Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Episode 16 - Incarnation
Today's word is Incarnation.
Yes, we don't find it explicitly in the liturgy, but it is in the collect prayer.
So.
One more time the collect prayer helps us as a guide because it says: "Give to our spirits
your Grace, father, thou who in the announcement of the Angel have revealed the incarnation
of your son", etc, etc.
That prayer is the prayer of the Angelus.
It is the prayer of the Angelus. Yes, but actually it is one of the oldest prayers, because
it's the one of the fourth week of advent, well, of the rorate Sunday.
Yes, the four Sundays of the advent have Latin names which are the first word of their
introduction, this is rorate.
Rorate which means more..
Drip them from above.
The word incarnation, which is a difficult word, because we always have in mind the
reincarnation, which has nothing to do with it, isn't it?
Incarnation means that God has made himself man.
Yes.
So in Jesus the whole human reality, the whole human reality has been taken from the
divine person.
Yes.
The whole human reality has been taken from the divine person which not because of that has stopped
being God. So Jesus is perfectly human, is perfectly God. As St. Leo The Great used to say,
complete in what relates to humanity..
Humanity
.. Complete in what relates to divinity.
Yes, it is complicated to understand, I have to say, I mean, no, it probably can't be understood.
Well, it can't be understood, because the problem is that God is infinite, man
is finite. So, how does infinity fit into finite? how can infinity join with
finite? well, obviously it is a similar problem as how he can be one and three at the same time.
Certainly.
But some hints as to how this is possible, more of how this comes into existence are given by
today's liturgy. Because on the one side the Gospel speaks about the son of David, Joseph son
of David, and then you will call him Jesus. So, in this title of son of David given to Joseph,
and then implicitly given to Jesus, it is rare it is given to Jesus, but under certain
circumstances it is given to him, especially in Luke.
Yes. Sometimes Jesus accepts also that title.
The title of son of David, especially what relates to his deeds as a healer,
as a thaumaturgist, but obviously the title of son of David takes on itself the whole
concreteness of history, the whole concreteness of tradition, of the history of the people
of Israel, son of David. But there is another thing that is being said in the book of the
prophet Isaiah: "And with the *** he will conceive". Then, obviously the *** will
conceive, in this impossibility that derives more from the Greek text of the prophet Isaiah, then from
the Hebrew text, but in this impossibility that a *** conceives..
You mean, Isaiah didn't mean a ***...
What he had in mind was a princess of Royal dynasty, but then obviously when the davidic dynasty
fell obviously the text had to be reinterpreted, and by translating it into
Greek, what was a girl became a ***.
Yes, yes.
Then, obviously this nurtures the hopes of Israel. The *** that conceives points to
the fact that there is something radically new.
Yes.
Something radically different.
A divine intervention.
A direct divine intervention. Then, the dynasty of David and the *** who conceives
show these two things.. These two elements.
Certainly.
Of the incarnation. Whole God, whole man.
But it is difficult to stay balanced in this thing, generally we tend to do it either
one way or the other.
Yes because irrespective that you reduce one side, or that you reduce the other, Jesus becomes..
he goes farther away. If you say.. If you lean on the side of God, which is something out of fashion today, you end up
saying that God, well, has gone back in his Heavens and has left us the book
of instructions, isn't it? When you install a new domestic appliance and then the technician
leaves you with the book of instructions and you read the book of instructions...
And then you don't understand anything.
You don't understand anything.
You call the technician who is never there.
Who is never there, etc, so God, the incarnation more or less imagined as a.. The Bible
more or less seen as an instruction book. Instead if you lean completely towards
the point of view of man, obviously then here we have the example, Jesus who leaves, has died
and has left us with an example, and we have to live following this example.
And we never make it.
And we never make it, both if you fall into the image of the instruction book, as well as if you fall
into the image of the example, anyway the Christ is somebody faraway, far away. Because the only
possibility is to recognise that both things are together, so that we are dealing again
about looking at a presence, not with remembering
an absence trying to look like it.
Yes yes.
Christianity is never moralist, it never underlines the effort, it underlines the gaze, it
underlines the gaze at something.
So to keep in mind incarnation means to have an antidote against moralism.
Absolutely yes.