It has been approximately 2025 years since we found out that God can bungee jump. Yes, you read that right: the nativity of Jesus Christ shows us that, to the amazement of men and angels, God can, and does, bungee jump. God’s descent from his heavenly heights into the gorge of creation is the magnum mysterium, the great mystery, that we contemplate and celebrate each and every Christmas. Though it is surprising to find out that God can and does jump into creation, what is far more awesome is discovering how and why he does so. Without ever leaving his eternal Father and Spirit, the Eternal Son of God, born of the Father before all time, jumped from his heavenly heights and was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the Virgin’s womb—he became man. God did this so that by his visible humanity we may be snatched back up with him, body and soul, into his infinite divine friendship.
Without any change to his divinity, the Eternal Son of God jumped from heaven into the gorge of his creation. This jump is the Christ child—the true, visible, and full humanity conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the most pure and blessed Virgin Mary. In the fullness of time, the second person of the Most Holy Trinity, infinitely blessed and lacking nothing in himself, united a human nature to himself. God became one of us and in a way that we could understand: conceived and born of a woman. He desired to be like us in every way except sin; and for that reason he took on a full human nature—body and soul, mind and heart (cf. Heb 4:15). Christ’s humanity is not a projection or a puppet for his divinity; rather, his humanity and divinity are in harmony with one another. In the depths of the person of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary, divinity and humanity embrace in an everlasting marriage. This means that as Mary looks into the eyes of her newborn son, she looks into the eyes of the God who really and truly jumped from the heavenly places, insofar as he became man, and also, never left his Eternal Father and Spirit, insofar there was no change to his divinity.
But why? Why become man? Why the jump? For us men and for our salvation.The Eternal Son of God jumps into creation, he becomes incarnate, in order to save and transform men, that is to say, in order that by his humanity he may snatch men back up with him to the heights of heaven. The Son of God became flesh in order to heal and recreate all flesh through his own suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension. It is through our union with his sacred humanity in the sacraments and the life of grace that we not only cling to him, we become one with him. From heaven, Jesus forms his body, the Church, and prepares a place for us. For he will come again and take us to himself, so that where he is, there we also may be (cf. John 14:3).
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