; and He is perfect man, with a rational soul and human flesh. He is equal to the Father in His divinity but he is inferior to the Father in His humanity. Although He is God and man, He is not two but one Christ.And He is one, not because His divinity was changed into flesh, but because His humanity was assumed into God. He is one, not at all because of a mingling of substances, but because He is one person."

"A belief which is occasionally challenged, even today, is that Jesus knew that He was God. Some argue that Jesus grew in the knowledge that He was God, but was not born knowing this. As can be seen from the argument above about Jesus being truly and fully God from His conception, since Jesus was truly God knowing all things, He must have been born knowing all things, including that He is God. If He were born not knowing this, then He could not be God.

"Pope Pius XII taught, in his Encyclical Mystici Corporis ("The Mystical Body" - 1943): "By means of the Beatific Vision (the sight of God in Heaven), which He enjoyed from the time when he was received into the womb of the Mother of God, He has for ever and continuously had present to Him all the members of His mystical Body, and embraced them with His saving love." (N.D. 661).

"In other words Jesus possessed, in His human soul, the same immediate vision of God which all the saints and angels in heaven have. This means that Jesus was, at the same time, both a pilgrim on earth like us and a possessor of the immediate vision of God. Even His human nature is endowed with an abundance of supernatural gifts. He knows all things - past, present and future.

"Taken from "The Catholic (Universal) Catechism", # 5: Jesus Christ, the Person, by Gerard Gaskin, Diocesan Director of Religious Education, Diocese of Wagga Wagga, Australia"

THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST(Catholic Answers)

"Christ’s divinity is shown over and over again in the New Testament. For example, in John 5:18 we are told that Jesus’ opponents sought to kill him because he "called God his Father, making himself equal with God."

And what is more telling, this man claims to be able to forgive sins against Almighty God. He claims to have this Divine Authority with Him on earth. And He exercises this authority with some of those for whom he performs physical and spiritual healing. He says, "Go thy way, thy sins are forgiven thee!" He claims that He,who is called the Son of Man, can forgive offenses against God. Is this not colossal presumption and arrogance? Who does this man think He is? Let's pick up stones and throw them at this blasphemer! He says to His Apostles, "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins ye shall retain, they are retained! And believing in His Word even today, we go to His Church and confess our sins, seeking God's forgiveness as He promised. And to our joy we find that our guilt is released, and the Holy Spirit returns to our soul restoring it to full vigor in the abundant Life of the Spirit. And acting on His Word, we, once again, know the peace of God which surpasseth all understanding from the grace infusing our soul through the sacrament of Confession. We experience in our soul the "well-being," which is experimental proof of the truth of this Man's Word!

"In John 8:58, when quizzed about how he has special knowledge of Abraham, Jesus replies, "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I Am"—invoking and applying to himself the personal name of God—"I Am" or "Yahweh." His audience understood exactly what he was claiming about himself. "So they took up stones to throw at him; but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple" (John 8:59).

"In John 20:28, Thomas falls at Jesus’ feet, exclaiming, "My Lord and my God!" (Greek: Ho Kurios mou kai ho Theos mou—literally, "The Lord of me and the God of me!")

"In Philippians 2:6, Paul tells us that Christ Jesus "[w]ho, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped" (New International Version). So Jesus chose to be born in humble, human form though he could have simply remained in equal glory with the Father for he was "in very nature God."

"Also significant are passages that apply the title "the First and the Last" to Jesus. This is one of the Old Testament titles of Yahweh: "Thus says Yahweh, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, Yahweh of armies: ‘I am the First and I am the Last; besides me there is no god’" (Is. 44:6; cf. 41:4, 48:12).

"This title is directly applied to Jesus three times in the book of Revelation: "When I saw him [Christ], I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me, saying, ‘Fear not, I am the First and the Last’" (Rev. 1:17). "And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: ‘The words of the First and the Last, who died and came to life’" (Rev. 2:8). "Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay every one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the beginning and the end" (Rev. 22:12–13).

"This last quote is especially significant since it applies to Jesus the parallel title "the Alpha and the Omega," which Revelation earlier applied to the Lord God: "‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty" (Rev. 1:8).

THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST
by Romano Guardini

"Early Christology sought, as its first task, to establish, beyond any shadow of doubt, that Jesus of Nazareth was more, and other, than a mere creature. Our minds, dulled by everything said and written on the subject, can no longer comprehend the passion with which for centuries the early Christians fought out the issues of Christology--a passion which can, in spite of its many all too human features, yet be called holy. In the end, the declaration affirming Christ to be the eternal, consubstantial Son of the Father was established as a pillar of truth never again to be shaken.

"The second phase came when the Christian mind saw clearly that this Son of God had truly become man in Christ. It was not that he had come merely to dwell in a man: he came as an actual member, indeed, as the crucial and all-important member, in the whole history of the human race. He was completely within human history, yet at the same time quite independent of it. Indeed, the very reason for the uniqueness, the redemptive force of his entry into human history, is to be sought in the fact that he came from the freedom of him who is above all history and above the whole world. This is what he meant when he said, as St. John reports: "I have power to lay down (my life), and I have power to take it up again" (John 10. 18).

"Thus the divine rigor of this true incarnation had to be purified from every notion which, while apparently affirming a maximum of incarnation, in fact destroyed its reality, because it substituted for a personal event one which, in spite of the appearance of sublimity, still remained at the natural level: namely, the confusion of the natures. A being in whom the human blended with the divine in a single, undifferentiated substance would be a myth. And so arose the concept of one person in two distinct natures, a concept which exceeds the capacity of the human mind, to be sure, but which guarantees the integrity of the God-Man.

"The reality of the divine nature in Christ was now unassailable, his true humanity was likewise established, as was also the indissoluble unity of the two natures in the person of the Logos: a unity which constituted the basis for the historicity of Christianity a unity which we may perhaps even say made God himself historical. In saying this, we mean, of course, something very different from the pantheistic processes of the Absolute. And so, we now have these truths before us in a form which is both sublime in purity and rich in content, both truth and mystery together: they have become dogma.

" And then the spirit began to ask further: what was the place in history of the Son of God made man. This led to attempts to merge the unique historicity of Jesus in the universal historicity of human life; and this resulted in all those images of Christ which represented him as sheer man-- even though a most extraordinary man--or, on the other hand, as an idea, a myth, the content of an experience.

"We know that these ways are wrong. Alerted by the attitude of the Church, theology is able to ward off all such attempts. But this resistance--if I interpret it correctly--has remained essentially negative. It has told us what is not. Now a positive task must be undertaken. We have seen how the existence of Christ proceeds from an event which resists any attempt to identify it with universal historical concepts. We have seen also that we cannot penetrate the heart of his personality, not merely empirically, because we lack the necessary means for such an insight, but in principle. For, to achieve this, we would have to be able to reduce the absolute reality of the divine nature and the relative reality of human nature to a common denominator--which is impossible.

"But something else is possible: the fact can be brought home to us that the existence of Christ was a real earthly existence, taking place within the framework of actual history. He had his own inward and outward experiences, his encounters with men and things, his decisions and actions to be constantly taken and performed, and so forth. All this took place within the realm of being and event, that is to say, it can be understood. Hence the questions what, how, why, wherefore, whence and whither, can properly be asked and answered; and so also can the psychological questions, but-- and it is an important but--they must be asked with regard to a fact which prescribes both an attitude and a method. This fact is the one already mentioned: the incomprehensibility for us of both the origin and the heart of Christ's personality.

"So this psychology is going to be of a peculiar kind. If the word means, as it generally does, an analysis of personality and individual circumstance, then there can be no such thing as a psychology of Christ. The eternal decree that he was to become man, no less than the existence of the Logos in human flesh, resists any attempt to induce it to a psychological concept--or to an historical one, for that matter. On the other hand, the decision of the Logos to become man embraces everything that is essential to human nature, including the possibility of being understood. All the circumstances which determine human existence--body, soul, mind, society-- attain their fulfillment in the being and life of Christ. Basing ourselves on these circumstances, we can, it is true, come to an understanding or, in other words, a psychology, but we are going to find that, owing to its inherent limitations, this psychology will be baffled at each line of approach towards precisely these circumstances which we try out. And, it must be repeated again, this defeat results not from any lack of material, from any dullness of insight or deficiency of method, but from the very nature of the object being investigated. The more complete the material, the more penetrating our insight, the more thorough our method, the clearer and more decisive becomes the impasse in the conviction forced upon us that our undertaking simply opens out on to the incomprehensibility of God incarnate.

"How little justice was done to the figure of Christ by the historical and psychological method of the liberal school of theologians! The repercussions of this tendency in Catholicism, known as Modernism, have been overcome. We know not only that a watered-down version of Christianity is erroneous, but also that it is not even worth while wasting energy trying to provide it with an intellectual basis. The self-commitment of faith only makes sense when directed towards the one complete, unadulterated revelation with its suprarational appeal.

"Yet, on the other hand, it is evident that Christology must go a step further. Not merely because of the logic of theological development, but for the sake of Christian life. Prayerful meditation requires an approach which will lead it deeper into the heart of real reality. The same thing is true of life and action as well. We are accustomed to think of the Christian life as a "following" or "imitation" of Christ. But what do we mean by that? In what sense are the person and life of Jesus normative for us? If we are to go any further than the usual abstract applications; if Christ's actions, sufferings, behavior and attitude are to illumine and guide our human existence; if the idea of the "new man" who "is being changed into (the) likeness (of the glory of the Lord)" (2 Cor. 2. 18) is to acquire a definite, inspirational content, then this image must be made more concrete than is usually the case.

"This is the task, essentially, of a "theological psychology", the sort of thing I referred to in my short work on "The Mother of the Lord" (1955), and which I tried to provide, very tentatively, in my book, "The Lord" (1937). In this connection, we may dwell for a moment on the phenomenon on which research might well try itself out and from which it could perhaps deduce many of the concepts it will need. This phenomenon is the saint and the life of his soul.

"Hagiography has followed a course of development not unlike that of Christology. The history of the way it dealt with its subject shows that it first elaborated an abstract ideal of the supernatural, then created more individual but still typical figures, and only finally succeeded in grasping the concrete, historical person. The picture of the saint appears, at first, in the highly stylized form of the icon, to become gradually more and more concrete and individual. In the process it runs the very real danger of having all its originality leveled out to accord with preconceived historical or psychological patterns, until we come to the final stage of treating sanctity as a pathological manifestation. At this point the work of destruction is complete.

"If the saint is what the Church knows him to be, then his figure, too, contains a heart which defies all analysis: the "Christ in us" of which the Epistle to the Galatians speaks (2. 20). Now, this Christ does not exist as a separate transcendent entity above the man, Augustine, for example, or as an alien body enveloped in some inaccessible depth of his soul; he penetrates his genuine humanity and historical life. Furthermore, Christ has become identified with the essential self of the man, so that the Pauline text: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me", can be completed by another: "and now for the first time I really am becoming my true self". The basis for a psychology of sanctity is to be found in St. Paul's thought on Christ's in-dwelling and the "emergence of the new man within the old"; but, as far as I know, this idea has not yet really been exploited. If we think of the saint in these terms, we learn, I think, much about the way we ought to view the reality which is Christ.

"We can see St. Francis of Assisi, for example, as he is revealed to us by the biographies of Thomas of Celano or Bonaventure. They greatly overstress the supernatural aspect of his character and the image they create remains remote from the world of men. Again, we can see him as Sabatier portrayed him. Here we have a concrete picture of his life, it is true, but the essence, the heart of the saint has vanished. This is because Christ has gone out of the picture too. For, along with Francis of Assisi, Christ also is classified as one of a series of individuals belonging to the same psychological type, that of the "homo religiosus". This train of thought finally becomes lost in the rationalism and lyricism of a Henry Thode, Hermann Hesse, or Nikos Kazantzakis.

"We are today engaged in the task of penetrating to the true nature of Francis, who lived in the mystery of a likeness to Christ such as, perhaps, no other individual has ever achieved in such charismatic exactness. For that very reason he possessed so definite and so unique a human personality that he was able to influence history as few others have been able.

"Finally, we must go into the question of method, for this sums up the whole difficulty. In view of the confusing variety of images of Christ current today, we must ask the further question: Which Christ have we in mind? If we answer: The one who brought us the fullness of revelation and revealed himself therein, then another question must be posed: Where is he to be found? There is only one answer to this: In the New Testament. But this means, in the complete New Testament, in all its books, and from their first to their last sentence, and this brings us to the heart of the theological problem.

"The reality of Christ has been made known to us by means of the words, i.e. the recollections, of the apostles, of all the apostles from Mark to John. But this does not mean that the genuineness of the figure Christ diminishes the further the witness is removed in time. The interval in time between Luke and Mark does not mean that the theologian must be wary of the later Gospel. It is even likely that the passage of time will have allowed the writer to gain a fresh insight into the nature of Christ. As a result of discipleship, prayer and meditation on his sayings and acts, a new experience of his reality will have been gained, so that when he proclaims Christ's message he will be able to say things which before were impossible or untimely.

"When research comes back from St. John's Gospel to an examination of the earlier ones, this does not mean that it discovers forthwith more authentic strata of the reality of Christ, but only ones that were perceived earlier. On the other hand, if, as we proceed from the earliest to the later statements about him, we find the emergence of strata in the picture of Christ which show evidence of riper reflection, greater metaphysical comprehension, and a more concrete appreciation in terms of contemporary problems, the message proclaimed does not become less genuine; but factors do emerge and impose themselves precisely because of the general situation and the stage reached in the progressive unfolding of the message.

"Were we in a position to disregard all such accounts and gain an immediate impression of Jesus Christ as he was on earth, we would not be confronted by a "simple" historical Jesus, but by a figure of devastating greatness and incomprehensibility. Progress in the representation of the portrait of Christ does not mean that something was being added to what was proclaimed; it means that we are witnessing the unfolding step by step of that which "was from the beginning", on the supposition, of course--and this is fundamental--that as God willed the revelation of the redeeming truth of his eternal "Word" in Christ, so he also willed and brought it about that this truth should, in fact, be handed on to later generations;[2] and handed on in such a way that it could be included in the simplicity of the act of faith, and need no specialized knowledge to extract it from the text of the Gospel message.

"We have said that the source for our knowledge about Christ is the memory of the apostles, of all the apostles and throughout the whole time that they were proclaiming the divine message right up to their death; that is, from the day of Pentecost until the death of John. These were no mere individual reporters, each one of whom would be credited only to the extent of his personal abilities. They spoke as apostles, that is, as "pillars" and members of the Church. The Church, that is, the sumtotal of local communities, their faith, liturgical life, prayer, etc., is not something existing alongside or apart from them, so that it would be legitimate to make a distinction between a valid original witness and a secondary "theology of the community".

"The apostles are themselves the Church. They are the Church in her earliest kerygmatic phase, when she derives her commission and authority directly from Christ and the Pentecostal enlightenment. This phase, as we have said, extends from the author of the first logion to the writer of the Apocalypse. It is obviously pertinent to ask what kind of picture of Jesus they painted in the various historical stages of their preaching. A particular interest attaches to the question of the picture found in the very earliest preaching. The search for these strata, however, must not be dominated by a suspicion as to the validity of that preaching which would tend to assume that it became less and less reliable as the first century wore on. Our aim must not be to "get behind" the apostolic preaching in order to reach the authentic Jesus, thus freeing ourselves from too close a dependence on the "temporal limitations" of the apostolic message. The authentic Jesus is revealed to us by the apostles, by them alone, and by all of them together.

"The attitude we are criticizing would be, not "scientific", but agnostic. It would amount to a volatilizing of the only specific object of theological investigation, and, consequently, of the whole scientific character of theology. The different ways in which Paul, as compared with Mark, and John contrasted with Matthew, recount the Gospel message are an element of their apostolic mission. The fact that they were impelled (or enabled) to fulfill their task by the changed circumstances of the later period in which they lived and worked is due just as much to the Spirit of Christ as was their enlightenment at Pentecost. So the picture of Christ which is transmitted by the later preaching of the apostles is as authoritative for the reality of Christ and as much an object of faith as is the content of the earliest preaching. By the same title, it constitutes, as readily as the former, the valid object of theology as a science.

"The attitude described earlier also closes its eyes to the full reality of Christ in terms of method. It begins with the assumption that the first, "historical" Jesus was the "simple", unmetaphysical, purely human individual, and that his true greatness lay in his human genius, the depth of his religious experience, and the power of his teaching. Thereafter, it is affirmed, this primitive reality was metaphysically inflated in the course of the first century, was assimilated to the mythical category of the "Savior" and adapted to suit the religious needs of the communities which felt the need of a cult figure. To admit this is to abandon at the outset everything that could merit the name of "revelation" in the true sense of the term, namely, the communication of a reality not conditioned by man, but sent to him from God in order to judge and redeem all mankind.

"At the same time, it abandons at once everything which the passage of time, the increasing remoteness from the original event, the development in historical circumstances, and the tradition that welds all that together, can contribute to a disclosure of the "beginning" of that Reality which is the foundation of redemption and the controlling force of history. To repeat: the contrary of that premise is true. If we could get back to the "original", that is, if we could work our way back to the picture of Christ as it existed before it had been turned over in the apostles' minds or elaborated by their preaching, before it had been assimilated by the corporate life of the faithful, we could find a figure of Christ even more colossal and incomprehensible than any conveyed by even the most daring statements of St. Paul or St. John.

"The Christ who interests the scholarly theologian and the faithful Christian alike is the figure which comes to us from the whole of the apostolic preaching. And this is so, not because that preaching is concerned with the "Christ of faith" as distinct from the "Christ of history", for that would mean that the Christ of faith existed only by virtue of a religious attitude towards him and was not existent and real by himself. Later accounts would then be nothing more than idealized versions of the various experiences of Christ; evidence of the various ways in which the apostles and their hearers had seen him in the course of the first century, preliminary drafts for the way in which the faithful of later generations would view him.

"To make sense we must see things the other way around. The Christ whom serious believers believe in is the original reality. The statements of the apostles are guides to him which never quite do justice to the fullness of his divine-human nature. The apostles never state more about the historical Jesus than he actually was; it is always less. Consequently, everyone who reads the New Testament aright feels that every sentence is pregnant with meaning regarding a reality which surpasses all that is said about it. As opposed to the rationalist approach, true biblical theology must now accomplish a kind of "Copernican revolution". Its scientific purpose must not be to isolate from supposedly over-emphasizing representations, as likewise supposedly simple original reality; its object must be to bring out clearly all the elemental greatness of the original, on the basis of a whole series of representations, all of which are valid, but all of which, in spite of a gradual deepening of perception somehow fall short.

"It is this elemental greatness of the original which has been at work in history, has built up the Church, and has furnished the irrepressible impulse towards activity and transformation, which is a matter of past as well as present experience. This is what "is, and was, and shall be". This is the only source of salvation.

The Incarnation

"When did people begin to abandon the worship of idols, unless it were since the very Word of God came among men? When have oracles ceased and become void of meaning, except since the Savior has revealed Himself on earth? When did those whom the poets call gods and heroes begin to be adjudged as mere mortals, except when the Lord took the spoils of death and preserved incorruptible the body He had taken, raising it from among the dead ?

"Or when did the deceitfulness and madness of demons fall under contempt, save when the Word, the Power of God, the Master of all these as well, condescended on account of the weakness of mankind and appeared on earth? When did the practice and theory of magic begin to be spurned under foot, if not at the manifestation of the Divine Word to men? In a word, when did the wisdom of the philosophers become foolish, save when the true Wisdom of God revealed Himself on earth? In old times the whole world and every place in it was led astray by the worship of idols, and men thought the idols were the only gods that were. But now all over the world men are forsaking the fear of idols and taking refuge with Christ; and by worshipping Him as God they come through Him to know the Father also, Whom formerly they did not know.

"The amazing thing, moreover, is this. The objects of worship formerly were varied and countless; each place had its own idol and the so-called god of one place could not pass over to another in order to persuade the people there to worship him, but was barely reverenced even by his own. Indeed no! Nobody worshipped his neighbor's god, but every man had his own idol and thought that it was lord of all. And all over the world men made human sacrifice to these idols they worshipped. But now such abominations have ceased, and the worship of demons has been crushed by the Power of God. Christ alone is worshipped, as One and the Same among all peoples everywhere; and what the feebleness of idols could not do, namely, convince even those dwelling close at hand, He has effected. He has persuaded not only those close at hand, but literally the entire world to worship one and the same Lord and through Him the Father.

"Again, in former times every place was full of the fraud of the oracles, and the utterances of those at Delphi and Dordona and in Boeotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of the Kabiri and the Pythoness were considered marvelous by the minds of men. But now, since Christ has been proclaimed everywhere, their madness too has ceased, and there is no one left among them to give oracles at all. Then, too, demons used to deceive men's minds by taking up their abode in springs or rivers or trees or stones and imposing upon simple people by their frauds. But now, since the Divine appearing of the Word, all this fantasy has ceased, for by the sign of the cross, if a man will but use it, he drives out their deceits.

"Again, people used to regard as gods those who are mentioned in the poets-- Zeus and Kronos and Apollo and the heroes, and in worshipping them they went astray. But now that the Savior has appeared among men, those others have been exposed as mortal men, and Christ alone is recognized as true God, Word of God, God Himself. And what is one to say about the magic that they think so marvelous? Before the sojourn of the Word, it was strong and active among the unbelievers of the world, and filled all who saw it with terror and astonishment. But by the coming of the Truth and the manifestation of the Word it too has been confuted and destroyed. As to worldly wisdom, however, and the philosophers' noisy talk, I really think no one requires argument from us; for the amazing fact is patent to all that, for all that they had written so much, they failed to convince even a few from their own neighborhood in regard to immortality and the virtuous ordering of life. Christ alone, using common speech and through the agency of men not clever with their tongues, has convinced whole assemblies of people all the world over to despise death, and to take heed to the things that do not die, to look past the things of time and gaze on things eternal, to think nothing of earthly glory and to aspire only to immortality.

"These things which we have said are no mere words: they are attested by actual experience. Anyone who likes may see the proof of glory in the thousands of virgins of Christ, the untold numbers of martyrs, and in the hundreds of thousands of Christians who have given their lives to the service of their religion, and in the assurance of immortality in so great and glad a company. In the very presence of the fraud of Pagan Religion, demons, the imposture of the oracles, and the wonders of magic, the Name and Power of Christ has established the Peace of God while demons are routed, oracles cease, and all magic and witchcraft is confounded.

"Who, then, is this Christ and how great is He, Who by His Name and presence overshadows and confounds all things on every side, Who alone is strong against all and has filled the whole world with His teaching? Let the scoffers tell us, who mock at Him without stint or shame. If He is a man, how is it that one man has proved stronger than all those whom they themselves superstitiously regard as gods, and by His own power has shown them to be nothing? If they call Him a magician, how is it that by a magician all magic is destroyed, instead of being rendered strong? Had He conquered certain magicians or proved Himself superior to one of them only, they might reasonably think that He excelled the rest only by His greater skill. But the fact is that His cross has vanquished all magic entirely and has conquered the very name of it.

"Obviously, therefore, the Savior is no magician, for the very demons whom the magicians invoke flee from Him as from their Master. Who is He, then? Let the scoffers tell us, whose only serious pursuit is mockery! Perhaps they will say that He, too, is a demon, and that is why He prevailed. But even so the laugh is still on our side. for we can confute them by the same proofs as before. How could He be a demon, Who drives demons out? If it were only certain ones that He drove out, then they might reasonably think that He prevailed against them through the power of their Chief, as the Jews, wishing to insult Him, actually said. But since the fact is, here again, that at the mere naming of His Name all madness of the demons is rooted out and put to flight, obviously the unbelievers are wrong here, too, and our Lord and Savior Christ is not, as they maintain, some demonic power.

"If, then, the Savior is neither a mere man nor a magician, nor one of the demons, but has by His Godhead confounded and overshadowed the opinions of the poets and the delusion of the demons and the wisdom of the philosophers, it must be manifest and will be owned by all that He is in truth Son of God, Existent Word and Wisdom and Power of the Father. This is the reason why His works are no mere human works, but, both intrinsically and by comparison with those of men, are recognized as being superhuman and truly the works of God.

"What man ever healed so many diseases as the common Lord of all? What man heals diseases today in various parts of the world where He has chosen to manifest his power? Who restored that which was lacking in man's nature or made one blind from birth to see? Aesculapius was deified by the Gentiles because he practiced the art of healing and discovered herbs as remedies for bodily diseases, not, of course, forming them himself out of the earth, but finding them out by the study of nature. But what is that in comparison with what the Savior did when, instead of just healing a wound, He both fashioned essential being and restored to health the thing that He had formed? Hercules, too, was worshipped as a god because he fought against other men and destroyed wild animals by craft. But what is that to what the Word did, in driving away from men diseases and demons and even death itself? The gods are worshipped among them, because they taught men drunkenness and ribaldry; yet they ridicule the true Savior and Lord of all, Who taught men temperance.

"Has any man's teaching, in any place or at any time, ever prevailed everywhere as one and the same, from one end of the earth to the other, so that his worship has fairly flown through every land? Again, if, as they say, Christ is man only and not God the Word, why do not the gods of this world prevail against Him, and prevent His conquest of the hearts of the idol-worshipping faithful? Or why, on the other hand, does the Word Himself dwelling in our midst make an end of their worship of spirits by His teaching and put their fraud to shame?

"Many before Him have been kings and tyrants of the earth, history tells also of many who were wise men and magicians. But which of those, I do not say after his death, but while yet in this life, was ever able so far to prevail as to fill the whole world with his teaching and retrieve so great a multitude from the craven fear of idols, as our Savior has won over from idols to Himself? The secular teachers and philosophers have compiled many works with persuasiveness and much skill in words; but what fruit have they to show for this such as has the cross of Christ? Their wise thoughts were persuasive enough, yet how did they make men better; even in their life-time their seeming influence was counterbalanced by their rivalry with one another, for they were ambitious for worldly recognition, a jealous company that declaimed against each other while trying to outdo each other.

"But the Word of God, by strangest paradox, teaching in meaner language, has put the choicest sophists in the shade, and by confounding their teachings and drawing all men to Himself He has filled assemblies over the face of the Earth. Moreover, and this is the marvelous thing, by going down as Man to death He has confounded ail the sounding utterances of the so-called wise men . For whose death ever drove out demons, or whose death did ever demons fear, save that of Christ? For where the Savior is named, there every demon is driven out. Again, who has ever so rid men of their natural passions that fornicators become chaste and murderers no longer wield the sword and those who formerly were craven cowards boldly play the man?

"In a word, what persuaded the barbarians and heathen folk in every place to drop their madness and give heed to peace, save the faith of Christ and the sign of the cross? What other things have given men such certain faith in immortality as have the cross of Christ and the resurrection of His body? The Gentiles told all sorts of false tales, but they could never pretend that their idols rose again from death: indeed it never entered their heads that a body could exist again after death at all. And one would be particularly ready to listen to them on this point, because by these opinions they have exposed the weakness of their own idolatry, at the same time yielding to Christ the possibility of bodily resurrection, so that by that means He might be recognized by all as Son of God."

"Again, who among men, either after his death or while yet living, taught about the danger of adulterous thoughts, and the control of lust through chastity, and did not account this virtue impossible for human beings? Yet He not only preached through His own disciples, but also wrought so persuasively on men's understanding that, laying aside their savage habits and forsaking the worship of their ancestral gods, they learnt to know Him and through Him to worship the Father. While they were yet idolaters, the Pagans and Barbarians were always at war with each other, and were even cruel to their own kith and kin. Nobody could travel by land or sea at all unless he was armed with swords, because of their irreconcilable quarrels with each other. Indeed, the whole course of their life was carried on with the weapons, and the sword with them replaced the staff and was the mainstay of all aid. All this time, they were serving idols and offering sacrifices to demons, and for all the superstitious awe that accompanied this idol worship, nothing could wean them from that warlike spirit. But, strange to relate, since they came over to the school of Christ, as men moved with real compunction they have laid aside their murderous cruelty and are war-minded no more. On the contrary, peace has been sown among them and nothing remains save desire for friendship.

"Who, then, is He Who has done these things and has united in peace those who hated each other, save the beloved Son of the Father, the common Savior of all, Jesus Christ? And Who, Alone, has the power so to unite the warring peoples who hate each other to this very day? By His own love He underwent all things for our salvation. Even from the beginning, moreover, this peace that He was to administer was foretold, for Scripture says,

"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles, and nation shall not take sword against nation, neither shall they learn any more to wage war."

"Nor is this by any means incredible. The people of the present day are extreme in their fanaticism and in their habits, and as long as they sacrifice to gods other than the One True God, Who sent Jesus Christ into the world, they will continue to rage furiously against each other and will not bear to be a single hour without weapons. But when they hear the teaching of Christ, forthwith they turn from fighting to farming, and instead of arming themselves with swords extend their hands in brotherly prayer. In a word, instead of fighting each other, they take up arms against the devil and the demons, and overcome them by their selfcommand and integrity of soul. These facts are proof of the Godhead of the Savior, for He has taught men what they could never learn among the idols.

"It is also no small exposure of the weakness and nothingness of demons and idols, for it was because they knew their own weakness that the demons were always setting men to fight each other, fearing lest, if they ceased from mutual strife, they would turn to attack the demons themselves. For in truth the disciples of Christ, instead of fighting each other, stand arrayed against demons by their habits and virtuous actions, and chase them away and mock at their captain the devil. They endure in times of testing and persevere in toils. When they are insulted, they are patient, when robbed they make light of it, and, marvelous to relate, they make light even of death itself, and become martyrs of Christ.

"And here is another proof of the Godhead of the Savior, which is indeed utterly amazing. What mere man or magician or tyrant or king was ever able by himself to do so much? Did anyone ever fight against the whole system of idol-worship and the whole host of demons and all magic and all the wisdom of the world, at a time, much like today, when all of these were strong and flourishing and taking everybody in, as did our Lord, the very Word of God? Yet He is even now invisibly exposing every man's error, and single-handed is carrying off all men from them all, so that those who used to worship idols or the secular state now tread them under foot, magicians and secular teachers burn their books and the wise prefer to all studies the interpretation of the gospels.

"They are deserting those demons and secular ideologies whom formerly they worshipped; they worship and confess as Christ and God Him Whom they used to ridicule. Their so-called gods are routed by the sign of the cross, and the crucified Savior is proclaimed in all the world as God and Son of God. Moreover, the gods worshipped among the Pagans and Gentiles are now falling into disrepute among them on account of the disgraceful things they did, for those who receive the teaching of Christ are more temperate and chaste in life than they. If these, and the like of them, are human works, let anyone who will show us similar ones done by men in former time, and so convince us. But if they are shown to be, and are the works not of men but of God, why are the unbelievers so irreligious as not to recognize the Master Who did them? They are afflicted as a man would be who failed to recognize God the Artificer through the works of creation. For surely if they had recognized His Godhead through His power over the universe, they would recognize also that the bodily works of Christ are not human, but are those of the Savior of all, the Word of God. And had they recognized this, as Paul says, "They would not have crucified the Lord of glory."

"As, then, he who desires to see God Who by nature is invisible and not to be beheld, may yet perceive and know Him through His works, so too let him who does not see Christ with his understanding at least consider Him in His bodily works and test whether they be of man or God. If they be of man, then let him scoff; but if they be of God, let him not mock at things which are no fit subject for scorn, but rather let him recognize the fact and marvel that things divine have been revealed to us by such humble means, that through death deathlessness has been made known to us, and through the Incarnation of the Word the Mind whence all things proceed has been declared, and its Agent and Ordainer, the Word of God Himself.

"He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become like God. He manifested Himself by means of a body in order that we might perceive the Mind of the unseen Father. He endured shame from men that we might inherit immortality. He Himself was unhurt by this, for He is impassable and incorruptible; but by His own impassability He kept and healed the suffering men on whose account He thus endured. In short, such and so many are the Savior's achievements that follow from His Incarnation up to the present day, that to try to number them is like gazing at the open sea and trying to count the waves. The world has been changed forever by His Coming. One cannot see all the waves with one's eyes, for when one tries to do so those that are following on baffle one's senses. Even so, when one wants to take in all the wonders of Christ in the body, one cannot do so, for the things that transcend one's thought are always more than those one thinks that one has grasped.

"Now this is proof that Christ is God, the Word and Power of God. For whereas human things cease, the fact of Christ remains. It is clear to all that the things which cease are temporary, but that He Who remains is God, Eternal Son of the Father in the Holy Spirit. (St Athanasius, "Incarnation")

...

The Eucharist as the Sacrament of Transformation
by Cardinal Ratzinger

"Let us return to the Holy Eucharist. What really happened on the night when Christ was betrayed? Let us listen to the Roman Canon - the heart of the "Eucharist" of the Church in Rome: "The day before he suffered, he took bread into his sacred hands, and looking up to heaven, to you, his almighty Father, he gave you thanks and praise, broke the bread, gave it to his disciples and said: "Take this all of you, and eat it. This is my body which will be given up for you'. When supper was ended, he took the cup, again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples and said: "Take, all of you, and drink from it. This is the cup of my blood the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, it will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me' " (ICEL Translation).

"Transubstantiation

"What is happening in these words?

"In the first place we are confronted by the word "transubstantion". The bread becomes the body, his body. The bread of the earth becomes the bread of God, the "manna" of heaven, with which God nourishes men not only in their earthly life but also in the prospect of the resurrection - which prepares for the resurrection, or rather, already makes it begin. The Lord, who would have been able to transform stones into bread, who was able to raise up from rocks the sons of Abraham, wishes to transform the bread into a body, his body. Is this possible? How can it happen?

"Body given, Blood poured out

"We cannot avoid the questions that the people posed in the synagogue of Capernaum. He is there before his disciples, with his body; how can he say over the bread: this is my body? It is important to pay close attention to what the Lord really said. He does not say only: "This is my body", but: "This is my body, which is given up for you". It can become gift, because it is given. By means of the act of giving it becomes "capable of communicating", has transformed itself into a gift. We may observe the same thing in the words over the cup. Christ does not say simply: "This is my blood", but, "This is my blood, which is shed for you". Because it is shed, inasmuch as it is shed, it can be given.

"Real transformation of violence into an act of love

"But now a new question emerges: what do "it is given" and "it is shed" mean? In truth, Jesus is killed; he is nailed to a cross and dies amid torment. His blood is poured out, first in the Garden of Olives due to his interior suffering for his mission, then in the flagellation, the crowning with thorns, the crucifixion, and after his death in the piercing of his Heart. What occurs is above all an act of violence, of hatred, torture and destruction.

"At this point we run into a second, more profound level of transformation: he transforms, from within, the act of violent men against him into an act of giving on behalf of these men - into an act of love. This is dramatically recognizable in the scene of the Garden of Olives. What he teaches in the Sermon on the Mount, he now does: he does not offer violence against violence, as he might have done, but puts an end to violence by transforming it into love. The act of killing, of death, is changed into an act of love; violence is defeated by love. This is the fundamental transformation upon which all the rest is based. It is the true transformation which the world needs and which alone can redeem the world. Since Christ in an act of love has transformed and defeated violence from within, death itself is transformed: love is stronger than death. It remains forever.

"Transformation of death into life

"And so in this transformation is contained the broader transformation of death into resurrection, of the dead body into the risen body. If the first man was a living being, as St Paul says, the new Adam, Christ, will become by this spiritual event the giver of life (I Cor 15, 45). The risen one is gift, is spirit who gives his life, "communicates", indeed, is communication. This means that there is no farewell here to material existence; rather, in this way material existence achieves its goal: without the actual event of death (with its interior transcendence) all this complex transformation of material things would not be possible. And so in the transformation of the resurrection all the fullness of Christ continues to subsist, but now transformed in this way; now being a body and the gift of self are no longer mutually exclusive, but are implicit in each other.

"Before going on, let us first seek to sum this up once more in order to understand this whole complex reality. At the moment of the Last Supper, Jesus has already anticipated the event of Calvary. He accepts the death on the cross and with his acceptance transforms the act of violence into an act of giving, of self-giving poured forth, "Even if I am to be poured out as a libation on the sacrificial offering of your faith", St Paul says on the basis of this and in regard to his own imminent martyrdom in Philippians 2,17. At the Last Supper the cross is already present, accepted and transformed by Jesus.

"This first and fundamental transformation draws to itself all the others - the mortal body is transformed into the resurrected body: it is "the spirit which gives life".

"Transformation of bread and wine

"On the basis of this the third transformation becomes possible: the gifts of bread and wine, that are the gifts of creation and at the same time fruit of human labour and the "transformation" of the creation, are transformed so that in them the Lord himself who gives himself becomes present, in his gift of self-giving. His gift, himself - since he is gift. The act of self giving is not something from him, but it is himself.

"And on this basis the prospect opens onto two further transformations, that are essential to the Eucharist, from the instant of its institution: the transformed bread, the transformed wine.

"Through them the Lord himself gives himself as spirit that gives life, to transform us men, so that we become one bread with him and then one body with him. The transformation of the gifts, which is only the continuation of the fundamental transformations of the cross and of the resurrection, is not the final point, but in its turn only a beginning.

"Transformation of communicants into one body

"The purpose of the Eucharist is the transformation of those who receive it in authentic communion. And so the end is unity, that peace which we, as separate individuals who live beside one another or in conflict with one another, become with Christ and in him, as one organism of self-giving, to live in view of the resurrection and the new world.

"Transformation of creation into dwelling place for God

"The fifth and final transformation which characterizes this sacrament becomes thus visible: by means of us, the transformed, who have become one body, one spirit which gives life, the entire creation must be transformed. The entire creation must become a "new city", a new paradise, the living dwelling-place of God: "God all in all" (I Cor 15,28) - thus Paul describes the end of creation, which must be conformed to the Eucharist.

"Thus the Eucharist is a process of transformations, drawing on God's power to transform hatred and violence, on his power to transform the world. We must therefore pray that the Lord will help us to celebrate and to live the Eucharist in this way. We pray that he transform us, and together with us the world, into the new Jerusalem.(Cardinal Ratzinger, "Eucharist, Communion, Solidarity")