Devine And Human Qualities
Jesus Christ, the Person by Gerard M. Who is Jesus?
Often today, when asked the question 'Who is Jesus?' Catholics reply: 'Jesus is the son of God'. While such a statement is true as far as it goes, it does not explain fully enough who Jesus really is. The problem is that we are all sons and daughters of God yet we are not God. So, while Jesus is the son of God, He is also God the Son.
It is the second part of the statement '.God the Son.' Which gives the real clue to understanding the person of Jesus. Unfortunately, some theologians today have downplayed Jesus' divinity. They stress His human qualities; His compassion, love, justice, social conscience and so on. In doing so they deny the fact that Jesus was not just a good man, not just someone chosen by God to do a special mission in Palestine.
In fact, Jesus is God Himself. The name Jesus means in Hebrew 'God saves'. The name Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word 'Messiah' which means 'Anointed'. Saint John tells us that this is the divine name which alone brings salvation (John 3:5). Kings, priests and prophets were anointed as a sign of their special calling.
Jesus was unique in that he was at one and the same time priest, prophet and king. Jesus is a member of the Holy Trinity, truly God. Irenaeus of Lyons would say: '.in the name of Christ is understood he who anoints, he who has been anointed, and the anointing itself by which he has been anointed: He who anoints in the Father, he who has been anointed is the Son, and he has been anointed in the Spirit, who is the anointing.' Haer, III,18,3) 2.
Jesus Christ is True God and True Man This teaching is, to our human minds, impossible. It is a mystery of the Faith, one which we will never fully understand. Nevertheless, through His Church, Jesus has taught us about this profound mystery. The Church teaches that Jesus Christ is one person having two natures. This, itself, is contrary to our human experience. We see everything around us as having a nature, but only one nature: the tree has the nature of a tree, the man has the nature of a human being, a rock has the nature of a rock.
The nature of a thing indicates the kind of thing it is. Logically, every created thing has one nature, its own particular nature. No created thing has two natures or it would be two things at one time, which is impossible.
Accordingly, the tree does not have the nature of a man, nor the man a rock's. Nevertheless, we are taught by the Church that Jesus has two distinct natures in one person. We are taught that Jesus Christ has a Divine nature, as God; and a human nature as man. Just as the tree is not a rock, so the natures of man and God are distinct, not blurred together. Yet the Church teaches that in one person, in all time, since His conception in the womb of a human mother, these natures are united by being in the person of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus possesses fully the nature of God and the nature of man we can describe Him as true God and true man. Because Jesus possesses fully the nature of a man, He has a human body and soul.
Furthermore, His human soul, like ours, has intellect and will. (He is like man in all things but sin). But Jesus has the infinite intellect and will of God as well as the intellect and will of a man. He is one divine person having two natures, the human and the divine. As the fifth century Athanasian Creed put it: 'He is perfect God; and He is perfect man, with a rational soul and human flesh. He is equal to the Father in His divinity but he is inferior to the Father in His humanity.
Although He is God and man, He is not two but one Christ.And He is one, not because His divinity was changed into flesh, but because His humanity was assumed into God. He is one, not at all because of a mingling of substances, but because He is one person.' In the gospels we see Jesus demonstrating that He possesses the divine knowledge and will of God when He said, 'Before Abraham was, I am.' Yet He shows His human will when, in agony in the garden of Gethsemene, He cries, 'Not my will but thine be done.' Luke 22:43) In the year 553 AD, the Second General Council of Constantinople decreed: 'We think that God the Word was united to the flesh, each of the two natures remaining what it is.
This is why Christ is one, God and man; the same, consubstantial (homoousios) with the father as to the divinity and consubstantial with us as to the humanity.' 430, N.D.620/8). It is intriguing to consider that one letter in a word can make a great difference. Arianism, one of the most devastating heresies to befall the Church, focussed on the difference of one letter in one word.
As can be seen from the above quotation the Greek word homoousios means that Jesus is 'one in substance (i.e. Nature)' with the Father; clearly being God as the Father is God. The Arian heretics, on the other hand, wanted the word homoiousios. By inserting the mere letter 'i' into the word, its Greek meaning became 'similar in substance' with the Father (homo = same, homoi = similar). This denied the certainty of Christ's divinity.
Incidentally, the Arian heresy, that Jesus was not eternal God, but only a creature made out of nothing, swept through the entire Church in the fourth century, affecting in one way or another almost every Catholic, lay, priest and Bishop. The Council of Nicea (325), attended by some 220 bishops, condemned this heresy and gave us the creed which is now called the Nicene Creed.
Did Jesus Know He was God? A belief which is occasionally challenged, even today, is that Jesus knew that He was God.
Some argue that Jesus grew in the knowledge that He was God, but was not born knowing this. As can be seen from the argument above about Jesus being truly and fully God from His conception, since Jesus was truly God knowing all things, He must have been born knowing all things, including that He is God. If He were born not knowing this, then He could not be God. The only real objection to this belief is based on the human idea that a baby is born knowing virtually nothing. How, people ask, could Jesus be a baby and yet know that He is God? The answer is that it is just as easy for God to be a baby as it is for Him to be an adult man. In each case, the infinite God takes on a limited, weak human nature at the same time that He is infinite God.
Pope Pius XII taught, in his Encyclical Mystici Corporis ('The Mystical Body' - 1943): 'By means of the Beatific Vision (the sight of God in Heaven), which He enjoyed from the time when he was received into the womb of the Mother of God, He has for ever and continuously had present to Him all the members of His mystical Body, and embraced them with His saving love.' In other words Jesus possessed, in His human soul, the same immediate vision of God which all the saints and angels in heaven have.
This means that Jesus was, at the same time, both a pilgrim on earth like us and a possessor of the immediate vision of God. Even His human nature is endowed with an abundance of supernatural gifts. He knows all things - past, present and future. Jesus, throughout the Gospels, claimed to be the Son of God.
When He spoke of His relation to God He said 'My Father' (Matthew 25:34 and 26:29; Luke 2:49 and 24:49; John 20:17.) When He spoke of the disciples' relation to God, He said 'Your Father'. Even when teaching the 'Our Father', He told the disciples how they were to pray to the Father (Matthew 6:9).
Jesus knew that He was sublime over all creatures, men and angels. He transcends the Prophets and Kings of the Old Testament (Matthew 12:41). The angels are His servants. They appear and minister to Him (Matthew 4:11, Mark 1:13). In Matthew 23:34 and Luke 11:49, He asserts of Himself what in the Old Testament is said of Yahweh, making Himself equal to God. He describes Himself as the 'Lord of the Sabbath' (Matthew 12:8, Mark 2:28, Luke 6:5) There can be no doubt, from a reading of the gospels and study of the Church's interpretation of these passages. Jesus clearly claims to be God.
Jesus claims to be God: Mt16:13ff 'Who do, people say I am?Who do you say I am? Blessed are you.' Mt 26:63ff ' Caiaphas: 'I adjure you by the Living God that you tell us if you are the Christ the Son of God. Jesus said: Thou hast said it. And you shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of the power of God.'
Jn 19:7 The Jews said: 'He ought to die because He made himself the Son of God.' Lk 10:22 He claimed equality with God. 'All things are given to me by my father; no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom He chooses to reveal Him.' Mt 25:31 He claimed to sit in judgement on all mankind. 'The son of Man will come in His majesty and all the angels with Him.
And all the nations shall be gathered together before Him, and He shall separate them one from another.' Mt 5:22 'You have heard it said. But now I say to you.'
10:30-33 'I and the Father are one' The Jews were about to stone Him because 'being a Man He made Himself God.' Jn 5:17-21 'He said God was His Father, making himself equal to God.' Jn 5:18 to Nicodemus. 'He who does not believe, believes not in the name of the only begotten Son of God.' A Deeper Understanding When we understand the two natures of Jesus we can come to a deeper personal understanding of Him and commitment to Him in prayer and sacrifice. We can see how God could truly die for us, the greatest act of self-giving any person can make. Yet we know that God cannot die; that it was only after becoming man that Christ was able to die.
In fact it was in order to die for us that God did become man. On the other hand, it is as God that Jesus is also the Creator of the Universe. He is the unique personal union (Hypostatic Union) of God and man intimately bound supernaturally and mystically. The perfect man upon whom to base our lives. Yet He is a real person who experienced human life, suffering and death and is thus able to share our human pain and worries. Listening to a cassette tape about the Blessed Eucharist recently I was struck by the story told by a American speaker.
He asked his audience what they would do if they heard on the six o'clock news that Jesus was going to come to their neighbourhood that night. He would actually be out in the street just down from their home. Naturally they would race out to enjoy the privilege of seeing Him and talking to Him.
We who believe in the divinity of Christ have that unique privilege. We know that although Christ is spiritually present as God everywhere around us, He is also physically present nearby in His Body and Blood, God and man. In every tabernacle in every Catholic Church in the world, this same infinite, eternal, omnipotent and all-loving God/man is really physically present just as He was after the Resurrection.
He is available to us. We can enter His physical presence and be as close to him as the Apostles were during His life. Whereas they saw Him with their eyes, we can see Him with the eyes of faith.
We need only enter a Catholic Church and we enter the physical presence of the mighty king, Lord of the Universe who lived as a humble village carpenter, suffered, died and rose again for us. Perhaps we could visit Him more often. Taken from 'The Catholic (Universal) Catechism', # 5: Jesus Christ, the Person, by Gerard Gaskin, Diocesan Director of Religious Education, Diocese of Wagga Wagga, Australia.
Babaji was known as a great saint — a highly realized soul with all the spiritual powers. Writing about Baba, Swami Vijayananda, a disciple of Anandamayi Ma, called him “a yogi whose name radiates an aura of mystery and miracle.” We saw many of his miracles coming one after another; they continue even now.
They are exciting, often entertaining, but sometimes disturbing. Once at Kainchi, after what had been for me a very painful experience, I had to tell him that I was not interested in his miracles; he was Baba, and that was enough for me. His acceptance came in the form of one of his ineffable smiles.
Positive Human Qualities
So far as the mysteries are concerned, not only have I not been able to solve any of them, but they have become more mysterious day-by-day. One morning Babaji was in his small room in Kainchi. A sadhu with a half-dozen of his disciples came for Baba’s darshan. I took them to his room. After they had taken their seat, Babaji said, “This is Mahant Digvijaynath, a great saint.
Bow at his feet.” When another person came, Babaji made him bow as well. Babaji smiled and asked people to bow low to the saint instead of touching his own feet.
But when the third one came and Babaji repeated his words, the Mahant stood up and clasping Babaji’s feet, with tears in his eyes, said, “Baba, you are the saint of saints sitting before us, and you are making people touch my feet, taking me to be a saint.” “A saint can be known only by one who himself is a saint.” That is what has been said by the wise. So we cannot have — at least speaking for myself — any pretension of knowing Babaji, the great saint. In the Bhagavat Gita we learn that a saint is a person with a dual personality — the divine and the human. Many of us have seen the human person in Babaji, but that doesn’t mean that we can claim to have seen the divine person in him.
In a saint, the divine person is encased in the human frame but is not entirely identical. The bottom of the human and the top of the divine stand far apart from each other. There is a co-mingling in the inner space, and in noble human beings, some of the divine qualities merge entirely with their human qualities, destroying all distinction between human and divine. I am saying this about Baba from my own experience of him. I have never seeing him wearing his divine crown, but I have always seen his divine qualities of love and compassion. He was always ready and alert to mitigate the sufferings of the helpless by taking their pains upon himself. His body became a honeycomb of diseases.
This was the price he had to pay for his compassion and his readiness to help. Every individual suffers from some kind of physical and mental pain. But with many, hunger or disease of body or mind become acute. One of Babaji’s visible methods of helping people was by feeding the hungry, arranging medical treatment for the sick, and giving money and materials to the helpless. Wifi adapter for macbook pro. The brief interlude of his life in the ashrams was spent in caring for the hungry and curing the sick, like the head of a household busy with his large family. Those who visited his ashrams, especially Kainchi, saw how prasad was being served throughout the day to all and sundry without any discrimination.
For some it was prasad, an auspicious token of spiritual elevation, but for many more it was a whole meal for the stomach. Seeing that food was being given in such large amounts, some persons complained that the food was being wasted.
Babaji was unrelenting and continued to ask us to give in plenty. “Give more, give more, Dada.” No doubt Babaji would never allow food to be wasted or abused, but his idea of abuse and waste was different from ours, so the bhandara continued, giving food to the needy. Some persons have suggested that one of the reasons for his – choice of Kainchi and Bhumiadhar for ashrams was to be in direct contact with the helpless — particularly the shilpakars, the forsaken ones. They fell easy victim to the allurements of the preachers who approached them with loaves of white bread, biscuits, etc. After several bhandaras at Bhumiadhar, he said one day, “Dada, the preachers do not come anymore because they have seen that their ‘double rotf (white bread) and biscuits cannot fight with your puri and halwa.”There were also other methods of mitigating the sufferings and hardships of the people coming to him. They were seldom done in the public gaze, but they were going on every day. Some poor farmer would come and say, “Out of my one pair of bullocks, which is my only source of living, one has died and I have no money to purchase another.” An old woman would come and say, “My daughter has reached marriageable age, but I have no money to pay for her marriage.” Another comes with his tale, “My brother is suffering from tuberculosis and I have no money for his treatment.” Such things would go on all the time. Few would leave disappointed.
It was never publicized, but help was always coming from him in some form or other. Excerpt from The Near and the Dear by Dada Mukerjee.