Fr. Campbell, “That believing you may have life in his name” (Jn.20:31)
Today
is the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. St. Peter and St. Paul are
united in speaking of the power and significance of the Holy Name. St.
Paul writes:
“Therefore
God also has exalted him and has bestowed upon him the name that is
above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend of
those in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should
confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father”
(Phil.2:9-11).
St. Peter, our first Holy Father, affirms:
“For there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
We
must not let the Christmas Season pass without taking note of certain
essential teachings of the Holy Catholic Church, some of which are
implicitly denied every Christmas. The Birth of God’s Divine Son was an
altogether unique and marvelous event in the history of the world. The
Church has taught from the beginning that Mary was a Virgin before,
during, and after the Birth of Jesus. A well-known Catholic theologian
comments:
“It
is one of the mysteries of our Catholic faith that the Mother of God
was a virgin in the conception of her child, and that she remained a
virgin after his birth for the rest of her life on earth; and we accept
this teaching, as we do that of her own immaculate conception, both from
Scripture and the apostolic tradition. Moreover, when we enter into the
question more deeply, we find that this miracle of the virgin birth is
itself proof and evidence of our faith: a ‘sign’, as Isaias the prophet
said: ‘The Lord himself shall give you a sign: behold a virgin shall
conceive and bear a son’ (Is.7:14); for this event, by which God deigned
to become man, points the way to that new birth, by which man is ‘born
of the Spirit’ (Jn.3:6), and without which there is no entrance to the
Kingdom of Heaven” (Hugo Rahner, Our Lady and the Church, p. 22, Logos Books, 1965).
But
this doctrine is neglected in the Novus Ordo “church”, and is being
allowed to pass into oblivion. The Vatican itself does not defend the
doctrine, and even approves and recommends movies that depict the Birth
of Jesus as an ordinary event, accompanied by the usual birth pangs and
other consequences involved.
If
we are not mindful of His miracles we start thinking like the world
wants us to think, which amounts to denying our Faith. Those who have
lost their Catholic Faith and no longer have a sense of the
supernatural, find a natural explanation of the miracles surrounding the
Birth of Christ. They lose the sense of the supernatural, and take on a
purely natural understanding of the world and all that happens in it.
To the worldly, miracles are impossible.
St. Paul points this out:
“Now
we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit that is
from God, that we may know the things that have been given us by God.
These things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in
the learning of the Spirit, combining spiritual with spiritual. But the
sensual man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God,
for it is foolishness to him and he cannot understand, because it is
examined spiritually. But the spiritual man judges all things, and he
himself is judged by no man. For ‘who has known the mind of the Lord,
that he might instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ”
(1Cor.12-16).
The
life of Jesus Christ was a miracle. He was not understood or accepted
by the world, although He proved the truth of what He taught by the
miracles He performed. To the devil, the first unbeliever, Jesus said:
“It is written, ‘Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God’” (Mt.4:4).
St. John refers to the miracles, or ‘works’ of Jesus, near the end of the Fourth Gospel:
“Many
other signs also Jesus worked in the sight of his disciples, which are
not written in this book. But these are written that you may believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may
have life in his name” (Jn.20:30,31).
The
miracles surrounding the life of Jesus Christ began even before He was
born. Jesus was born of the Holy Virgin Mary, whose virginity was intact
before, during, and after His Birth. This is supported in the words of
the Angel Gabriel to St. Joseph:
“Do
not be afraid, Joseph, son of David, to take to thee Mary thy wife, for
that which is begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall
bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save
his people from their sins” (Mt.1:20b,21).
Mary
was to be always true to her Divine Spouse, always living by her words
to the angel, “I do not know man” (Lk.1:34). It would have been
unthinkable for the chosen Spouse of the Holy Ghost, and the Mother of
the God-Man, Jesus Christ, to have other children by any man. Mary
maintained her virginity for the rest of her life. And Jesus was her one
and only Child.
St. Irenaeus speaks of the Church and the Holy Virgin Mary as one in the work of our salvation:
“How
was mankind to escape this birth into death, unless he were born again
through faith, by that new birth from the Virgin, the sign of salvation
that is God’s wonderful and unmistakable gift.”
