Choose a topic from Part 3a:
1. Christ assumed a true human body with the normalrequirements of that body, and with the limitations and thedeficiencies connatural to such a body, excluding those that coulddetract from the dignity of perfect human nature. Thus Christ couldsuffer in his body such things as hunger, thirst, pain, death.These hardships or defects are in themselves punishments for thesin which Christ had not. But it is suitable that he who came asman to atone for human sin should take on the nonstainingpunishments consequent in man upon the original sin. By assuminghuman nature with these bodily deficiencies, our Lord both provedhis true humanity, and gave to all men a most noble example ofhumble and patient endurance.
2. It is by natural necessity that a child of Adam hassuch deficiencies as the enduring of hunger, thirst, pain, death.And God chose to become man as a true child of Adam. It was bydivine Will in the effecting of the incarnation that the flesh wasthus allowed to do and to endure what belonged to it to do andsuffer.
3. Human beings are said to contract the defectsof human nature inasmuch as these are due to sin and are inheritedby the sin-infected offspring of a sinful first parent. It is notso with the human nature ofChrist. Our Lord did not inheritsin; he did not contract or inherit the consequences of sin in hisbody. He assumed sinless human nature. He might have assumed humannature without any bodily deficiencies at all. Those defects whichhe took, he took by his own will to let natural necessity have itsway in all that is not degrading- not setting this necessity asideby exercise of his divine power.
4. Christ as man did not have defects that conflict with hisperfect knowledge, grace, and dignity. He was not, for instance,subject to sickness, or disease, or disfigurement, or suppuratingsores, or broken bones.
"What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. "
Thomas á Kempis
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"The more you know and the better you understand, the more severely will you be judged, unless your life is also the more holy. Do not be proud, therefore, because of your learning or skill. Rather, fear because of the talent given you."
Thomas á Kempis
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"There is nothing which gives greater security to our actions, or more effectually cuts the snares the devil lays for us, than to follow another person’s will, rather than our own, in doing good."
St Philip Neri
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