Albin Varakukalayil CST
To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God (Jn.1:12). This is the central message that the incarnation and the feast of Christmas gives the humanity. St. John presents the incarnation of Logos as man as the privilege given to man to become the children of God. It is grace and power given to man to rise above from his life situations and to transcend his ways to the level of God’s children. Thus, Christmas assures the human being that their relationship with God is a filial relationship. God restored the status of man as the sons of God, which was lost by his fall, through the incarnation of Logos. And St. Paul says,
Karl Rahner, the greatest theologian of the twentieth century, also speaks of the transcendental notion of human being which is made possible through the greatest mystery of incarnation. According to Rahner human spirit is unlimitedly transcendental. Humankind’s basic orientation is toward absolute mystery. The radical openness to the mystery of God is a permanent quality of human being as spiritual subjects. Karl Rahner in his Theological Investigations says, “Man is a Christ-centred being, i.e. his being possesses an ontic and spiritual-personal capacity for communicating with Jesus Christ in whom God has forever made the countenance of a man his own and has opened the reality of man, with an unsurpassable finality, in the direction of God; only thus was the real possibility of a direct communication of all men with God established with finality. Hence we can only speak ultimately of God by engaging … in anthropology; and ultimately any information about anthropology … can be given only when we engage in theology about God and from God.” Human being’s transcendental openness to the Absolute mystery called God is made possible through the self-manifestation of God through Incarnation. So the transcendental openness of man is linked to the Christian idea of Revelation, both in grace and in history, which was culminated in the revelation in the Christ-event where the Word of God became flesh. For Rahner, revelation “is the definitive self-giving of God. And this self-communication of God, latent in grace, becomes explicitly known in the historical event of Christ,” i.e., incarnation of Logos.
Human beings by creation is a unique creature. And Rahner says that “human person, though lives in the world, is of a higher order of reality, i.e., supernatural existential.” Human person within him or her has the potency for self-transcendence towards God, the ultimate mystery of life. human spirit is unlimitedly transcendental. This transcendental notion is inherent in every person and his ore activities. This ever present, original orientation towards God constitutes the permanent ground out of which the more systematic knowledge of God arises. Humans have a primal and radical orientation towards the absolute mystery who is God. The unlimited horizon beyond our limited experience is the absolute mystery and this is what constitutes our fundamental experience of God. It was made evident and clear at the time of Incarnation. According to Rahner matter and spirit have a great deal in common. Matter has the capacity to become more, to initiate a leap into something higher. And he calls it an A Priori Doctrine of the God-Man. It was through the mystery of incarnation that the mystery of the Triune God is made available to us.
When the Logos assumed human nature, humanity itself has reached the point towards which it was tending by virtue of its transcendental orientation towards the infinite mystery. “The incarnation constitutes the highest actualization of the essence of humanity, since human nature possesses an obediential potency for the hypostatic union.” Despite the fact that God is unchangeable, the Logos, without a change in itself, assumed a created reality that does undergo change, i.e., the human nature of Jesus. The mystery of incarnation unfolds the truth that God can become something new in something else. He can give himself to what is not God and have his own history in the other as his very own history. Thus, the mystery of incarnation throws light into the almost infinite perfectibility of human nature. It also denotes the boundless desire of God to share His life with rational creatures.
Through the mystery of incarnation, through the Logos, God has the real possibility of offering his very self to us in our history. By sharing his very self, God gave the human beings the possibility to become the Children of God. It is an invitation to take part in the divinity of God. It gave us the possibility to rise above the human fragilities and human weaknesses and to transcend our human nature into the divine nature. This transcendence is the human openness to God perpetually initiated by God in the act of creation. And it is a movement towards God.
The transcendence notion of human beings made possible through the incarnation of Logos invites us to respond to this notion as an act of faith. The one who rejects this supernatural vocation stands with his own being in the shadow of doom. The transcendental notion of human being is God’s gratuitous grace that elevated man to a higher level of existence. It is an invitation to respond positively. It is grace that makes a man so special in this world. Thus, the incarnation of Logos made the human beings special in the world. It made us the children of God. What we need to do is to become the hearer of Logos and to believe in him.
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