THE INCARNATION

As I stood on the sidewalk outside an abortion center, I looked at the fetal model in my palm. The fetal model was of a human person at about ten weeks after conception but not of any person in particular. As I gazed at the model, it struck me that this model could be of Jesus, the second person of God, just ten weeks after His conception. The conception of Jesus is known as the Annunciation, when Saint Gabriel appeared to the Blessed Virgin Mary, describing to her God’s plan that she is to bear the world’s Savior.

“He whom the entire universe could not contain was contained within your womb, O Theotokos,”1 with Theotokos being the Blessed Virgin Mary. Jesus shares with each of us the path of the womb. For nine months, Jesus, the Second Person of God, has been confined to the enclosure of the womb. For eternity, in His human nature, He is limited to a human body, albeit now in a glorified human body. While human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, the Divine Jesus consented to taking on the form of a slave2, to come in the likeness of sinful flesh.3 It was in this willingness of Jesus to take on this likeness of the fallen nature of humanity and be obedient to the Father that He condemned sin in the flesh.4

From eternity, Jesus accepted His physical nakedness during His Crucifixion, His birth, and His time in the womb of His mother, Mary. Jesus accepted for Himself the immobility of a late-stage preborn in the womb preparing for labor and delivery. Jesus accepted for Himself the blindness of the early preborn child who was deprived of seeing from the darkness of His womb. Jesus accepted for Himself the near deafness of a preborn person but for muffled sounds of the world outside through the confining walls of His womb. Jesus accepted for Himself the silence of being preborn child who cannot breathe air and speak or cry out. Jesus accepted for Himself the developing body of a preborn person in the fetal stages of eight to forty weeks after conception. Jesus accepted the formless body of a person from conception as a person of a single-cell body to 8 weeks after conception. As read in the Psalms, “You have seen my embryo.”5

“The most radical and elevating affirmation of the value of every human being was made by the Son of God in his becoming man in the womb of a woman, as we continue to be reminded each Christmas.”6

With the vulnerabilities and temptations of being of human nature, Jesus was willing to become man and remain obedient to the Father to redeem an otherwise sinful, disobedient race. Through His Incarnation as man, Jesus lives a sinless human life. He also offers to live every human life as “another Christ”7, if only we would surrender to His trustworthy and holy goodness as expressed as being Christ’s head while we, the baptized of His Church, are Christ’s body.

At His last Supper, and repeated during every Holy Mass, Jesus expressed His love saying, “This is my body which is given for you.”8 Are we willing to own those words as our expression of love to Jesus in offering our life to Him, “This is my body which is given for you.”9 Can “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church?”10

On this very day that the Church celebrates the Incarnation of Jesus, we must ask ourselves if we are willing to serve Jesus as a member of the ongoing Incarnation of Christ.

Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom.

 Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.11

Peace of Jesus in the womb of Mary be with you.

© 2023 Patrick A. O’Donnell All Rights Reserved

1. Taken from the Divine Office of the Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin: Matins, II Nocturn, III responsory.
2. Philipians 2:6
3. Romans 8:3
4. Cf. Romans 8:3
5. Psalm 139:16(New Jerusalem Bible)
6. Saint Pope John Paul II, “Christifidelis Laici”, December 30, 1988, Section #37
7. A phrase often used by Caryll Houselander and first read by this author in her book, The Passion of the Infant Jesus,
8. 1 Cor 11:24
9. 1 Cor 11:24
10. Cf. Col 1:24
11. From a sermon by Saint Leo the Great, pope. (Sermo 1 in Nativitate: Domini, 1-3: Pl 54, 190-193) Found in the Liturgy of the Readings for Christmas Day. Excerpts from the English translation of The Liturgy of the Hours (Four Volumes) © 1974