Last time we spoke on the second article of the Apostle’s Creed, “Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, our Lord.”  We mentioned Christ is one Divine Person (person - a rational individual); He has two natures (nature- what a thing is), one Divine and one human nature; He has two wills and two modes of operation (a divine and a human way of acting).  The second article of the Apostle’s Creed describes the Person and nature of Christ.  The third article, “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,” describes how Christ came into the world.   This will be our topic today.

To redeem the world, God chose to become a man who would suffer and die on a cross.  To accomplish this act, God could have entered the world fully grown.  God Almighty could have paraded down from the heavens in a fiery chariot much as Elias went up.  But God did not do this.  Rather God chose to enter this world not as a fully grown man, coming down as Elias went up, in a fiery chariot, but He came down as an infant... as a soft and tender, weak and defenseless, babe.  Carrol Houselander says, “as a snowflake;” the Psalms say, “as dew.” 

What a lesson in humility for us!

And as Christ entered this world as a infant - a speechless one - it means he has a mother!  And so the third article also concerns the Blessed Virgin Mary.  God was given a human body and a human soul inside the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  From the very moment Mary said, “Let it be done to me according to thy word” the Word became flesh and began to dwell among men.   For nine months Christ, both true God and true man, would grow within the womb of Mary, taking all His bodily substance (including all 46 chromosomes) from her. Therefore, we truly call Mary the Mother of God.

We will now present Catholic belief concerning the two elements of the third article of the creed namely, "Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost" and "born of the Virgin Mary."

When we say, “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost”...  
We believe that Jesus Christ existed from all eternity in reference to His Divine Nature.  As a man, we believe Jesus Christ began to exist 2,000 years ago, in the womb of a Virgin of Palestine. 

We believe that God became man in the Person of Christ at the moment of His conception in the womb of  Mary.  At the moment Mary gave the angel Gabriel her vocal fiat, “let it be done to me...” Almighty God created a human soul out of nothing and infused this human soul into the womb of the Virgin Mary... and here, in the womb of Mary, God began to dwell among men in their own substance.  For nine months, the blessed and sinless Mary was God’s tabernacle on earth.  God created Mary the most perfect of all creatures because it would be from Mary that His perfect and Divine Son would receive all His physical substance.  In virtue of this fact, we rightly honor Mary above all mankind and angels.

We believe that the Hypsotatic Union (the human and Divine natures joined in the one Divine Person of Christ) was effected by all Three Divine Persons acting in common.  The 11th Synod of Toledo in 675 decreed, “It is to be believed that the whole Trinity effected the incarnation of the Son of God because the works of the Trinity are indivisible.”  When we say, “conceived by the Holy Ghost” we are attributing the Incarnation as a work of God’s love to the Person of the Holy Ghost who is the Love of God expressed eternally between Father and Son.  

 We believe that Mary provided the body of our Savior without the cooperation of man.  His flesh is of her flesh; His blood is of her blood.  What Christ has in His body is what Mary gave him of hers... both now in heaven.  As Mary was the source for the Divine flesh so we have reason for recognizing her immaculate person. 

We believe that Christ, from the very first moment of His divine conception possessed the immediate vision of God.  The scholastics identify Christ as ‘viator simul et comprehensor’which is to say, Christ was both a pilgrim like us but one who had already reached the end of His journey; put another way, Christ could not possess the theological virtues of faith or hope... as this is impossible with God who IS the object of faith and hope itself.

(Against those who say Christ despaired on the cross, we may rightly point out that God can not forget that He is God nor ever lose the vision He has of Himself which Christ always maintained through His Divine Nature.  Ergo, Christ could never despair i.e. lose hope which He never needed.)

We believe Christ was free from all sin, from original sin and from all personal sin.

When we say, “Born of the Virgin Mary”...
We believe that Christ was truly generated and born of a daughter of the human race.  Christ has a true human mother, the Virgin Mary.  As Mary is a daughter of Adam so is Christ our Brother.  Some have claimed that Christ came to earth in spirit-flesh which flowed through Mary like water through a canal.   But the Apostle’s Creed says, “natus ex Maria Virgine,” "born of the Virgin Mary", not "through the Virgin"; and the Creed of St. Athanasius states, “ex substantia Matris in saeculo natus,” "from the substance of Mary born in time."  The substance of Christ’s body was given Him by Mary.

We believe that Mary truly is the Mother of God.  In 431, the Council of Ephesus decreed, “If anyone does not confess that the Emanuel (Christ) is God and, on account of this, that the Holy Virgin is the Mother of God (Theotokos), since according to the flesh she brought forth the Word of God made flesh, let him be anathema.” May the day come soon when all the world honors Mary as the Mother of God.

We believe that Mary was conceived without stain of original sin and that she was free from concupiscence and from every personal sin.

We believe that Mary was a Virgin before, during, and after the birth of Jesus Christ.  In 649, the Lateran Synod decreed, “The blessed and ever-virgin and immaculate Mary... conceived without seed, of the Holy Ghost, generated without injury, and her virginity continued unimpaired after the birth.”
 
These are some doctrines which regard Catholic belief in the third article of the Apostle’s Creed.

When Pilate asks Christ whether Christ is a king or not, our Lord responds, “Ego in hoc natus sum et ad hoc veni in mundum...” "This is why I was born and why I have come into the world." Christ is a king.  The whole universe is His domain; all creation is subject to His rule.  The kingdom of Christ bears witness to the truth. We are told that every one who is of the truth hears His voice; it is implied that everyone else is not of the truth.  What will happen to those who are not of the truth?  They will be  destroyed... so the Lauds antiphon of today reads, “The nations and kingdoms shall perish that do not serve Thee; et gentes solitudine vastabuntur”... "those nations shall be utterly destroyed."

Let us pray for the conversion of all nations to the gentle rule of Christ, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary.