During this season of Christmas, we read St John’s letter. He continually warns Christians of the antichrist. He tells us not to trust anyone without having tested the spirit first. The sign of the antichrist is a denial of God’s becoming flesh, the Lord's incarnation. St John makes sure that a true Christian is to confess the Lord’s incarnation. The critical faith of Christianity is on the incarnation of the Son of God. If someone is short of this faith, he shouldn’t be called Christian but is an antichrist.
You may wonder who denies the faith in the Lord’s incarnation in our times.
Many Christians say and act as if Christ exists only in our minds and heart. They don’t deny the Son of God was on earth. But for them, Jesus has gone to heaven, no longer on earth. They understand Jesus’ promise that “I will be with you until the end of time” only as spiritually or mentally. But they often forget or ignore that Christ is with us sacramentally and physically, not depending on our mind and heart. From the very beginning, Christians believed that Christ comes to us in the Eucharist. What we receive at Communion is the body and the blood of Christ – true flesh of our Lord, not a symbol of his flesh. The whole Christ is with us in the Eucharist, independently from our mind and heart. And it was his incarnation that made this sacramental existence of Christ possible and real.
Unfortunately, many surveys show that more than half of Catholics no longer have faith in the real presence of the Lord in the Eucharist. How you act and behave inside your parish church reveals the state of your faith. The Mass is not merely a ‘gathering’ of the faithful. It is a real and true encounter of God and his people – flesh to flesh! Isn’t this why still many of us come to our parish church to receive Holy Communion under this pandemic?
The incarnation is not a myth or a theological theory. It is the Lord’s greatest gift for humanity. Thanks to the incarnation man can encounter God his Creator in human ways. God lowered himself to communicate with us. If someone denies the incarnation of the Lord he also rejects the Lord’s goodness to the man.
