The Universal Dimensions of the Incarnation

More than two millennia have passed since the Incarnation of the Lord, yet it seems that Christian societies are regressing, rather than advancing, in their understanding of its message and meaning. The Fathers of the Church heralded this great mystery as the means of man’s deification and creation’s renewal, but modern Christians have largely accepted a diminished view. Uprooted from the sacramental worldview of old and immersed in the fragmented landscape of secularism, modern Catholics often adopt unorthodox ways of thinking about themselves and the world they inhabit. But if man is to realize the grace extended to him, he must recover an integrated view of reality. He must recognize that the Creator of all things has irrevocably joined Himself to creation, wedding the things of Heaven to earth.

The first truth of the Incarnation is that simple yet inexpressible truth that God is man. But this does not simply mean, as some imagine, that God has been inserted into the world as one living among men — as one object among others. Rather, it represents a radical upending of the created order. By joining Himself to creation, the Uncreated One shatters the wall separating Heaven and earth, flooding this impoverished world with unspeakable light. For the Author of all things, and the One in whom all things are held together, assumes a created nature. Of this divine espousal, Isaiah prophesied:

You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more
be termed Desolate
but you shall be called My delight is in her,
and your land Married;
for the Lord delights in you,
and your land shall be married. (62:4)

Already in the Old Testament, the Prophet Isaiah foresaw a time when God would wed the human race — and in such a way that the land itself would be drawn into this exalted covenant. Christ’s human nature is the central axis of this divine marriage, consummated in the hypostatic union. Without blurring the lines between the divine and the human, these two natures are united in His person, deifying the latter and making it a lightning rod of grace whereby others might be made holy.

St. Teresa of Ávila touches on this union of natures in her poem Para Navidad (“For Christmas”), emphasizing the exaltation of Christ’s humanity. By reversing the terms of the common Christological phrase God is man, Teresa stresses this second, more alarming truth that now man is God. She writes:

Danos el Padre
A su único Hijo:
Hoy viene al mundo
En un pobre cortijo.
¡Oh, gran regocijo,
Que ya el hombre es Dios!

The Father gives to us
His only Son:
Today He comes to the world
In a stable poor.
Oh, great rejoicing,
Because now man is God!

Struck by this declaration, we may wonder, as St. Thomas Aquinas did, if it is right and proper to claim that “man is God” (cf. Summa Theologiae III, q. 16. a. 2). Thomas answers in the affirmative, as this saying may rightly be applied to the hypostasis of Christ, who is truly man and truly God. Nevertheless, Teresa’s utterance goes beyond the mechanics of systematic theology. It is a contemplative insight, a gaze, an ecstatic exclamation at the sight of the marvelous exchange effected by the Incarnation. It is the cry of that great and terrible truth, looming before us in frightful proportions, for it surpasses the scope of man’s reason. Here, the Blessed Trinity burns brightly before us in the Person of the Incarnate Word.

The saying man is God further touches on the elevation of human nature as such, which reaches unto divinization. Though among men Christ alone is God by virtue of His divine personhood, His human nature is divinized as a result of the hypostatic union. This deification occurs by grace, without confusing the two natures or raising human nature to a likeness of essence with the divine. As a result, Christ’s divinized human nature serves as the source of deification for all those joined to Him, and in this sense does this phrase have its secondary and subordinate meaning. As the Athanasian maxim would have it, “God became man so that man might become God” (De Incarnatione). Christ’s deified humanity is that holy door men may enter so as to share in His divinity (cf. 2 Pet. 1:4). Indeed, St. Thomas teaches that the fundamental grace of all graces is “the grace of union,” whereby the divine being of the person of the Son is communicated to His human nature, giving that human nature its being. This gift is the basis for all the grace Christ has as man — capital grace — which He lets flow upon the rest of His Mystical Body.

It is truly the case that He who knew the eternal embrace of Triune Love endured the winepress of the Cross to redeem the fallen race of men. The Author of time, who was Himself untouched by change, shattered the solemn march of seasons by entering into their fray and carving a path into eternity. All those baptized into Him, dying to their natural lives and reborn to lives of supernatural grace, henceforth leap with Him beyond all change, into eternity’s rest. Henceforth, Christians sing of that unending day: “This is the day which the Lord has made…” (Ps. 118:24).

As all things are contained within the Logos, the Incarnation of the Logos could hardly fail to impact the entire created order. As noted above, Isaiah prophesied that God’s marriage with man would have precisely this effect, drawing the land itself into this covenantal union: “You shall be called My delight is in her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married.” Surveying fallen creation, St. Paul speaks of it as “groaning in travail” (Rom. 8:22), longing for Christ to deliver it from the futility of corruption. And when He who sustains all things (cf. Col. 1:17) joined Himself to the material universe, He sanctified all that is made, allowing man to taste of the first fruits of the Spirit (cf. Rom. 8:23). As St. Maximus the Confessor would have it, the Incarnation is that spark whereby God’s grace “deifies” the cosmos — a phrase he employs without blurring the essential distinction between the Creator and created.

The result is this: man cannot be said to live in a purely natural world. He lives in a world God has broken into and hallowed. Put another way, the same Eternal Wisdom who fashioned the universe, and the same Eternal Goodness who lovingly willed it into being, condescended to espouse Himself to it forever. Consequently, St. Maximus speaks of all mutable beings finding their rest in Him — their very beginning and end — now Incarnate.

These profound truths are, however, increasingly obscured and untaught. Following the Protestant Reformation, Western cultures regressed in their understanding of the Incarnation, partly because of their widespread rejection of the sacraments. By emphasizing a mental faith rather than contact with the sacramental presence of Christ, distance was placed between the Incarnate Word and man. This chasm was echoed in the iconoclasm of those same communities that broke from the apostolic faith. The Catholic Church, however, maintained the hallowed use of matter in the administration of the sacraments and sacred depictions of God-made-flesh. She held to man’s union with the Incarnate Christ and his participation in the Cross vis-à-vis the Eucharistic sacrifice (cf. Col. 1:24). And by this Holy Communion, man was understood to be sanctified — even divinized (cf. 2 Pet. 1:4).

If the Reformation inadvertently placed distance between the Incarnate Word and man, subsequent generations willingly alienated themselves from God, rupturing any harmony between Heaven and earth. The French Revolution ushered in an age of secularism, marked by Deist notions of a self-sustaining universe. This fundamental error was soon implemented in civil policies in the form of secular spaces — places in which God was absented by the will of man.

By reclaiming the ancient truth of the Incarnation, our understanding of reality will necessarily become more integrated, placing us in the path of grace. Christ’s humanity stands at the nexus of God’s marriage with man, and all grace flows from this deified source. From this inexhaustible fount, man finds every means of sanctification. Furthermore, the Creator’s assumption of a created nature has effects that reach all of time and space — a truth supremely realized in the administration of the sacraments. Recognizing this holy state of affairs, we may survey the now-sanctified cosmos, recalling God’s command to Moses: “Put off the shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Exod. 3:5).

The message of the Incarnation is gratuitous love, aimed at eliciting a return of the same love. The Divine Child of Bethlehem, in whom all things have their beginning and end, has come into the night to scatter the darkness. He has come to illumine hearts, enlighten minds, and raise their contemplation to the things that are above, without destroying those natures below. Creation has been turned on its head — or rather, it has been recapitulated — and the angels are astonished.

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