Baptist Minister Who Prays for Local Police Dept. Presides at His Father's Funeral via Teleconference

VPD Staff Laura Donovan, SPSV Class of 2001, at Funeral of Former Police Officer & VPD Volunteer, Owen Johnston, at Friendship Baptist Church

Intro. to 2 Natures of Jesus: Homily #222 [Christology 101]

 (5pm Mass - audio only) #222b

Homily #222: Intro to the Two Natures of Jesus Christ [Christology 101]

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

January 15, 2023

12pm & 5 p.m. Masses

by Deacon Dennis Purificacion

[hand over eyes, looking up]  “Look, up in the sky.  It’s a bird.  It’s a plane.  It’s Superman!”

Many of us grew up with stories of this fictional red-caped superhero.  He belonged to two worlds: The planet Earth & the planet Krypton.

On planet Earth, his human parents called him Clark Kent on a farm in Kansas.  On planet Krypton, he was called the son of Jor-El before Krypton was destroyed.

You can say that he had TWO NATURES but was ONE PERSON.  He was not two persons; he did not have one nature.  Rather, he had 2 natures but was 1 person.

Superman was human in every way with human titles like “mild-mannered reporter at the newspaper Daily Planet” and super-human titles like “Man of Steel” and “faster than a speeding bullet”.  His weakness was Kryptonite.

This one Person with these 2 natures helps us understand today’s Gospel.  To understand what Jesus did for the world, we need to know who he is.

On this 2^nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, we heard John the Baptist describe Jesus, just like you are hearing me describe Superman.  But whereas Superman is not real, Jesus is real.

Jesus has 2 NATURES but is 1 PERSON 

For the human nature of Jesus, he grew up in a carpenter’s shop in Nazareth.  For his divine nature, Jesus is the Eternal Word of God, the 2^nd Person of the Blessed Trinity, who became flesh, who became one of us.  The Creator becomes part of His Creation.

This union of the human and the divine natures in one person is a Hypo-Static Union.  Jesus was not two persons; he did not have one nature.  Rather, Jesus has 2 nature (human and divine) and he was 1 person.

As we heard today, his titles include “Lamb of God” and “Son of God.”

Interestingly, John the Baptist affirms the humanity and divinity of Jesus in the same sentence, “A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of men” and then John said, because Jesus “existed before me.”  Remember, John the Baptist is physically older than Jesus by a few months.  Yet John the Baptist testified to not only Jesus’s humanity but also Jesus’s divinity.  Jesus is God. Jesus existed before John.  Jesus is human like us in every way except sin.

Jesus was so humble, he identified with us sinners by being baptized by John.  Jesus who created us was baptized with water by creation.  The soldier, John, baptizes his King, Jesus.

God the Father, the 1^st Person of the Blessed Trinity, revealed his Son, the 2^nd Person of the Trinity.  The third Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Spirit came down like a dove to rest on Jesus.

[Just like the Trinity was revealed with the 3 wise men (Caspiar, Melchior and Balthasar) last week at the Epiphany, so too at the Baptism of Jesus the Trinity was revealed.]

Jesus is the only and unique Son of God.  I like to say that if God ever had a weakness, if the divinity of Jesus Christ ever had any weakness, if God ever had a kryptonite.  God’s kryptonite is his great mercy.

God’s love for you is so great, he so wants you to be with Him happy forever in eternity.   Even when we say no to Him with not just the Original Sin and our Personal Sins, God still fights for us by sending His only Son, the eternally begotten Son of God.  He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.  Blessed are you called to this!

God is the REAL superman who saves the world.  God died for you.  And saved you, in every way that a person can be saved.  We are not just a number to God.  We are more than just a Social Security Number paying taxes, a cog in the economy, a mere statistic.  We are more than our failures and our sins.  "We are the sum of the Father's love for us!"  We are more than how many people like our Instagram and Facebook and YouTube posts.  As long as God is the only that press that “like” button we have on social media of our souls, that’s all that matters, baby!  [if time, repeat for “love” “cry” “care”]

[To participate in God’s divine life…]  And that’s why he gives us Baptism.  At our baptism, we are united to the Father, Son and Spirit.  Baptism is God’s “like” on our social media page of our soul.  Not only is Original Sin washed away, but something greater replaces the filth of sin in the human soul.  Sanctifying Grace.  At baptism, you become an adopted son of God (lower case s) and an adopted daughter of God (lower case d).  Jesus is “capital S” Son of God.  We are children of God by nature at creation and rejected God with Original Sin and our personal sins.  But we are now a newly adopted creation.  As the Fathers of the Church say, we are divinized!  In a sense, we take on a 2^nd nature in union with Jesus.   We become like Christ in a life and death like His.  While mortal sin kills the life of the Trinity in our souls, by contrast prayer and the Sacraments and service grow the life of the Trinity in our souls.

Our task, then, isn’t just to stand back and admired in awe the real Superman Jesus, but to join in the person and work of Jesus.  Our task isn’t just to hear that Jesus is the Lamb of God and Son of God at church.  You and I shared in the mission to be real heroes of God through our Baptism.  As I close here, that is the consciousness to remind us: to be baptized members of the Church.

YOU are the light of the world!  In the First Reading today, it is written in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, “I will make YOU a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth.”  Don’t just watch Superman on TV and hear people say, “It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!”  Don’t just watch superheroes on the movie screen.  BE the superhero that God meant you to be. 

[In today’s Second Reading, St. Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Church in Corinth: Be holy!  It may as well have been a letter of St. Paul to the Church in Vallejo.  Be holy!  Not with the “S” on your chest, but with the Baptism on your heart, with the Spirit that hovered over you at Confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist that unites our humanity with divinity, where God’s blood courses through our veins, and his body gives us the source of our superpowers!  Let our kryptonite be the mercy of Jesus that we receive.  Let our weakness for others be a life of service and virtue.

It’s said that Benedict XVI’s last words before he died were, “Jesus, I love you.”  Let us too give our entire lives for love of Jesus.

[hand over eyes, looking up]   Look!  Up in the sky… the sky of the Cross. 

It’s the Lamb of God.

It’s the Son of God. 

It’s Jesus Christ!