Friday, August 15, 2008

The Incarnation (Romano Guardini)

"Revelation shows that the merely unitarian God found in post-Christian Judaism, in Islam, and throughout the modern consciousness does not exist. At the heart of that mystery which the Church expresses in her teaching of the trinity of persons in the unity of life stands the God of Revelation…Son of God become man – not only descended to inhabit a human frame, but ‘become’ man – literally; and in order that no possible doubt arise…John specifies sharply: Christ “was made flesh.” Only in the flesh, not in the bare spirit, can destiny and history come into being; this is a fact to which we shall often return. God descended to us in the person of the Savior, Redeemer, in order to have a destiny, to become history. Through the Incarnation, the founder of the new history stepped into our midst. With his coming, all that had been before fell into its historical place “before the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ,” anticipating or preparing for that hour; all that was to be, faced the fundamental choice between acceptance and rejection of the Incarnation. He “dwelt among us,” “pitched his tent among us,” as one translation words it. “Tent” of the Logos – what is this but Christ’s body: God’s holy pavilion among men, the original tabernacle of the Lord in our Midst…Somewhere between that eternal beginning and the temporal life in the flesh lies the mystery of the Incarnation” – From “The Lord” by Romano Guardini

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