Jesus Christ is true God and true man, born of Mary. His suffering humanity in union with his divinity and glorious Resurrection rescues us from our sins. The Gospel accounts and the blood of the martyrs in the early Church bolster our faith in His Resurrection. With God’s grace, human reason provides additional compelling arguments to support our faith.
Mary provides the evangelists with all they need to know concerning the Annunciation. The Angel Gabriel appears to Mary:
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end. (Lk. 1:31-33)
Mary responds: “How can this be, since I have no husband?”
Gabriel: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”
And Mary said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word” (cf. Lk. 1:34-38). Isaiah prophesized Mary’s testimony: “Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Is. 7:14).
The public life of Jesus affirms the unity of his divine and human natures. He is “the master of the moment.” When the Pharisees and Herodians try to entrap him by asking whether it was Godly to pay taxes to their hated occupiers, “He said to them, ‘Whose likeness and inscription is this?’ They said to him, ‘Caesar’s.’ Jesus said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were amazed at him” (Mk. 12:16-17).
Rightly so. Not even a literary genius like Shakespeare could improve on his words.
His many miracles validated his words, preparing Him to call God His Father. “The high priest asked him, ‘Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?’ And Jesus said, ‘I am; and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.’ And the high priest tore his mantle, and said, ‘Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his blasphemy’” (Mk. 14:61-64). Indeed. Jesus is God, or he is the most loathsome liar in all of history.
The words and mighty deeds of Jesus gradually reveal his Divine Sonship, in union with his humanity. But his ignominious crucifixion seems to deny his divinity and undermines Mary’s testimony.
The saving purpose of his life and ministry hangs on a single event: the glorious Resurrection. “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” (1 Cor. 15:14)
The evangelists ensure we do not mistake the Resurrection as a pious vision. We read in the final chapter of Saint John’s Gospel:
Now Thomas… was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God.” (Jn. 20:24-28)
Astounding! Saint Thomas was not only a witness to the bodily resurrection of Jesus, but he also witnessed his unseen divinity.
Among the great Christians of recent history was the evangelical Charles Colson. His mid-life religious conversion in 1973 sparked a radical life change. He founded the Prison Fellowship International ministry and he cooperated with Catholics to focus on Christian worldview teaching and training worldwide.
Many will remember his infamous role as an advisor to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal. (Alas, compared to today’s political corruption, the Watergate crimes are child’s play.) He served seven months in prison as the first member of the Nixon administration incarcerated for Watergate-related charges.
We have Charles Colson and the Watergate scandal to credit for an unexpected Christian witness:
I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Everyone was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.
Secular revolutionary groups who lose their charismatic leaders have a hard time reconstituting. Imagine those frightened Apostles huddled in rooms with locked doors, fearing the wrath of the authorities. Suddenly, they become fearless and suffer beatings, torture, and death–going to their ends courageously. Their turnaround had to be in response to the miraculous, supernatural, and wonderfully mysterious appearances of Jesus in the flesh.
The Gospel accounts and the rigors of human logic support our faith in his Resurrection. Jesus Christ is true God and true Man, Who suffered and died for us. He rose from the dead. The glorious Resurrection validates our faith in the Incarnation and gives us confidence in the testimony of Mary.
Merry Christmas. Happy Easter.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Yes…a witness too awesome to be false.
And without the infinite humility (!) of the equal Son before the Father, combined with the total humility of the creature Mary, neither the Incarnation nor the Resurrection would have happened.
St. Augustine, in his articulation of the Original Sin in our time and God’s eternity, gave to this fact and mystery some additional thought in his later years. About the sin, he discovers that the really original sin was not so much some external action, as it was firstly the internal betrayal of primal humility. The internal and chosen predisposition of pride–in the face of God and all of His Creation which includes our deepest and very selves.
Further, Augustine identifies Adam as the Ideal Man, such that in the eternity of infinite God (not the finite and historical chronology where we live and breathe), each of us is/was present in this same impulse into pride as the Original Sin. Not preexistence, but universal predisposition. The unity of the Human Family, but also individualized souls, compressed into a moment in time. (I might not be summarizing this well; have just begun dipping into a used-book-store find: Robert J. O’Connell, SJ, “The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustine’s Later Works,” Fordham University Press, 1987).
And, we might add, with Mary as the singular exception, at Lourdes with the fact of these timeless and mysterious words: Not I am the produce of (…), but “I AM the Immaculate Conception.” Not I am the product of….”
Christ’s divine nature, his humanness is theologically well presented by Fr Pokorsky. As well the historicity confirmed by the amazing courage and consistency to proclaim the risen Christ after his death, until their own deaths, far more powerfully than when Christ was alive and with them.
Another dimension favoring belief is the power of the written Word. Not one of the Gospels is a perfect match recording of another. All have deficiencies in chronology, and in the actual accounts of similar events. We may dismiss that as human error, or rather reference it as evidence that there wasn’t a preconceived conspiracy. They weren’t masters at getting their story straight. What they miraculously achieved was getting it right. That rightness is the unmistakable proclamation of a single, unique person. Pokorsky alludes to this in his account of Thomas. “Astounding! Saint Thomas was not only a witness to the bodily resurrection of Jesus, but he also witnessed his unseen divinity”. Anyone who reads the Gospels with an open mind and heart is met with a piercing image of the divinity unique to the person of Christ.