Jesus Christ, the Word of the Father, reveals the life of God to us and invites us to live that same life in our lives. The Word resists our attempts to control or reduce it. The Word was not “made concept” so that we could think about it, but rather, “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”
As man, the Eternal Son shares his life with us: it is one of self-emptying, whether as a baby lying in a feeding trough, or as a foreigner in Egypt, or a carpenter in the slums of Nazareth. Romans 12 invites us not to flee from the fleshiness of the life Jesus calls us to, but rather to offer our very bodies as a living sacrifice to God, so that our minds, too, can discern the will of God, being transformed by the good that God gives us to do in the flesh.
—Fr. Sylvester Tan, SJ, is a newly ordained priest of the Central and Southern Province. He is serving as the associate pastor of Immaculate Conception Jesuit Church in New Orleans.