{"id":26260,"date":"2025-12-22T07:56:37","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T12:56:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26260"},"modified":"2025-12-22T08:56:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T13:56:57","slug":"26260","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=26260","title":{"rendered":"The First Incarnation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"All Creatures Of Our God And King (with lyrics)\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0d3gO6qDLNA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God\u2026. &nbsp;All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.<br>\u2014John 1:1, 3&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Drawing on the wisdom of Franciscan theology, Father Richard Rohr writes that the <strong>Incarnation begins first with the birth of the cosmos, long before the birth of Jesus:&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What was God up to in those first moments of creation? Was God totally invisible before the universe began? Is there even such a thing as \u201cbefore\u201d? Why did God create at all? What was God\u2019s purpose in creating? Is the universe itself eternal, or is the universe a creation in time as we know it\u2014like Jesus himself?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s admit that we will probably never know the \u201chow\u201d or even the \u201cwhen\u201d of creation. But the question that religion tries to answer is mostly the \u201cwhy.\u201d Is there any evidence for&nbsp;<em>why&nbsp;<\/em>God created the heavens and the earth? What was God up to? Was there any divine intention or goal, or do we even need a creator \u201cGod\u201d to explain the universe?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most of the perennial wisdom traditions have offered explanations, and they usually go something like this:\u202f<em>Everything that exists in material form is the offspring of some Primal Source, which originally existed only as Spirit<\/em>.\u202fThis Infinite Primal Source somehow poured itself into finite, visible forms, creating everything from rocks to water, plants, organisms, animals, and humans. This self-disclosure of whomever we call God into physical creation was the&nbsp;<em>first Incarnation&nbsp;<\/em>(the general term for any enfleshment of spirit), long before the personal, second Incarnation that Christians believe happened with Jesus.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Christians hear the word \u201cincarnation,\u201d most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God\u2019s radical unity with humanity. But I want to suggest that the first Incarnation was the moment described in Genesis 1, when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything. This, I believe, is why light\u202fis the subject of the first day of creation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Incarnation, then, is not only \u201cGod becoming Jesus.\u201d It is a much broader event, which is why John first describes God\u2019s presence in the general word \u201cflesh\u201d (John 1:14). John is speaking of the ubiquitous Christ we continue to encounter in other human beings, a mountain, a blade of grass, or a starling.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cChrist\u201d is a word for the Primordial Template <strong>(<em>Logos&nbsp;<\/em>or Word) through whom \u201call things came into being, and not one&nbsp;<em>thing&nbsp;<\/em>had its being except through him<\/strong>\u201d (John 1:3). Seeing in this way has reframed, reenergized, and broadened my own religious belief, and I believe it could be <strong>Christianity\u2019s unique contribution among the world religions.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>===========================<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Christ in Every Thing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\">\n<p>Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; <strong>all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.<\/strong><br>\u2014 Colossians 1:15\u201317\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard describes how early Christians understood Christ to be a transcendent Presence dwelling in and with them, transforming all things.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <strong>Christ Mystery is the indwelling of the Divine Presence in everyone and everything since the beginning of time<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the twentieth-century English mystic Caryll Houselander said, \u201c<strong>Christ is everywhere; in Him every kind of life has a meaning and has an influence on every other kind of life.\u201d<\/strong> [1] \u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If this seems to us today somehow exotic, it certainly wouldn\u2019t have to early Christians. The revelation of the Risen Christ as ubiquitous and eternal was clearly affirmed in the Scriptures (Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, John 1, Hebrews 1) and in the early church, when the euphoria of the Christian faith was still creative and expanding. In our time, however, this deep mode of seeing<strong> must be approached as something of a reclamation project.<\/strong> After the Western and Eastern Churches separated in the Great Schism of 1054, we <strong>in the West gradually lost this profound understanding of how God has been liberating and loving all that is.<\/strong> Instead, we gradually limited the Divine Presence to the single body of Jesus,&nbsp;<em>when perhaps&nbsp;it is as ubiquitous as light itself\u2014and <strong>uncircumscribable by human boundarie<\/strong>s.&nbsp;<\/em>\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If my own experience is any indication, discovering Christ as&nbsp;<em>the transcendent within&nbsp;<\/em>of every \u201cthing\u201d in the universe <strong>can transform the way we perceive and the way we live in our everyday world.<\/strong> It can offer us the deep and universal meaning that Western civilization seems to lack and long for today. It has the <strong>potential to reground Christianity as a natural religion and not one based on a special revelation, available only to a few lucky enlightened people. \u202f&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As G. K. Chesterton expressed,&nbsp;<strong>our religion is not the church we belong to, but the cosmos we live inside of. <\/strong>[2] Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all creation, is<strong> both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply<\/strong>. I call that kind of deep and calm seeing \u201ccontemplation.\u201d \u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Religion\u2019s essential function is to radically connect us with everything<strong> (<em>re-ligio<\/em>= to re-ligament or reconnect).<\/strong>\u202fA cosmic notion of the Christ <strong>competes with and excludes no one, but includes everyone and everything <\/strong>(Acts 10:15, 34) and allows Jesus Christ to finally be <strong>a God figure worthy of the entire universe<\/strong>. In this understanding of the Christian message, the Creator\u2019s love and presence are grounded in the created world, and the <strong>mental distinction between \u201cnatural\u201d and \u201csupernatural\u201d falls apart.\u202f<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God\u2026. &nbsp;All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.\u2014John 1:1, 3&nbsp; Drawing on the wisdom of Franciscan theology, Father Richard Rohr writes that the Incarnation begins first with the birth of the cosmos, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26260"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26260"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26266,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26260\/revisions\/26266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}