how beautiful...

Today I read something, and learned something, beautiful.

As Christians, we learn and come to believe that it is only through Jesus that we can be restored to God's friendship, and become - once again - children of our Father.

But what does this mean, really?  It is easy to forget from time to time that Jesus was a man, a human being, like you and me.  Yes, he is God - but he is also human, in the deepest sense.  John Paul II observed: "God is behind man!  For God has become man!"  How mysterious this is, and how difficult to understand.  Is it true, John Paul, that - as you have said - "Jesus Christ is the human face of God, and the divine face of man"?

How mysterious indeed, this Incarnation of God; and yet how amazing, that God desires to share his Life and Spirit with us, in and through this Incarnation, this Word Made Flesh - Jesus.  One part of the Eucharist prayer makes this profound reality felt with these words: "By the mingling of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity."

How important it truly is, then, to remember this Incarnation.  Without it, we could not even be "Christians" - and what is worse: without the Incarnation, we could not have any hope to be restored to God's friendship, or to his Fatherhood.  The weight that rests on Jesus' shoulders, who was a man, speaks volumes to us, or at least it should.  It is also in Jesus that we come to see an objective form of true beauty, found in this man, who is also God.

Adam, a character in one of Karol Wotyla's plays (Our God's Brother), makes this discovery, and in turn has a reaction and a conversion that belongs to us all who by name call ourselves "Christian":

"You have toiled in every one of them.
You are deadly tired.
They have exhausted You.
This is called Charity.
But with all this You have remained beautiful.
The most beautiful of the sons of men.
Such beauty was never repeated again.
Oh what a difficult beauty, how hard.
Such beauty is called charity."