The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. God becomes man so that man may become God.
COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF SUNDAY II OF CHRISTMAS – (4.1.2026)
JN 1, 1-18
Today’s biblical readings speak of the Incarnation (humanization) of God and the salvation of human beings. These two terms, like everything human, have been changing in meaning throughout history. Their evolution responds to the biological and cultural evolution of human beings. The image of divinity has changed location. From an ancestral god outside and far away. (transcendent, beyond the reach of human knowledge) to a God near and within, humanized, within our experiential reach. In this theological and anthropological change, for Christians, the life and message of Jesus of Nazareth is the key to interpretation. The God of Jesus is an incarnate, humanized God. In us and with us.
But this teaching of Jesus continues to be little heard and even less applied. We find the image of the God of the OT less engaging. Being distant and outside of us, we are content to adore and praise Him (through rituals). The God of Jesus, within us and among us, commits us. He involves us in His “dance,” in His continuous creative project. He makes us co-responsible for His project of progressive humanization of every human being, in His salvation. The concept of salvation has had a parallel evolution. The Incarnation (humanization) of God and the salvation (divinization) of man are two sides of the same coin. Human salvation is a consequence and effect of the humanization of God, of the incarnation of God in every human being.
To live, to experience, and to manifest this divine incarnation within ourselves is the current meaning of salvation.
The first reading speaks of Wisdom: “The creator of the universe gave me a command: Set up your tent in Jacob, and establish your inheritance in Israel …And it ends: “I rooted myself in a glorious people, in the portion of the Lord, in his inheritance.” The psalm commands us to repeat several times: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The letter to the Ephesians speaks of salvation in terms of blessing and anointing in Jesus Christ. An anointing that makes us children like Jesus. The prologue or epilogue of John, with symbolic, esoteric and cryptic language (more gnostic), identifies God with the creative Word, the Logos, the Word, the Life, the Light that illuminates. “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was with God. And the Word was God. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
Let’s pay attention, briefly, to these texts and draw some conclusions that will help us with the reflection we are going to do: Life makes the Word understandable. That is: experience is the path to knowing the Word, not mental discourse. The Word (divinity) is intuited, experienced, lived. Human beings, by being finite, limited, and evolving, are incapable of rationally knowing the transcendent, the divine. Only in deep experience can it be found.
My reflection today has three moments: 1. God humanizes. He becomes man. 2. To deify every human being. 3. Consequent conclusion: Incarnation of God and salvation of all creation. Human fulfillment: Gift and task.
God becomes man. He is humanized. For this moment I use what I learned reading the work of José María Castillo The Humanization of God. To affirm that God incarnated, became flesh, means that he became one with the specifically human: carnality, otherness, and freedom, that God humanized himself. God and human beings are inseparable from the beginning of creation and for all eternity, forever. In God there is no time. From the mystery of universal incarnation, the divine and the human identify. All human beings are divine, all equal and “children of God.”
God is drawing near, approaching so that we may seek and find Him within ourselves and within the interior of other human beings and the entire creation, so that the search becomes easier, so that we may seek Him in the everyday, inside and near. With the words of José Mª Castillo, I maintain: “The God of Jesus is not found in transcendence and divinity, but in immanence and humanity.” This is the theological revolution of Jesus and what today sustains the post-theistic paradigm and Panentheism (All in God and God in all. In Him we live, we move, and we exist) versus the theistic God outside and far away. Thus God makes human beings participants in His divine nature (S: León Magno. V century). He makes us children. Like Him.
What is most characteristic of the God of Jesus is his humanity without a mixture of inhumanity. God is love. All good without any evil. And that is the goal of our individual evolution and of the human species.
**To make man God.** Human beings are a combination of body, mind, and spirit. They are complex, limited, and evolving beings. They are born incomplete, open to learning to make evolution possible and necessary. Their goal is their completion or fullness. As limited beings, they are capable of doing good and doing evil. Human and inhuman. They are free and capable of choosing between doing good or doing evil. They are capable of the highest heroism and wickedness. From our Christian faith, we confess that we have been created in the image and likeness of God. That we are anointed (empowered) and blessed as children of God. Being a child means resembling the father, doing the things of the father, inheriting his task.
God humanizes himself so that human beings become aware of their double nature: human and divine. Jesus of Nazareth is our model of being, our reference. The catechism I studied in my childhood said, “Jesus came to give us an example of life.” Jesus lived for us (fr. Marcos) and for us. Jesus “spent his life doing good because God was with him.” Imitating the lifestyle of Jesus is the salvation or liberation of our inhumanity. It is achieving our fullness of humanization. We are anointed (empowered) and blessed as Jesus. We are blessed to bless as he did. Being like Jesus is our ideal of being, to be what we truly are, children of God.
Habited by their Spirit, which pushes us towards a continued development of the talents received freely and to use them coherently for their purpose: the good of all.
**Conclusion. Humanization of God, humanity of Jesus, and the salvation of humanity is God’s project when creating the universe.** If God has become human so that human beings may deify and be saved, our question and task is: how will this be? We have the protocol to follow or the script to execute: In Jesus and his Gospel, we have the model to imitate.
**Mª África de la Cruz**
English version translated with AI