The Incarnation is the mystery and the dogma of the Word made Flesh.

The Incarnation implies three facts: (1) The Divine Person of Jesus Christ; (2) The Human Nature of Jesus Christ; (3) The Hypostatic Union of the Human with the Divine Nature in the Divine Person of Jesus Christ.

The divine person of Jesus Christ

The Divine nature and Divine personality are one and inseparable, as in the Trinity.

The historical person, Jesus Christ, is really and truly God, i.e. has the nature of God, and is a Divine person.

Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah promised of the Old Testament, the One promised to be God; a Divine Person in the strictest sense of the word, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of the Father, One in nature with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

There is a real sonship and real Divinity of Jesus. Christ is the first-born of the Father, and the object of the adoration of the angels.

The personified wisdom of the Sapiential Books is the uncreated Wisdom, the incarnate Logos of St. John, the Word hypostatically united with human nature, Jesus Christ, the Son of the Eternal Father.

The sonship is the real and natural Divine Sonship of Jesus Christ. He is the Son of God.

Jesus is God.

The human nature of Jesus Christ.

Christ is true Man. He is the Son of Man.

The hypostatic union of the divine nature and the human nature of Jesus in the divine person of Jesus Christ.

The Divine nature was and is really and truly united with the human nature of Jesus, i.e., one and the same Person, Jesus Christ, was and is God and man. This is a union that is physical, a union of two substances or natures so as to make One Person, a union which means that God is Man and Man is God in the Person of Jesus Christ.

It is always one and the same Person, Jesus Christ, Who is God and Man, Who assumes both Divine and human nature.

The nature of the incarnation

The human and Divine natures are united in one Divine Person so as to remain that exactly which they are, namely, Divine and human natures with distinct and perfect activities of their own.

This union of the two natures in one Person is called a hypostatic union, that is, a union in the Divine Hypostasis.

A hypostasis is a complete whole whose nature is rational; a rational substance in its entirety

The human nature that is hypostatically united with the Divine, that is, the human nature that the Divine Hypostasis or Person assumes to Itself, has certainly more of reality united to it than the human nature of Christ would have were it not hypostatically united in the Word. The Divine Logos identified with Divine nature (Hypostatic Union) means that the Divine Hypostasis (or Person, or Word, or Logos) appropriates to Itself human nature, and takes in every respect the place of the human person. In this way, the human nature of Christ, though not a human person, loses nothing of the perfection of the perfect man; for the Divine Person supplies the place of the human.

When the Word took Flesh, there was no change in the Word; all the change was in the Flesh. At the moment of conception, in the womb of the Blessed Mother, through the forcefulness of God's activity, not only was the human soul of Christ created but the Word assumed the man that was conceived. There was no change in that Logos when it began to terminate the human nature. A new relation ensued, to be sure; but this new relation implied in the Logos no new reality, no real change; all new reality, all real change, was in the human nature.

Effects of the incarnation on the body of Christ.

Before the Resurrection, the Body of Christ was subject to all the bodily weaknesses to which human nature unassumed is universally subject; such are hunger, thirst, pain, death. They were the natural results of the human nature He assumed. He did not suffer weakness peculiar to only parts of mankind, no matter how common. Christ was noble in bearing and beautiful in form, such as a perfect man should be; for Christ was, by virtue of His incarnation, a perfect man.

Effects of the Incarnation on the human soul of Christ.

(a) IN THE WILL

Sinlessness

The effect of the Incarnation on the human will of Christ was to leave it free in all things save only sin. It was absolutely impossible that any stain of sin should soil the soul of Christ. Neither sinful act of the will nor sinful habit of the soul were in keeping with the Hypostatic Union. Christ was sinless. The absolute impossibility of a sinful act on the part of Christ was due to the hypostatic union of His human nature with the Divine.

Liberty

The will of Christ remained free after the Incarnation.

(b) IN THE INTELLECT

The effects of the Hypostatic Union upon the knowledge of Christ shall be treated in a SPECIAL RESOLUTION.

(c) SANCTITY OF CHRIST

The Humanity of Christ was holy by a twofold sanctity: the grace of union and sanctifying grace.

(d) LIKES AND DISLIKES

The Hypostatic Union did not deprive the Human Soul of Christ of its human likes and dislikes, inasmuch as they are gracefully becoming of the Son of God.

On the God-Man.

One of the most important effects of the union of the Divine nature and human nature in One Person is a mutual interchange of attributes, Divine and human, between God and man, the Idiomatic Communication. The God-Man is one Person, and to Him in the concrete may be applied the predicates that refer to the Divinity as well as those that refer to the Humanity of Christ.

The adoration of the humanity of Christ.

The human nature of Christ, united hypostatically with the Divine nature, is adored with the same worship as the Divine nature