“In our second reading today Paul describes the greatest two acts of love in the history of the human race: the incarnation when Jesus became human and Jesus accepting death in the most humiliating and painful way. In the incarnation Jesus condescended from the infinite to our level and because he condescended from the infinite, there’s no analogy that we can give that would give justice to this act. We can’t fathom the magnitude of this act and of course he did that solely for our benefit. With both the incarnation and the passion Jesus performed the ultimate acts of humility and obedience and St. Paul tells us that because of this humility and obedience to the Father, Jesus’ name is to be revered above every other name. Not only is Jesus the person to be exalted by us, but even his name is to be praised by every human and every Angel in Heaven. That’s why in the Mass whenever Jesus’ name is said we bow our head and that’s why during the creed when we get to the incarnation we make a profound bow and hopefully we should try to internalize those gestures so that they’re not just empty gestures. We really reflect on why we’re bowing. Outside of Mass there are many many ways that we can honor Jesus and his name. I’ll mention a few:
- Whenever we utter ‘Jesus’ we should never do so except in a holy way
- Follow the commandment that He gave us at the last supper, to love others as He loves us
- We can obey and be obedient to the Church He founded
If we’re honest with ourselves, we all have difficulty with some Church teaching at least at some time and the appropriate response to that doubt is to learn about that teaching and a good place to start is the Catechism. If you don’t have a Catechism you can access the Catechism from the website for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and invariably what I’ve found is that these teachings didn’t just come out of whole cloth within the last century, these truths have been taught by brilliant theologians for 2,000 years and I’m always left coming away thinking, ‘Well who am I to question these teachings?’ And of course all of that begins with humility. A fruit of humility is obedience. A fruit of obedience is true freedom. A fruit of true freedom is true and lasting happiness and that’s what Jesus wants for every single one of us more than we want it for ourselves. That’s why he became human and that’s why He died for us.”