PART 2: FAITH – A JOURNEY THROUGH THE CATECHISM WITH ST. PAUL AND THE CHURCH FATHERS
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We celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ at Christmas. This is our holy season of waiting, preparing our hearts so that Jesus can come under our roof at Christmas. Let us make room for Him in our hearts. We prepare this week by reviewing the Nicene Creed, which speaks to the heart of Who Jesus is.
We pray, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.” We see in St. John's Gospel, “for as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself” (Jn. 5:26). God the Father, the very spark of life itself, shares His eternal light with the Son. In our language, the words the sun, and Son of God, both give us light–one illuminates our world, and One gives eternal Light to our souls. St. John proclaims:
What came to be through Him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn. 1: 3-5).
So often, we think it was the star of Bethlehem or the angelic host that shone most brightly on that holy night. Indeed, the sky was afire with glory. The light from heaven was God the Father, and the light on earth was from the very divinity of Jesus. He was the source of the light that night because He was God on earth.
A most beautiful mystery is that we believe that God the Father “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim. 6:16), and He has poured His full divinity into His Son. In truth, the Light of the world was born, and Jesus' holiness radiated from Him in the night. St. Paul says it best in Hebrews 1:3: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory.”
The radiance of Jesus in a cold world was the breaking through of God into our darkness. The Catechism tells us:
The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. He is truly the Son of God, Who, without ceasing to be God and Lord, became a man and our brother…Jesus Christ possesses two natures, one Divine and the other human, not confused, but united in the one person of God's Son. (USCCB, Catechism, Number 469 and 481)
Jesus is fully Divine and fully human, a great mystery of faith. Jesus the Christ and Jesus the Baby are inseparable in ways we cannot fully comprehend. St. John says of Jesus:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came to be through Him, and without Him, nothing that was made came to be. (John 1:1-3).
Christ is ageless, and somehow, this Jesus is One with the eternal Father. He has all the same life force of God, and is Co-Creator. This is another one of the greatest mysteries of faith, how the Lord is both the Jesus of our world, and also the Christ, Co-Creator of all that is. In Genesis 1:26, we hear God speaking in the plural: “Then God said: ‘Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness.’” He was there from the dawn of eternity, and then He broke into our time and was born on earth.
Meditation 3: The image of light fills the description of Jesus. He illuminates the world and casts out all darkness from the human heart. Reflect on what this means to you. How does this relate to the theme ofChristmas lights?
Loreen Marie Derry is a Roman Catholic who worshiped in Charismatic Roman Catholic communities as a teen and in college. She earned a Bachelor's degree double major in Theology and Psychology from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Master's in Clinical Psychology from Slippery Rock University. For a time, she lived a life of wandering in faith, and then she and her husband found spiritual renewal in a Charismatic Protestant church that was very Spirit-filled and focused on the Word of God. In 2018, Loreen and her husband found a home at Ascension Catholic Community in Melbourne, FL. In 2020, Loreen walked beside her husband as a sponsor in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. Being so inspired by this process and returning to the Church of her youth, she has continued reading theology and inspirational writings. As a result of this journey of faith, Loreen now writes devotionals, articles about faith, and poetry reflections. The focus of her works are spiritual reading for for new and renewed Catholic followers of Jesus Christ.
