He was conceived and born

He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. The highest consciousness of God that exist in the human is in Jesus, the Christ. In Christian language, he was the Word of God made flesh. In Yeshua, God enters the human history.

Our Lady of Lourdes is depicted in a painting by British expressionist Stephen B Whatley.

Christianity teaches that Christ is the sinless one. It also says the first sin (the intrinsic drive not to follow the will of God) contaminated all human flesh we inherit and pass over to our children. If human flesh is contaminated by sin how can Christ, the Word made flesh, be sinless?

The Catholic faith teaches us that God created Mary, the mother of Yeshua, through the immaculate conception. This means that the mother of Jesus was preserved from the taint of original sin from her mother’s womb so that she may be a sinless human vessel to carry the incarnate Word of God.

To many people, including the faithful, this is a difficult dogma, especially for people of science who believe in empirical evidence. This is so because not everybody finds it easy to believe that God acts directly in the natural course of creation. Many of those who believe in the existence of God presume that God acts only causally by influencing creation in a non-physical ways.

In the first part of this series we saw that God’s mode of causal influence is likely to be beyond the governance of natural law. Therefore it is not measurable, predictable, or publicly observable. The sciences, on the other hand, describe regular, measurable, predictable, controllable, and repeatable behaviour. Consequently acts of God are outside the scientific remit.

In faith, with the assistance of revelation and the Church’s holy tradition, we state that this is one of the occasions where God intervenes and acts directly in creation. This poses no difficulties for the faithful who believe in miracles. In fact, the Christian faithful are obliged to be Christ-like, that is, they are compelled not to limit their minds by physical laws. This is why they are commanded to pray for every need and not to bind God with their own limits.

Jesus prayed for the course of clouds to turn, and storms to cease, and it happened. Jesus prayed for diseases to be arrested, and the sick were cured. Jesus prayed even for the physical laws of death to be reversed, and so the son of a widow from Nain (Lk 7:11-14), the daughter of Jairus (Mk 5:22-43) and Lazarus (Jn 11:1-44) woke from the dead.

To be Christ-like, then, we must follow Jesus in placing our trust in the power of God. In fact, Christ assures us that if we had faith as big as the mustard seed we would do more. This is why the Church commands its faithful to be Christ-like.

What Christ has taught, and revealed by his own life, is that no matter how hopeless and countless falterings of the world we see, God is in control, and everything shall end according to the purpose of God that has been revealed to us in Christ.

Christ teaches us that our sins are what separates us from God. That despite the mixture of hope and despair; despite our deceptions and failing faith, despite our confused dreams driven back by odious reality; despite the things seeming to fall apart, in Christ we are more than conquerors. All our strife is collected and redeemed in the universal redeem conscience of Christ we are to be when we become. God is, and we are becoming.

With faith in Christ we can do everything, especially since the dominion of all creation has been given unto him. Christ reveals to us that death is not the end—and that we shall be judged by Love (it’s a double-edged sword in that means love shall be our judge taking account of how much we love).

It is no cheap fancy of St Augustine when he says “love and do as you will”, because true love will never let you sin (at least not with the impunity of a dead conscience) without demanding reparations from your conscience—the Law of God in your flesh.