What Catholics Believe
A Pocket Catechism for the Year of Faith
January 11, 2013 Pittsburgh Catholic
Jesus Christ is truly man and truly God
Who is Jesus?
Jesus is the eternal Son of God, the second person of the holy Trinity, who came into the
world to save us from sin and show us the way to heaven. Jesus is true God and true man.
How was Jesus born into this world?
By the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus became man and was born to the Virgin Mary.
When God became man, he became our brother.
How did Jesus live?
Jesus worked, studied and prayed as we all must do. He lived with his parents, Mary and
Joseph, as an obedient and loving son.
Meditation
The astounding truth at the very heart of Christianity is this: that God became one of us.
As Scripture puts it: "The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us, and we
saw his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). It
is the "mystery of the Incarnation": that, in Jesus, God became man, divine love would
walk among us and be one of us.
The Incarnation describes this singular and extraordinary belief fundamental to a Catholic
understanding of Jesus. Jesus is truly man and, at one and the same time, he is truly God.
To deny that Jesus is truly and fully man is to miss the full glory of the Incarnation: He is
one of us. He worked with human hands, loved with a human heart, thought with a
human mind. He got cold, he got hungry, he got thirsty. He laughed, he cried, he enjoyed
the company of friends. He could know loneliness.
But to understand Jesus only as a man is to profoundly -- astoundingly -- understate the
miracle of the Incarnation and miss the entire meaning of the New Testament. Seeing
Jesus as just a wise prophet, a benign teacher of the serene life or a comforting uncle,
creates an image that demands no conversion, an image that doesn't make us profoundly
change how we view ourselves, our world and our faith.
Prayer
An Act of Faith
O my God, I firmly believe that you are one God in three divine persons: Father, Son and
Holy Spirit. I believe that your divine Son became man and died for our sins, and that he
will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe these and all the truths which the
holy Catholic Church teaches, because you have revealed them, who can neither deceive
nor be deceived. In this faith I desire to live and die. Amen.
Based on the book "What Catholics Believe: A Pocket Catechism," by Father Kris Stubna
and Mike Aquilina. The questions and answers are excerpted with permission from Our
Sunday Visitor, 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, Ind. 46750. The book is available from Our
Sunday Visitor at 800-348-2440, or by visiting its website at www.osv.com. Unless
otherwise noted, the meditations at the end of each question-and-answer series are written
by Robert P. Lockwood, general manager of the Pittsburgh Catholic, developed from his
book "A Faith for Grown-Ups" (Loyola Press).