By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part One
Who was or who is this Jesus Christ?
Different people give different answers to this question. Muslims came up with the ridiculous suggestion that He was a prophet of Islam (by the way, Tom, Dick, and Harry in the Old Testament were all also supposed to be “prophets of Islam,” or something like that); some positivists say He was a man of great mind, intelligent, able, endowed with great leadership abilities.
Some calling themselves “Christian” say He was a prophet but not divine; others of the same ilk say He was a holy man upon whom the Holy Spirit descended on His Baptism; others say that He was divine, yes, but He was not aware of it (as if God could suffer from amnesia and forget that He is God), and so on and so forth.
But the Church founded by Him solemnly teaches that Jesus Christ is true God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, equal in all things to the Father. As early as in the year 325, the Catholic Church convened the Council of Nicaea and condemned the heresy of Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity.
This was a very important definition, because the teaching on the Trinity is nowhere to be found in the Bible! The Bible mentions the three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but nowhere does it explicitly say that there are not three gods but only one: three Persons in one God.
The concept of the Holy Trinity as we hold it today is a dogma defined by the Roman Catholic Church. Thus all non-Catholic Christians who believe in the Trinity believe in a Catholic dogma.
The Nicene Creed, which we Roman Catholics recite at Mass on Sundays, was written at the Council of Nicaea, well over one thousand years before Martin Luther’s parents were dating after Sunday Mass in Germany. Thus, Protestants owe to the Catholic Church the explicit teaching on the Holy Trinity.
This is the faith of the early Christians, which the Catholic Church has emphatically proclaimed from the beginning. It makes this proclamation of the divinity and co-eternity of the Son of God by saying that He is “born of the Father before all ages . . . begotten, not made.” This goes for His divinity.
As for His sacred humanity: Jesus Christ, true Man, like all men, was born of a woman; He lived at Nazareth as the reputed son of Joseph the carpenter; then, in the three years of His ministry, He labored and taught, journeying hither and thither, suffering fatigue, hunger, and thirst, and showing the feelings and emotions of ordinary men — love, compassion, sorrow, anger, and fear; then, at length, He was seized by His enemies, tortured by them, and nailed to a cross; then after His death He was taken down and laid in a tomb.
While on this earth, He was subject, like all of us, to the infirmities of our nature, but, unlike us, He was subject to them not of necessity but of choice; and, unlike us, He was free from ignorance and all tendencies to sin. Thus, for example, when He was afraid in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:33) it was because He freely chose to afflict His soul with fear.
The Catholic Church coined the marvelous term, Hypostatic Union: It means Personal Union. It is the union of the two natures, the divine and the human, in one Divine Person, Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity.
To understand the difference between person and nature, consider this: “person” answers the question, who? And “nature” answers the question, what? So, whom are we talking about? The Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, Jesus Christ. What is Jesus? The union of two natures, divine and human, in one single Person.
We do not claim to be able to understand how it works; we believe because God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, taught us so through His Holy Catholic Church.
Likewise, we do not understand the miracle of the transubstantiation, whereby Jesus give us His Flesh to eat and His Blood to drink under the appearances of consecrated Bread and Wine. We do not understand how pouring water over a baby’s head and saying a few words will erase original sin; we do not understand how a priest, by making a sign of the cross in the air, and saying certain words will indeed absolve our sins, if we are repentant.
And so on, and so forth. We believe because God said so, and that is enough for us.
Let us delve a little more into the marvelous mystery of the Hypostatic Union. The two natures, while remaining perfectly distinct, are joined together in an unchangeable and inseparable union. Thus, Jesus will never cease to be God and Man. This unique union began at the Annunciation, when Christ was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mother, and that union will continue forever.
Now something interesting, which very few of us have thought about: The union of two natures in the one Person of Christ was not broken even when He was dead, in the period between His death on the cross and the Resurrection! His Person remained united to His body in the sepulcher, and to His soul in limbo.
In the Gospels we learn that Christ acted sometimes by His human nature, sometimes by His divine nature, and sometimes by both together. For example, He acted by His human nature, when, for example, He walked or slept; by His divine nature, when, for example, He cured the centurion’s servant at a distance; by both natures together, when He consecrated the Blessed Eucharist: as Man, He took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the apostles, saying, “This is My Body”; as God, He changed the bread into His own sacred Flesh.
Since Christ is one Person and that one is a Divine Person we can never call Him a human person. Never: He is a Divine Person, living in two natures, one human and one divine.
“God Saves”
His Name: The name Jesus means, literally, “God saves” or “God is salvation.” Used as a name, it may be interpreted as “Savior.” The title, “Christ,” is the Greek form of the Hebrew, “Messias.” It means “the anointed one.”
In the Old Testament, men were anointed kings, priests, and sometimes prophets, as a sign of the sanctity of their office and their special consecration to God. Jesus is called “Lord,” in Greek “Kyrios,” used for the divine name “Yahweh” when the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek three centuries before Christ. “Jesus” is His personal name, “Christ” is His title of office, and “Lord” is His divine title.
Next article: The human knowledge of Christ
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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