Incarnation is the Theme

Pope Benedict XVI provides a template for more to reflect this year on the Incarnation and the virginal conception, a reality that drives the believer to an act of God unlike any other act and the divine-human Son of God. (I’d only add to the Pope’s theme that God chose to become Jewish flesh, a particularity that brings to the surface the fullness of the Story of the Bible and speaks to the necessity of particularism in reality.)

This theme can’t be avoided if we read the Bible’s texts for Christmas; if we seek to say something new we may miss it. Read Matthew or Luke or John and it’s there.

Vatican City, Dec 18, 2011 / 02:17 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI said today that the virginity of Mary guarantees Jesus’ divinity because it proves the Incarnation is solely the work of God.

“The human being that begins to live in her womb takes the flesh from Mary, but his existence is derived entirely from God,” the Pope said Dec. 18 in his final Sunday Angelus address before Christmas.

“The fact that Mary conceived while remaining a virgin is, therefore, essential to the understanding of Jesus and our faith, because it witnesses that it was God’s initiative and above all it reveals who is conceived.”

So while Jesus is “fully human” and “made of earth,” he “comes from above, from heaven” and is truly “the Son of God.”

Thus, said the Pope, “the virginity of Mary and the divinity of Jesus reciprocally guarantee one another.”