As you know,
there are people who like
to try and trick Christians
in order to show that our faith
is ridiculous.
One of the favourite ways
they try this
is to ask,
“can God make a rock
that is too heavy for Him to lift?”
If He can't, they say,
then God cannot create
anything He likes
and is not Almighty.
If He can, they say,
then God is too weak
and is not Almighty.
Can God make a rock
too heavy for Him to lift?
How do you answer that question?
[PAUSE]
We can answer this question
by asking,
"If God does so
then how would
we know that He'd done it?"
We could say that
to be Amighty
means that
whatever God does
has to make sense to us,
and such a rock
doesn't make sense.
But for us Christians,
the question is
surprisingly easy to answer.
Yes, God can create a rock
that's too heavy for Him to lift.
But doesn't this contradict
His being able to do all things,
including lifting heavy things?
The answer really lies in
this festal season,
the octave of
the feast of the Epiphany.
[PAUSE]
The Epiphany is
the revelation of
the Word made flesh.
The whole point of the Incarnation
is that God takes
into Himself our human nature.
This means that Our Lord
is both human and divine
and that these two natures
cannot be separated in Him.
This means that our Lord Jesus Christ
has both a human nature
and a divine nature.
To see how this works,
we can simply consider that
it is not in human nature
to lift huge rocks such as
the Rock of Gibraltar.
Therefore, it is not in
Our Lord’s human nature
to be able to lift the Rock of Gibraltar.
So God has already created a rock
that is too heavy for Him to lift!
We can see that this is all due
to Our Lord Jesus Christ being
both human and divine.
[PAUSE]
The fact that Jesus has two natures
shows that there are many questions
that we can answer about him.
He has revealed those answers
about Himself in HIs Epiphany.
In his human nature,
he is just like us.
As a child he has to learn,
and he grows in wisdom
and stature
and maturity.
Notice then that
Jesus is not born perfect,
but he is sinless.
Perfection is about achieving
what one is meant to do,
or what one is meant to be.
Perfection is total completion.
Until Jesus dies upon the cross,
He has not lived a full human life,
therefore He is not perfect.
But he is without sin.
So how can Jesus be God
and yet not know things?
[PAUSE]
These days, we human beings
have great knowledge
at our fingertips.
If we don't know something,
we take out our phone
and we Google the answer.
Now imagine being able to do this
without the phone.
Our Lord Jesus Christ
may not have all the answers
in His human nature,
but He does in His divine nature
and He can communicate
with His divine nature through prayer.
This is why Jesus prays.
What does this mean for us?
[PAUSE]
Our Lord Jesus can communicate
between His natures through prayer.
While he may not be perfect
in His human nature,
He can still communicate infallibly
with His divine nature
through perfect prayer.
This is why Jesus can know things
that human beings can’t
and yet be truly human.
This also shows us the pattern
for how we are to be with God.
While we may not be perfect,
and while we are certainly not sinless,
prayer is still something
that is always open to us
and can be perfected
through daily practice.
The Epiphany of Our Lord shows us
the reality of God
in His taking of our human nature.
He is like us in every way but without sin.
So we can have communion with God
through our liturgy,
through our Mass,
through our prayer.
The Epiphany shows us
that we now have direct access to Almighty God
in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ.
[PAUSE]
Here is the reason why God became man.
He became man like us
so that we could become
divine like Him.
We can become perfect in Christ
and become rocks
that build the Church,
a Church that is carried by
and carries Our Creator.
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