In our Catholic profession of faith we profess our belief that the Word of God who was from the beginning with God became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus is the Incarnation of the Word, the Son of God who comes to dwell among us and share our human existence. The Catechism tells us that Jesus “became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.” (CCC 464) Jesus Christ is not partly God and partly man but is fully God and fully man. In the liturgy we pray in preface number seven of Sundays of Ordinary time that God sent Jesus the Son into the world as “one like ourselves, though free from sin.” In the fourth Eucharistic prayer we say, “born of the Virgin Mary, a man like us in all things but sin.” The mystery of the Incarnation is a difficult mystery for us to truly understand and believe. Do we truly relate to Jesus as “one like ourselves”? In our human tendencies we can see Jesus as being a very special being who is God and has the special power of God and so we tend to think that Jesus is truly God who is only hiding in a human form among us. We may also err on the other side and see Jesus as a human being who was born like us in the world and so we begin to think of him as just a really good example of a human being.

Does Jesus truly share our limited nature as a human being in all things but sin? The gospel story in Matthew, chapter 14, 22-33, where Jesus comes to the disciples “walking on the sea” makes it hard for us to see Jesus as “one like us in all things.” In this gospel, we see Jesus walking across the waters of the Sea of Galilee. How can he do that and still be “one like us”? Can we also walk on water? We see the disciples proclaim that Jesus is the Son of God. Are we also sons of God? Clearly Jesus calls Peter to come to him over the waters and for a little time Peter is truly walking on water. When he begins to doubt and his faith fails him then he starts to sink beneath the waves. We see in this story that we could walk upon the stormy waters of life if we had sufficient faith. The catechism also tells us, “The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature”: “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.” “For the son of God became man so that we might become God.”” (CCC 460)

Jesus shows us what God had originally intended for human persons if they could share more perfectly in the divine nature and enjoy a more perfect communion with God. Jesus does not violate our human nature, rather he perfects our human nature and shows us what we would be capable of if we did not limit ourselves through fear, doubt, sin and lack of faith. If we could live in perfect communion with the Father and have perfect faith in the power of God to work in us then we also could accomplish the things that Jesus accomplishes. Everything that Jesus does is done according to his human nature but a human nature that partakes in the divine nature through God’s grace and power through a perfect communion of faith in prayer. We also could heal the sick, raise the dead and walk on water if only we had faith. We fail to be all that we could be because we are men “of little faith”. Indeed Jesus tells his disciples that they will do all the things that he does as a human person when they believe and cooperate with the Spirit of God that is given to them. “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.” (Jn 14,12)

We are our own greatest limitation. Imagine what we could do if we drew more fully on the power of God in our lives. Even death would have no power over us. When we think of Jesus as having special powers we put distance between ourselves and God. God sent Jesus into the world to remove that distance and to heal us from the pain, fear, woundedness and doubt that separate us from God. Jesus is truly “one like us” and we are meant to be more perfectly one like him.