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86 • Part I. The Creed: The Faith Professed
• The only Son of the Father, the eternal Word, became man at the
appointed time, without ceasing to be God. He was conceived by the
Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
• Jesus Christ is true God and true man united in one divine Person.
• “The son of God . . . worked with human hands; he thought with a
human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart
he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary . . . he is like us in all things except
sin” (GS, no. 22).
• In the Incarnation, we behold the mystery of the union of the divine
and human natures in the one person of God’s Son. Somehow, in a
way we cannot completely grasp, Jesus had both human knowledge
and a human will and divine knowledge and a divine will.
• As disciples of Christ, we are called to conform ourselves to him
until he is formed in us.
• The mysteries of Christ’s infancy and hidden life invite us to identify
with Christ’s obedience to Mary and Joseph as well as the example
of his holiness in the daily work of family and work in the long years
at Nazareth.
• The mysteries of Christ’s public life draw us to learn discipleship from
the teachings of his baptism, his temptation in the desert, his preach-
ing and witness of the Kingdom of Heaven, his Transfiguration, his
voluntary journey to Jerusalem to face his Passion, and his entry into
Jerusalem, where he completed the work of our salvation through
his death and Resurrection.
MEDITATION
Why Did the Word Become Flesh?
The Word became flesh to save us from sin and reconcile us to God.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that every-
one who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life”
(Jn 3:16).
By the Incarnation we are made aware of the depth of God’s love
for us. “In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only
Son into the world so that we might have life through him” (1 Jn 4:9).