Humble Lord and Redeemer

“The Word became Flesh,” says St. John the Evangelist, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The very Son of God became one of us and lived amongst us. Jesus Christ, who is a divine person with a human nature, suffered, died, and rose from the dead to accomplish our Redemption. “His resurrection from the dead not only ratifies his divine identity but also establishes Him as the Lord of the nations, the one to whom final allegiance is due.”[1] Jesus founded His Church on twelve specially chosen men to be His Apostles. And who were these men? They were poor, humble, lowly, uneducated men. They were not the type of men to reign over the whole world as Caesar had done, nor were they the type of men who—by themselves—had any power to change the world. Yet that is the point; that is why Jesus chose them: By choosing the lowly and despised of this world, Jesus shows that He—the one God and Lord of all—is in charge of the Church. God is the one who gives the Church victory over evil. But it is a victory patterned on the victory of the Son of God made Man, a victory of sacrificial love that comes after much willing abasement and long suffering motivated by love for God and neighbor. It is the very opposite of the “victory” of the Caesars. And by “Caesar” is here meant both the emperors of ancient Rome and all the emperors of history even up to the present age. As we know from Divine Revelation found in the Book of Genesis, Adam was the First Man. God gave him the privilege and the responsibility of naming the animals. Naturally, to name something is to have power over it, and to name someone also means to have power over that person. A father names his son and has authority over him. And thus, by naming the creatures, Adam, the First Man, had dominion over God’s creation—over the whole world. Now, since Adam had dominion over all creation, by the will of the Creator, he (Adam) thus was lord of all creation, lord of the whole world. (Note that “dominion” has as its root the Latin word dominus, which means “lord.”) Adam was the King! But Satan then entered the picture and tempted this first lord of the human race and tempted him to set his authority against God’s authority, and thus the first king fell from grace, and his royal line was banished; the king was in exile. But through this royal line, the Davidic royal line, God has restored and healed the Kingship by the greatest and humblest King in that noble line, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of the noblest and humblest member of David’s line and of Adam’s line, the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the fullness of time, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, shows up as the New and Perfect Adam, as the Son of God made Flesh, as the Lord of all. Jesus the Lord has come to replace "Caesar the Lord." For, indeed, Caesar was considered to be a divine lord. People burned incense to him and pledged total allegiance to him. Jesus came to take back the lordship from those who had usurped it, namely, Satan and his minions of emperors or Caesars. But Satan and the powerful of the world were expecting Him to come in dreadful power and might, as a fearful lord. Thus they thought they could prevent His reign: Herod massacred all the babies born in Jerusalem from the day the Star appeared until two years later. However, Jesus outsmarted them. Through his Incarnation, more precisely, through his Nativity in Bethlehem in the fullness of time, Jesus slipped behind enemy lines.[2] In their immense pride, the powerful always think that everyone else is just like them and thinks just like them. Satan would not expect the claimant to the throne to come as a little, helpless baby, and neither would Caesar. This is magnificently illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien in his Lord of the Rings trilogy: The evil Sauron had possessed the One Ring—the Ring of Power—and wanted to regain it. However, ages before, Isildur, the Son of the King, had cut the Ring from Sauron’s hand and taken it for his own. Mercifully, Isildur was ambushed and killed by evil Orcs , and—for a time—nobody knew what had happened to the One Ring. Eventually, it came into the possession of a Hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, who had a wizard-friend named “Gandalf.” Gandalf, after much effort, finally persuades Bilbo to give up the Ring. At this point—if he had known—Sauron would have expected Gandalf to take the Ring for his own and become “powerful” and seek to conquer Middle-earth and make it his own empire. Sauron—of course—would have done this. Yet Sauron is very surprised when he learns the truth: Rather than claim the Ring for his own and seek an evil kind of lordship, Gandalf—with the help of Frodo the Hobbit—sends the Ring into Mount Doom for its destruction. Evil can often be caught off guard by the ways of the Good and the Humble. And so, through the humility and obedience of the lowly Virgin Mary, the Son of God did quietly slip into the world on that cold, cold night, unnoticed by the proud and the powerful, unnoticed by Satan and his minions. Thus, Jesus the true Lord arrives to challenge Caesar the Usurper Lord, protégé of Satan. With the Death and Resurrection and Final Coming of Jesus, that is, the Return of the King, Satan is definitively and finally overthrown. [1] Robert Barron, Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith (New York: Image Books, 2011) 5-6. [2] Cf. Robert Barron, Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith