Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.
God did not abandon man after Adam fell into sin, but promised to send into the world a Savior to free man from his sins and to reopen to him the gates of Paradise. God could have abandoned man and allowed the human race to suffer the just penalty of never seeing Him face to face in Heaven. In His mercy and love, God took pity on Adam and his descendants and gave them salvation through the promised Redeemer.
Our Savior--Jesus Christ
Jesus is the Savior of all men. It is through the merits of Jesus that all who are saved attain salvation. Jesus is the promised Savior which can be proved through the prophecies of the Old Testament which are fulfilled in Him, from his own testimony, which is worthy of belief, and from the miracles He worked in proof of His divine mission, especially His Resurrection. The name “Jesus” means Savior. It is the divine name that alone brings salvation. All can invoke his name, for Jesus united Himself to all men through His Incarnation. The name Jesus is at the heart of Christian prayer. All liturgical prayers conclude with the words “through our Lord Jesus Christ”.
“Christ”, the word comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Messiah” which means anointed. It became the name proper to Jesus only because He accomplished perfectly the divine mission that “Christ” signifies. His eternal Messianic consecration was revealed during the time of His earthly life when “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power”, that He might be revealed to Israel as its Messiah. (Acts 10:38).
God made Man
The most important teaching of the Catholic Church about Jesus Christ is that He is God made man.
We read in the Gospel of Saint John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh, and He made His dwelling among us, and we saw His glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth" (John 1:1-14).
St Luke tells us, “Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of David, His Father, and He will rule over the House of Jacob forever, and of His Kingdom there will be no end’. But, Mary said to the angel ‘how can this be since I do not know man?’ The angel said to her in reply ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God’” (Luke1:30).
Jesus Christ Is True God and True Man.
The unique and altogether singular event of the Incarnation of the Son of God does not mean that Jesus Christ is part God and part man, nor does it imply that He is the result of a confused mixture of the divine and the human. He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.
The Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553 declared that “There is but one Person, who is our Lord Jesus Christ, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, one of the Trinity”. Thus Christ’s human nature is the human nature of the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and it is that Person who performed miracles, suffered and died. He who was crucified in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, is true God. Jesus, without ceasing to be God, became man and our brother.
