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O Marvelous Exchange!
This is the mystery of Christmas in a nutshell: “O admirabile commercium: O marvelous exchange! Man’s Creator has become man, born of a virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity” (Catechism of the Catholic Church §526).
For this mystery St. Paul uses this language of Christ’s substitution, “…yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor 5:21).
Saints and theologians gladly and fruitfully delved into this mystery:
• “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God” (Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 3.19.1).
• “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God” (Athanasius, De Incarnatione §54.3).
• “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods” (Thomas Aquinas, Opusculum §57.1-4)
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This deification (a.k.a. divinization or theosis) is what Christian faith promises: to adopt creatures into the Triune life of God, to make men and women by grace what Jesus Christ is by nature, namely, a beloved child of the same heavenly Father. Just as in Christ God took on human attributes, in Christ humans can now take on the divine qualities of mercy, love, insight, incorruptibility and immortality.
We face almost daily terrible news that exposes the brokenness of humanity: war, violence, racism, dehumanizing poverty etc. That is why we need to spend this Christmas prayerfully contemplating this central Christmas truth: God has visibly become one of us in order that we may live like God. God is born in time so we can be reborn in eternity, the Son of God becomes the Son of Man, so men and women can become children of the one same Father in heaven. Only deep unity with Christ will keep the human heart from eternally fragmenting. The body of Christ is born from Mary, is continued in Mother Church’s Holy Eucharist, and is to be made manifest mystically in each of us as we gaze upon the Crib of Bethlehem.
Merry Christmas!
Fr. Paul D. Lee