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So the topic of our retreat is the incarnation.

Now, the word incarnation literally means infleshment.

If you don't mind my saying this, the karn part of incarnation

is the same karn that you get in chili kongkarni. It means flesh or meat. But when we say

that God takes on flesh, what we really mean is he takes on the whole of human nature and not

just the body. Now, Father Jonah's presentation last night, focus on the whole of human nature and not just the body. Now, Father Jonas' presentation last

night focused on the reasons why God became in. In this talk, I'm going to focus on, so to speak,

the metaphysical nuts and bolts of what it means to say that this happened, to say that

Christ is God and man. It's a theological topic. It's a divine mystery. We can

try to understand it, but there's only so far we can go. Now, it would certainly be wrong to make

no attempt to understand it. If we really do love God, we'll want to work to understand God as much as we can.

But we should also remember that divine mysteries really are beyond the full grasp of human reason.

And you can go astray by trying, by refusing to accept the mysterious element and trying to boil it down to something that you can

rationally comprehend. So you have to know when to go, oh, I don't get that part. But even that's

not giving up on being rational because you can sometimes at least understand in a really rational

way what it is that you don't understand. And that's a kind of understanding. It's a little bit like

Jacob wrestling with the angel. You struggle and you struggle and then you lose. But then you get a

blessing. So here's a way to get into the topic of the incarnation.

There was a Jewish rabbi, Jesus, and he had a significant following. He also came into conflict

with religious and secular authorities. and the conflict got to the

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