The Word became flesh for us to be saved from our sins by reconciling us with God, who loved us and sent his Son to be the atonement for our sins. The Word became flesh for us to know God's love. The Word became flesh to be our model of holiness. Finally, the Word became flesh to make us partakers of the divine nature.
The Incarnation. Incarnation is the embodiment of a spirit in an earthly form. It is the Son of God became man to accomplish our salvation in it. Belief in the Incarnation of the Son of God is the distinctive sign of Christian faith.
True God and true man. The Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is partly God and partly human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.
The Son of God is man. The human soul that that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human knowledge. This human knowledge could not be unlimited because it was exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time. This is why the Son of God could increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man, and would even have to inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience. This corresponded to the reality of his voluntary emptying of himself and become a slave.
Christ's human will. Christ possesses two wills and two natural operations, divine and human. They do not oppose each other, but rather, they cooperate in such a way that Jesus willed humanly in obedience to his Father all that he had decided divinely with the Father and the Holy Spirit for our salvation.
Christ's true body. Christ's body is finite because it assumed a true humanity. This made possible the portrayal of the human face of Jesus, represented in holy images to be legitimate. The individual characteristics of Christ's body express the divine person of God's Son. He has made the features of his human body his own, to the point that they can be venerated when portrayed in a holy image.
The heart of the Incarnate Word. Jesus loved each and one of us during his life, his agony, and his passion, and he even gave up his life for us. He has loved us all with a human heart. He loved every human being, without any exceptions.
Conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit…The annunciation of Mary initiated the fullness of time, the time of the fulfillment of God's promises and all the preparations.
The mission of the Holy Spirit is always conjoined and ordered to that of the Son. The Holy Spirit is sent to sanctify the womb of the Virgin Mary and by the power of the Holy Spirit, conceive the eternal Son of the Father in a humanity drawn from her own. The Father's only Son, conceived as a man in the womb of the Virgin Mary, is Christ, anointed by the Holy Spirit from the beginning of his human existence.
Born of the Virgin Mary. God sent forth his Son, but to prepare a body for him, he wanted the free cooperation of a creature. For this, from all eternity God chose for the mother of his Son a daughter of Israel, a young Jewish woman of Nazareth in Galilee, a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
Looking back at the Old Testament, the mission of many holy women prepared for that of Mary. There was Eve, despite of her disobedience. Then there was Sarah, who conceived a son despite of her old age. Against all human expectations, God chooses those who were considered powerless and weak to show forth his faithfulness to his promises.
To become the mother of the Savior, God enriched Mary with all the gifts appropriate for such a role. In order for Mary to be able to give the free assent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly born by God's grace. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person and chose her to be holy and blameless before him in love.
When Angel Gabriel announced that she would give birth to the Son of the Most High, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Mary responded with the obedience of faith, and certain that with God, nothing is impossible. Her yes to the Lord made her the mother of Jesus. Mary remained a virgin because Jesus was conceived in her womb solely by the power of the Holy Spirit. Mary remained a virgin even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. Christ's birth did not diminish his mother's virginal integrity, but sanctified it. Thus, the virginal conception is a sign that it was truly the Son of God who came in humanity like our own.
Mary is a virgin because her virginity is the sign of her faith untainted by any doubt and of her undivided gift of herself to God's will. It is her faith that enables her to become the mother of the Savior.
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