Two Sides Of A Coin
First of all, my apologies for not being able to make it here last week. We were all ready to make the drive back to Ohio when the snow storm hit and we had to postpone. I hope you were all able to make up for the loss of another Sunday Mass, perhaps by meditating a little on last week’s Gospel. That was of course the memorable account of how our Lord, after fasting forty days and nights in the wilderness was tempted by the devil. It was the first Sunday in Lent and the Church recounted this story to remind us of many things—the importance of fasting being the most obvious, plus of course the need to resist temptations, especially during this holy season when we are called upon to sacrifice things we normally enjoy. There are other lessons hidden beneath the surface of these events. If we delve a little more deeply into that whole idea of our Lord being tempted, one of those lessons is that our Lord Jesus Christ was not just the Son of God—he was also a man. As God he could not be tempted—it is impossible for God to contemplate doing something evil. What after all is evil, if not an offense against God? And how could God be tempted to do something that would offend himself? Only men, with their free will, can possibly choose to offend God, and of course, we do so, time after time, to the peril of our eternal souls.
Christ, the Son of God, must therefore be a man precisely because he was tempted. He was hungry after his forty-day fast, and like us when we are hungry, he wanted to eat. That’s human nature. And if he did have something to eat after those forty days, it would not be wrong, it would not offend God. However, in the context that Satan prepared for him, it would have been a very serious mortal sin indeed. “Use your powers,” whispers Satan, “change this stone into bread so you can eat.” For Christ to follow the instigation of the Devil and make a divine intervention for his own benefit, to satisfy his own hunger, would have made a total mockery of those very divine powers he would later use to perform many miracles for the benefit of others, not least of which was the miracle of his Resurrection. Rising from the dead was no party trick conjured up because he didn’t want to be dead anymore. It was the ultimate miracle, designed to prove his divinity and his victory over death and sin, to confirm our faith. To suspend the laws of nature by changing a stone into bread, just because he felt a bit peckish, would have cheapened his whole mission in this world—he dwelt amongst us not for his own benefit but for ours. And he would never intervene in the workings of nature simply because he can. He knew, even as a man, that this was a temptation from the Devil, and one that he must not give in to.
And yet he was hungry. And he was tempted. He was indeed a man, just like the rest of us, and capable, as a man, of misusing his own free will to commit sin. Instead, he used his free will to resist the temptation, to refuse an action that would have offended his Father in heaven. He could have committed a sin, but he did not. And while this is a wonderful example for us to follow whenever we are tempted, the point I’d like to make today is that it showed he was a man. He had a human nature.
The disciples knew he was a man. He walked, talked, ate and drank, slept and reasoned—all the things they did and we do. They knew of course that he was different from them in many ways—the sensational miracles he performed, the healing, the driving out of demons, and even the profound insights of his teaching, all showed the disciples that here was a very different kind of man. When our Lord told Peter to let down his nets after fishing all night without catching anything, and Peter saw the vast quantity of fish he then caught, he knelt before our Lord and begged him to leave him as he, Peter, was a sinful man and unworthy to stand in the presence of a man who was sinless.
As time passed, these many miracles of Christ convinced the disciples that there was more to our Lord than mere human nature. Jesus, however, knew that this vague and superficial intuition would be completely dashed the moment they saw him crucified. He himself knew that he was a man, and like all men, must surely die. But he did not want his death to be a source of scandal to his disciples, causing them to lose their faith in him. Hence, before he gave himself up to this death on the cross, he allowed three of these disciples to witness something far beyond any miracle he had performed, something so incredibly wondrous that they would know for certain that he was more than just a man. A week after we are shown the humanity of our Lord in his temptations, on this Second Sunday in Lent the Church chooses to show us his divinity, by placing before us the miracle of his Transfiguration. He is transfigured, changed in appearance, from something merely human, to something unmistakably divine. His face “shined as the sun and his raiment was white as the snow.” The three disciples fell to the ground at the sight, in awe at what they beheld. And then there appeared a bright cloud in the heavens, overshadowing them, and they heard a voice solemnly declaring: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him.” As if what they saw was not enough, this voice confirmed what they must already have guessed—that this was indeed the Son of God. Not just a man, but God himself. And the disciples “fell on their faces and were sore afraid.”
On the first and second Sundays of Lent therefore, we are given, side by side, the two natures of Christ. That he was a man we have no trouble understanding, because we are men. That he is God, we can also understand, although less fully—God has revealed to us all we need to know about God. What we could not figure out from reason alone, our faith in God’s revelations through Scripture and the traditional teaching of the Church fills in the rest. It’s certainly not everything there is to know about God, but it’s all we need to know for now as we see through a glass darkly in this life. There are further mysteries that are beyond the power of the human mind to understand. That Christ is man and that Christ is at the same time God is one such mystery. Two natures in one Person.
Everything else we deal with in life has only one nature. A rock, a tree, an insect, even something as complicated as a woman, has only one nature. God himself has only one nature, the nature of God-ness, divinity. Only our Lord Jesus Christ has more than one nature, two to be specific, human and divine. He took his divine nature from his divine Father, God the Father. And of course, he took his human nature from his human mother Mary.
We might not be able to wrap our minds around this mystery, but we can at least grasp the logic behind it. The reason for these two natures is clear. A human nature with free will was essential for our Redemption. Without it, our Lord could not have freely chosen to follow the will of his Father in heaven, he could not have died for our sins. Our blessed Lord was indeed the Son of Man, and often referred to himself as such.
And yet, to be a mere man was not enough. The Jewish sacrifices of lambs and goat and heifers were totally unsatisfactory to make reparation for the sins of man against an infinite divine Being. But for that matter, the blood of a finite human being was equally insufficient when weighed against even a single sin against an infinite God. Man might be God’s greatest creation, but by himself he was still incapable of making satisfaction for even one sin. Thus, Christ’s divine nature played an essential role in our Redemption. He was man, so he could suffer death, he could be immolated on the Cross as a victim sacrificed for our sins. But in being God, Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, he was able to make that sacrifice equal in scale to the iniquities for which it had to be made. The scales of justice were finally balanced, infinite on both sides, crime and punishment in perfect equilibrium. And of course, he could not be vanquished by mortality. Through his Resurrection he was able to confirm once and for all his divine nature and prove to us that death is no more than a portal to eternity.
Two natures, human and divine. For our redemption to be accomplished, for adequate reparation to be made for our sins, both natures were required in the victim of that sacrifice, the nature that could die for us, and the nature that could rise again from the dead and open the gates of heaven—again, for us! In the course of two Sundays, we have been privileged to witness each in turn of our Lord’s two natures. Our response must be to adore him, thanking him for his great gift of our Redemption purchased at such an infinitely high price, and then renewing our allegiance and pledging to serve him without fear.