Both God and man

THERE is that gospel episode where some Jewish leaders started to persecute Christ because Christ, by making an invalid walk, appeared to them as making himself equal to God. (cfr. Jn 5) They just could not accept that.

That was when Christ told them that what he did to that invalid, and later to many others with certain ailments, should prove to them that he was sent by God the Father. “The deeds my Father has given me to perform, these same deeds of mine testify that the Father has sent me,” he said. (Jn 5,36)

We need to understand that Christ is both God and man. In fact, as some theologians have been repeating, he is “perfect God, perfect man.” Obviously, for us to believe this truth of faith, we need faith, since this a supernatural mystery that our sciences and technologies would not fathom.

We need to make that leap of faith, which actually does not suppress our reason and the findings of our human faculties. What it does is to enable us to transcend, with our spiritual powers and the grace of God, our human powers.

In other words, we should not be trapped in the world of nature alone. We have to enter into the world of the spiritual and the supernatural. We are actually poised for it, but we have to make the decision to take that leap.

Without making that leap, our understanding of who Christ really is has no other way but to be wrong. In fact, some have considered Christ only to be man, not God, though a superior kind of man. Others have regarded Christ only as God, not man, though he appears to be like man.

That Christ is both God and man has been definitively defined by the Church through some councils like those of Ephesus and Chalcedon. It was clarified that Christ was first of all a divine person, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, with two natures, the divine and the human. That would make him both God and man, “perfectus Deus, perfectus homo.” This union of the two natures in Christ is called in theological terms as “hypostatic union.”

This truth of our faith about Christ is crucial in also knowing who we really are. Christ, being the pattern of our humanity, somehow reaffirms the belief that we too are meant to be like God, sharers of God’s life and nature.

For us to be like Christ, and in fact, to assume the very identity of Christ, we have to learn how to die to ourselves so that Christ can live in us. Thus, Christ said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it.” (Lk 9,24) And, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a seed; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (Jn 12,24-25)

We should give full force to our pursuit to assume the identity of Christ to such an extent that we can say with St. Paul, “It is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2,20) Given our proclivity to simply be by ourselves, Christ has given us the formula of how we can be like him: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” (Mt 16,24)