By Joel Padgett
Connecting Creed and Life
Editor’s note: For 2025, the weekly Connecting Faith and Life column will be renamed Connecting Creed and Life. To celebrate the 2025 Jubilee Year and the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the columns will consist of reflections on the Nicene Creed, corresponding with related paragraphs in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
“…and [Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God,] became man” (cf. CCC 470-483)
What a great and amazing God we have! We just celebrated the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, true God and true man, from the dead. We Christians believe in a God who “so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16), a God who, “did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).
Just a few months ago we were contemplating the birth of Jesus Christ, “the Word became flesh” (cf. John 1:14). As a newborn baby, totally dependent on the love and care of his parents, we beheld God who “emptied himself” and came to us “in human likeness” (cf. Philippians 2:7). We adored God lying in a feeding trough (cf. Luke 2:12), just as we adore him at Mass lying on the paten, the feeding trough of his Eucharistic self.
That child, who was small enough to fit into our hands and large enough to fill every fiber of our being, “grew and became strong,” and “advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man” (Luke 2:40, 52). That God-man, “holy, innocent, and undefiled” (Hebrews 7:26), “humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). And yet “God greatly exalted him,” so that now “every knee should bend of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (cf. Philippians 2:9-11)!
If you truly take a moment to reflect upon what we Christians believe about God, it would be easy to dismiss it as “too good to be true.” Except for the fact that it is true! We have a God who loves us so much that he created us out of love, in order to share in his love. And when we cut ourselves off from him, who is our ultimate source of purpose, peace and joy … everything that is truly good and meaningful in our lives, he became man so as to reestablish our relationship with him so that we could again fully share in his life and love. He even went so far as to lay down his life for us — in the most brutal fashion and by our own hands — and to rise three days later, redeeming and bringing healing to all aspects of our fallen human nature. Furthermore, at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, he yearns for us to live forever with him and each other in perfect beatitude.
It is the testimony that has come down to us, the reality for which so many martyrs have allowed their own blood to commingle with the Precious Blood that was first shed for them. St. John echoes that testimony by proclaiming that Jesus Christ, the very Word of life, “the eternal life that was with the Father,” was “made visible to us” (cf. 1 John 1:1-2). In fact, John himself had seen this reality with his own eyes and looked upon and touched it with his own hands (idem).
This reality should not be a sort of conclusion that we reach after the end of a long journey. It should be more like the lens that brings the entirety of our existence into focus. The glasses that we put on even before setting foot from bed first thing in the morning. But how does one do this? What would that even look like? A Vatican II document that was very near and dear to the heart and thought of Pope St. John Paul II can be very enlightening in this regard.
“Gaudium et Spes, n. 22,” affirms that the mystery of who we are as human persons only finds meaning in the mystery of God becoming man. It goes on to say that in becoming man, Christ has united himself in some mysterious way to you and me, and to each and every person. Likewise, “through Christ and in Christ, the riddles of sorrow and death grow meaningful. Apart from His Gospel, they overwhelm us. Christ has risen, destroying death by His death.”
All of this is summed up in the document’s most oft-quoted statement: Christ “fully reveals man to himself.” In other words, God not only knows what is best for us simply because he created us. By becoming human, he goes so far as to physically and literally show us how to live a truly human existence that is full of meaning, purpose and joy: “I have come so that you may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10), “so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete” (John 15:11). If we wish to know how to delight in a life worth living, turn to Christ! He himself tells us, “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be” (John 12:26). Passion, Death and Resurrection: This was the path of Christ. It is also our path. Do not be afraid!