1/17.2 Perfect God and perfect Man. He became a child so that we could go to him without fear. Special relationships with Jesus.

Jesus came to us from the Father, but he was born for us of a woman: when the time had fully come God sent forth his Son, born of woman,[246] says St Paul. The prophets announce that the Messiah will come down from heaven like rain and grow from the earth like a seed.[247] He will be mighty God and, at the same time, a child, a son.[248] I am from above,[249] Jesus says of himself; at the same time he is born from the seed of David:[250] there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots.[251] He will be born on earth, on this earth of ours.

In the Gospel for the Mass of Christmas Eve we read the human genealogy of Jesus.[252] The Holy Spirit wants to show us how the Messiah is related to one family and one people, and through them to the whole of humanity. In her womb, Mary shared her own blood with Jesus, the blood of Adam, of Phares, of Solomon.

The Word of God became flesh and dwelt amongst us;[253] he became man, but that does not mean that he stopped being God. Jesus Christ is perfect man and perfect God.

When, after his Resurrection, Our Lord miraculously entered through closed doors and appeared so inexplicably, a disciple might have thought that Jesus was a kind of spirit, so he himself dispelled such doubts for ever. He said to them: Handle me and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.[254] And then they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them. John was there and, as on so many other occasions, saw him eat. After that he could never lose his overwhelming certainty of that flesh which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands.[255]

God became man in Mary’s womb. He did not suddenly appear on earth like a heavenly vision, but became a real man like us, taking our human nature in the pure womb of a woman. In this way his eternal generation (his divinity, the pre existence of the Word) is distinguished from his birth in time. Jesus in his divinity is mysteriously begotten, not made, by the Father through all eternity. In his humanity, however, he was born, ‘was made’ from the Blessed Virgin Mary at one definite moment in human history. Because of this, the Blessed Virgin, being the Mother of Jesus Christ, who is God, is truly the Mother of God, as the Council of Ephesus defined as a Dogma of the Faith.[256]

We look at the baby who will be born in a few days in Bethlehem of Judaea, and we know very well that he is the key, the centre and the purpose of the whole of man’s history.[257] On this child depends our whole existence, on earth and in heaven. And he wants us to treat him with friendship and complete confidence. He became so small in order that we should not be afraid to come close to him.