The Seed of God

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We know that feeling after the best sleep we have had and needed for a while. Very little is quite as subliminal. We feel a restoration of what we were starving for. Thomas Merton is sometimes quoted as saying something to the effect of "being a contemplative is to be present to where God is creating oneself in the here and now". Although I am unsure of where exactly this quote originated, it draws us to contemplate just how true it is that God's work of creation is never done in us (perhaps in Heaven but maybe not). Christ, we find, is the Giver of Life always has been and always will be physically and spiritually.

First, we know that "all things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people." (John 1:3-4) Christ was there at the beginning and He is here now creating anew at the moment of every conception directly creating a soul, spiritual in the immortal and rational sense, and physical in the formal cause of the body, the DNA/logos of our being. Christ is thus the Author of Life. 

When we choose death, as a race in the Garden and personally in our sinful individuality, He brings us back always. This is most tangible and demonstrable in the Incarnation. When we look to the very moment Christ took on flesh in His conception, we know that a logos/DNA would likely have been added to the Blessed Virgin's egg. This is meant at least analogically, of course, but as we continue, we find something almost largely literal. Here we are moved to contemplate the Divine Logos that take on human nature. Suddenly, we see the poetry of just how incorrect it would have to be that Jesus was just the son of Joesph. The Divine logos literally interweaves itself at the genetic level with the nature of Mary. Here we find a need for Her Humanity to be tainted. What is it that bonds with an egg but a seed? Augustine elaborates on the Hypostatic Union, "For if the Father alone had made man without the Son, it would not have been written, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Therefore, because the form of God took the form of a servant, both is God and both is man; but both God, on account of God who takes; and both man, on account of man who is taken. For neither by that taking is the one of them turned and changed into the other: the Divinity is not changed into the creature, to cease to be Divinity; nor the creature into Divinity, cease to be creature.”.^1^

Christ continues His efforts in use. He joins the life (analogically "seed") He gave on the cross to His Church, whom He married in His Baptism, and a new birth comes forth through Her birth at Pentecost. Wherein the Spirit sends forth life from the Head to sustain the Body. This grace flows through the Church's Apostles and their appointed successors into the sacraments giving life to all who join the Body from death to life. Divinity and Humanity again are joined. In each aspect of His life, He precedes man as the psychical and spiritual cause of life and existence.

In conclusion, "The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator."[2] Christ is the seed of redeemed human life, the sustainer of that life in our hearts in the here and now, and responsible for the creative act that puts all we know into motion. Personally establishing through love and reconquering through love what selfishness destroyed, Christ is the King of Human life and death and of the Whole Universe which was entrusted to man. Through Him, it was given life and when that live life was taken, Christ came to bring it to life anew. Through Spirit and water each came, through Spirit and water, they were born again, and Christ preceded both. Christ's mission ever was and ever is the life of Man and in Him "it is Consummated"(John 19:30).

God in man that man can become God
God became man, through a creature.
Man chose against life, crucified its Author.
Forgiven, redeemed, and restored through the mystery of God's Word.

FN: 

  1. De Trinitate, Book 1, Chapter 7
  2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 27.

Written by Carter Carruthers
I am a created entity, not a person.

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