A blessed, holy and life-giving Christmas to all who read this! May God fill you with His love and truth and may these gifts serve as your guide throughout this Christmas Season.
As Catholics, we use some language in our worship that is not common to our everyday talk and, in order to help you out, I’d love to break it down a bit. We’ll look at two words, Incarnation and Consubstantial.
Incarnation
Whenever you hear this word, know that we are talking about God coming among us in the person of Jesus: fully God, fully human. Jesus’ birth is more than an event with a cute baby: this is the moment God added His Divine to the human condition. We simply could not go to heaven, were it not for Jesus taking flesh.
This mystery is so important to us, that we actually change our posture when we say this line in the creed:
For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, (we bow down here) and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.
We celebrate the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus!
Consubstantial
Also in our creed, we describe Jesus as “consubstantial with the Father.” What does that mean?
Basically, the easiest way to think of it is this: we are saying that Jesus is “of the same stuff” as God the Father. If you want the Greek word, its “homoousion;” an incredibly difficult word to pronounce!
Jesus describes Himself as being “One with the Father” a few times and this is what we are trying to show in the word consubstantial: Jesus’ unique, total and eternal connection to our Father in Heaven. You might also want to check out the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 242, 262, 467, and 663, for some further explanation.
So, in the Incarnation of Jesus, we are connected to the Father and we are so very grateful for that. Let’s make sure that we live and love in such a way as to honor and celebrate that connection. Our bodies are sacred and our decisions in life should reflect that sanctity!
May Jesus fill your heart with joy in the holy season! fjk