Pope Benedict on the Centrality of the Incarnation

Last week, I examined Pope Benedict's discussion of the Church's Marian doctrine in an unscripted homily at the opening session of the Seventh General Congregation of the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops. My post, however, barely scratched the surface of this remarkably deep homily. Among other things, Pope Benedict's words also remind us of the centrality of the Incarnation, not only to Catholic belief but to the history of the world.

"A woman is Mother of God. One might say: how is this possible?" How, indeed? While Catholic theology owes much to Aristotle, as the Holy Father points out "Aristotelian philosophy tells us that between God and man there exists only a non-reciprocal relationship." That which is unchanging (God) cannot become one with that which changes (man).

And yet that is precisely what happened at the Incarnation. Christ "was not born only as a man who had something to do with God, but in him God was born on earth. God came out from himself."

But just as importantly, "God has drawn us into himself, so that we are no longer outside of God, but we are inside, inside God himself." Here Pope Benedict echoes the Athanasian Creed, which says that God became man "not by the conversion of the Divinity into a human body, but by the assumption of humanity in the Godhead." Through the Incarnation, God does not change, but He changes man by making us "participate in his interior relationship."

In the previous post, I mentioned that Pope Benedict showed how two titles of Mary, Theotokos (Mother of God) and Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church), are really the same, because "Where Christ is born, there begins the movement of recapitulation, the moment of the calling, of the construction of his body, of the holy Church." The Church is the continuation of the Incarnation in time:

Birth in Bethlehem, birth in the cenacle [the Upper Room, where the Holy Spirit descended upon Mary and the disciples at Pentecost]. Birth of the Child Jesus, birth of the body of Christ, of the Church. They are two events, or one single event.

But then the Holy Father reminds us of something that we too often forget:

But between the two really stand the cross and the resurrection. And only through the cross does the journey toward the totality of Christ take place, toward his risen body, toward the universalization of his being in the unity of the Church. And so, keeping in mind that it is only from the grain that falls to the ground that the great harvest comes, from the Lord pierced on the cross comes the universality of his disciples gathered into his body, put to death and risen.

The joy of Bethlehem at Christmas is inseparable from the anguish of Golgotha on Good Friday. Only through His Death can Christ complete the construction of His Body, the Church. And only by uniting ourselves to Him in Baptism and through the daily sacrifices of our own crosses can we be resurrected in Him and become part of Christ's Body.

But in becoming part of the Church, we find that our journey is not at its end, but only beginning. In my next post, we'll examine Pope Benedict's explanation of the Church's role in history, and what our participation in the Church demands of us.

More on Pope Benedict's Unscripted Homily:

• Pope Benedict on the Church's Marian Doctrine
• English Translation of Pope Benedict's Unscripted Homily (at the Chiesa News website)

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