Divinity Of Christ

EWTN, Global Catholic Radio, and St. Joseph Communications proudly present Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. This 50-part series was recorded on phonograph records in the 1960s, and the sound quality is sometimes limited, but the word of God spoken by Archbishop Sheen is timeless. And now, here is Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Let me speak to you. You remember that in a previous instruction we said that our blessed Lord called Himself both Son of God and Son of Man, that He was both God and Man. This is indeed a great mystery. It is what is called, actually, the mystery of the Incarnation. That word, Incarnation, means incarnate, in the flesh. It means that God assumed a human nature, that He was enfleshed, as it were. St. John has a very beautiful description of it. He says the Word became flesh. The word means, of course, God, or the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. This is a difficult mystery, and we are going to try to explain it with a number of examples. When we say that God became man, we do not mean to say that heaven was empty. That would be to think of heaven as a kind of a space, like a room that was twenty by thirty feet. When God came to this world, He did not leave heaven empty. And when He came to this world, He was not shaved down, He was not whittled down to human proportions. He was rather, Christ was the life of God dwelling in human flesh. St. Thomas Aquinas has a very beautiful description of this in one of his hymns. He said the heavenly Word proceeding forth, yet leaving not the Father's side. Now let us begin with answering the question, why did God become man? We limit ourselves to the historical order in which we live. The answer is He became man in order to redeem us from sin. Therefore we have to describe why it was necessary for God to become man to completely atone for our sins. Well the answer is, whenever we sin, we contract an infinite debt, but we cannot pay an infinite debt, because we are finite and limited. Here is the reason. We will state it in the form of a kind of a principle, and then we will give examples. Or even the one honoring. For example, suppose a citizen of the United States, the mayor of a city, the governor of a state, and the president of the United States pay a visit to the Holy Father. Who pays the Holy Father the greater honor? The citizen or the president? Is it not the president? Honor is in the one honoring. Now the other proposition, the other side of it is this. Guilt or sin is always measured by the one sinned against. If for example, a citizen, a mayor, commits a felony or a crime or a tyranny, which is the greater sin? Guilt or sin is always measured by the one sinned against. If therefore the sin or the guilt was against, say, the president of the United States, obviously the mayor or the governor would be guilty of the greater sin, would he not? Now let us apply this to man. We have sinned. Against whom have we sinned? Against God. All right? Sin is measured by the one sinned against. We sinned against God. He is infinite. Therefore our guilt, our sin is infinite. Now let's take the other proposition. Honor is in the one honoring. We are going to try to pay that debt. Who is honoring God? Man. But man is finite and limited, is he not? Well if he's finite and limited, he cannot pay an infinite debt. Therefore it is possible for man to contract an infinite debt and still never be able to pay it in strict justice. After all, that should not surprise us. It's very easy for all of us to run up greater debts than we can pay. All right, then we have an infinite debt against God which we cannot pay. Now could God forgive us? Could he say, oh forget it. It's nothing. Well, he might say forget it, but he could not say it is nothing. Suppose he did forgive us. He indeed would be merciful, but he would not satisfy justice. If we owe somebody $20, the debt can be forgiven. But justice is not satisfied unless we completely pay the debt. I can remember when I was a boy, I often used to break the window of the next door neighbor. And the next door neighbor sometime would say forget it, but somehow or other I never just wanted to be let off. So I would go to my piggy bank and I would take out my savings in order to pay for the broken window. So man does not just want to be let off by God. He has a sense of his own dignity too, and he wants in some way to pay the debt which he owes to God, though he is unable to pay it. Now how it is to be paid, we have yet to answer. If justice as well as mercy are to be satisfied, then God had to become man. First of all, why did he have to become man? Well, unless he became man, he could not be our representative. He could not stand for us. Man would not be paying the debt. Let's suppose that I were arrested for speeding. Could you walk into the courtroom the moment that I was on trial and say, Judge, let him go. I will take it over. The judge would say to you, stay out of this. What have you got to do with this? You are not involved. He is. So inasmuch as man is involved, and inasmuch as man is sinned, in some way God has to share our nature with sin. And then furthermore, sin demands some kind of suffering and expiation, and if he ever became man, he could suffer as man and suffer in our name. But not only would he have to be man, but of course he would also have to be God. He would have to be man in order to act in our name. He would have to be God in order that the infinite debt could be paid by someone who is infinite. The action, therefore, of God would have an infinite value. Therefore, the outrage against God could be atoned for, and furthermore, he would have to be God in order to be sinless. After all, if he were full of sin, he too would need redemption. No man can atone for his own sins. In conclusion, therefore, if both justice and mercy are to be satisfied, God would have to become man. Man to be one of us, God in order that he could pay the infinite debt. We can explain this in other terms, perhaps in the terms of the old nursery rhyme, remember it? Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And all the king's horses and all the king's men could never put Humpty Dumpty together again. Now that rhyme pretty well expresses the condition of man as a result of sin. Since the fall of man, man is very much like a broken egg. He can't put himself together. There's some kind of a disorder inside of himself, and that is the reason why the mere arrangement of wealth and the social order outside of him is not going to change man himself. He needs God to put him together again. Or another example, the example of a clock whose mainspring is broken. We have the works, but somehow they just do not go. What two conditions have to be fulfilled to make that clock work? First, the mainspring must be supplied from the outside. Two, the mainspring must be placed inside of the clock. Man cannot redeem himself any more than that clock can fix itself. If man is ever to be redeemed, the redemption must come from without, and must be done from within. It must come from without, simply because we cannot, for example, if we are blind, ever restore our vision. If we've broken communion with God by sin, we cannot restore it. Have you ever taken a rose petal into your fingers and pressed and squeezed the rose petal? Did you notice if you could ever restore its tint? You could not. Lift a dewdrop from a leaf, you could never replace it. And even a light manner is just a little bit too deep-seated to be righted by a little bit of kindness here and there, and a little reason, and a little tolerance. You might just as well tell a man who's suffering from consumption that all he needs to do is play six sets of tennis. The clock whose mainspring is broken cannot repair itself. Its own salvation, therefore, has to come from without. Our human will is too weak to conquer its own evil, just as the sick need medicine outside of themselves. We need a teacher for our minds, we need a physician for our bodies, and we need a Redeemer for our souls, a Redeemer from outside humanity, outside of humanity with all its weakness, its sin, and its rebellion. Now let's take the other side. We said that if the mainspring is broken, a new mainspring has to be supplied from without, but be put inside of the clock, and so too. Salvation must come from without humanity, but it has to be done in some way within humanity. So God, therefore, had to become man in order that man would be redeemed from within. God did not become man, he would have no relation to us. Man, as I said, does not want just to have his sins forgiven, he wants to atone for them. So God became man. Now you put these two conditions together, and you have the reason why the Redeemer should be both God and man. God from without, man in order that he might be within humanity. That is the incarnation. God becoming man in the person of Christ in order that he might save us from our sins. Here we come to something just a little more difficult, and we're going to use a word which you may not often hear. We have to spend about six months when we are studying for the priesthood just studying the meaning of these words, hypostatic union. The hypostatic union means that there are in Christ two natures and one person. Now that's something you must always remember, embedded in your memory, in your mind. Christ has two natures, one human, one divine. They are both united in the person of God. Was God therefore a human person? No. He was a divine person. Did he have a human nature? Yes. Did he have a divine nature? Yes. And they were united in the divine person of God. Obviously I'm not using the word nature and person in the same sense, am I? Perhaps we can make this clear if you will take a pencil in your hand. I will wait for a minute until you put it into your fingers. Now that pencil has a nature, has it not? In other words, it's the nature of a thing that writes. A nature is a thing, something that operates. For example, a cow has a nature. A pig has a nature. A carpet has a nature. A pigeon has a nature. Your finger has a nature. But is a cow a person? If your cow comes over into my pasture and eats all of my grass, I cannot sue the cow, I could sue you. There therefore must be some difference between a nature and a person. And this is the difference. A person is a source of responsibility. The dog is not responsible for its actions. But man is. Now that is a very simple definition of a nature and a person, but perhaps it will suffice us for the moment. Now, using the pencil that you have in your hand, do you notice that there are before you two natures? One, the nature of the pencil. The other, the nature of your hand. Is your hand a person? No. Because you could lose your hand and still be yourself, could you not? Therefore we have in the hand now, combined with the pencil, two natures. How are they united? In your one person. So it is possible to have a union of two natures in one person. You have a body, you have a soul. They are very different in nature, one is material and the other is spiritual. And yet you are only one person. That too is a very incomplete and imperfect analogy of what happens. But returning now to our pencil. The pencil of and by itself cannot write. You put it down on a chair or a table before you. That pencil cannot write, can it? Now, you bring your hand down to that pencil. You have a union of two natures in one person. Now the pencil can write, can it not? It can do something that it could not do before. And when it writes, do you see the pencil write or I write? You do not say my eye sees you, you say I see you. You do not say my ear hears you, I hear you. You do not say my stomach digests, I digest food. Notice that we are always attributing the actions of a nature to a person. That is why if you sign a check, there is responsibility involved. And neither the hand nor the pencil are the sources of that responsibility. Now let us apply the analogy. Put down the pencil again on the table. That pencil of and by itself cannot write. That pencil is like man. He cannot pay the debt he owes to God. Now put your hand in the air. Bring it down slowly to that pencil. Pick up the pencil. Here you have a union of the nature of the hand which is united with your person and the nature of a pencil. Now the pencil can do something which by itself it could not do. So the hand with your personality coming down to that pencil represents the person of God and the divine nature coming down to human nature. And when God comes down and takes upon himself a human nature united with his divine nature and divine person, you have the union of two natures, namely the nature of God, the nature of man, in the unity of the person of God. And now, just as that pencil could do something which of and by itself it could not do, so human nature, united with the person of God, can now begin to do something which of and by itself it could not do before. The pencil is the instrument of my personality and so when God with his divine nature came down to this world and took upon himself a human nature from the womb of his blessed mother, he took upon himself an instrument. Once God took upon himself our human nature, he could act in our name. And every one of the actions of that human nature would have an infinite value. Not a sigh, a word, a tear, a step. Now that human nature was inseparable from the person of God. That is why one breath of God made man would have been enough to redeem the world. Why? Because it was the breath of God. And therefore had an infinite value. But why then did God suffer so much when he took upon himself our human nature? Well, there are more grains of sand in this world than are necessary. And so, love knows no limits. And the only way to prove perfect love is by a surrender of all that one has. And so, God took upon himself our human nature and he said, he loved us unto the end, even unto death. Now you see the beauty and the majesty, do you not, of Christ? Why when he became man at Bethlehem, took upon himself the form of a babe, what did we have? Why, he who was born without a mother in heaven is born without a father on earth. He who made the world was born in it. Maker of the sun, under the sun. Moulder of the earth, on the earth. Ineffably wise, a little infant. Filling the world, lying in a manger. Ruling the stars, nursed by his mother. The mirth of heaven weeps, God becomes man. Divinity incarnate. Eternity time. Lord scourged. Power bound with ropes. King crowned with thorns. And if you were the only person in the world who ever lived and sinned, you would have come down to this earth and died and suffered. Just for you alone. That is how much he loves you. God love you. This has been Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen. For more information about this series, contact St. Joseph Communications at 1-800-526-2151. If you live outside the U.S., call 818-331-3549. And please join us again next time for Life is Worth Living with Archbishop Fulton Sheen on EWTN Global Catholic Radio.