In AD 451, the Council of Chalcedon proclaimed that the Church believes Jesus is truly human and truly God, two natures, one divine person. This doctrine doesn’t mean Jesus is half God and half human or sometimes God and sometimes human. It means Jesus is 100% human and 100% divine. Many people find believing Jesus is divine easier than that he is human, but the doctrine holds both are true.
We humans are mystery to ourselves. We can’t explain where we come from, why we are here, where we are going, but we have an infinite capacity to wonder the questions. We are open at the heart of our being to transcending ourselves, to relationship with God.
In his humanity Jesus is like us. He must reflect to discover who he is. He is born of Mary and grows in grace and wisdom. He gets interested in God’s business as a teen talking with teachers in the temple. He wrestles with temptation. He prays that the cup of suffering pass from him.
Jesus has feelings; he weeps when he finds Lazarus dead. He sometimes finds his disciples’ lack of comprehension frustrating. He dies powerless on the cross, having to entrust himself to God as every other human must.
Jesus is also God’s Son, revealing in his every word and action what God is like and what his relationship with God is. Jesus puts a human face on the mystery of God. He reveals that God is love. He heals people who are sick and forgives people who are broken and estranged from others. He frees people who have lost themselves to unholy drives and addictions. He reaches out to the poor, the lost, the excluded, and the forgotten.
Jesus lives in relationship with God. The Spirit fills him and drives him to show us God present as one of us. Jesus takes time alone to be in communion with God and gathers with his community to worship God on Sabbath.
The Second Vatican Council describes beautifully the union of the divine and human natures in the Son. “For by his incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every human. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, acted by human choice, and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin” (Gaudium et Spes, #22).
Did Jesus know he was God’s Son? This is a modern question. To us a person is a self, an ego, a conscious center, an I with feelings and memories. At Chalcedon, the bishops used the Greek word hypostasis for person. It did not mean person in our sense of the word but rather the root or underlying reality. The council insisted the Son of God assumed a human nature in Jesus.
A few years ago singer Joan Osborne raised questions about God that people heard on their radios, in stores and elevators.
What if God was one of us, a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home?
The mystery of the incarnation says God is one of us. Because God became human in Jesus, we see the holy in every slob, in ourselves. This mystery gives human beings great dignity. For as one of us, Jesus revealed our capacity for knowing and loving God and knowing and loving one another.
In the Old Testament the prophets announced that the Spirit of the Lord would rest on the hoped-for messiah for his saving mission.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #1286