Emmanuel – God With Us

By Scott Ferrier, MJ • Phoenix, AZ

As we approach the Nativity of Christ Our Lord and Savior, let us meditate on His coming into the world. He is the sacramental principle and foundation of all God’s creation. The Catechism tells us that ‘the Word was made flesh’ in order to save us from our sins by reconciling us with God (457), so that we might know God’s love (458), to be our exemplar of holiness (459), and to make us “partakers of the divine nature” (460). For the same reasons as the Incarnation, the Most Holy Eucharist perpetuates His Presence, Sacrifice, and unites us in communion with God until He comes again in glory.

The mysteries of Christ’s life are the foundations of what He would henceforth dispense in the sacraments, through the ministers of His Church, for “what was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries” (St. Leo the Great) (CCC, 1115).

Sacraments are “powers that comes forth” from the Body of Christ which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in His Body, the Church. They are “the masterworks of God” in the new and everlasting covenant (CCC, 1116).

The divine and human nature in one divine Person, Jesus Christ, is the true image. He is the Alpha and the Omega, Lord of History. Through the ministry of Christ and His Spirit, we are transformed into the likeness of the true image.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him.” (Colossians 1:15–16).

God speaks of Himself through and in the humanity of His Son. Thus only in Him can man understand properly his having being created in the image and likeness of God, because he discovers himself to be an image of the image of God. This reveals the meaning of GS 22: that Christ reveals man to himself.

The Blessed Virgin Mary—Theotokos, “a garden enclosed”, Ark of the New Covenant, tabernacle of the living God, the daughter of unfallen Eve, Bride unwedded— shares in the Redemption by her Son. John Paul II said in Ecclesia Eucharistia, 56: “The body given up for us and made present under sacramental signs is the same body which she had conceived in her womb!”