Q. If Christ came to save us from our sins by suffering and dying on the Cross at Golgotha, why did he bother being born, going through the motions of infanthood, childhood, adolescence up until manhood? Why not appear as a fully grown man like Adam or Melchisedech and get right to it?
A. Wow! Very insightful question!
Q. Hope the answer will be as well!
A. Well the Church and a number of her saints explain that the crucifixion was the culmination of our salvation and not the whole package.
The entire human life of our Lord was the whole package, the whole of our salvation. It begun with the Incarnation, continues with His birth that we are celebrating in these 12 days of Christmas, goes on with his ordinary family life and professional work for 30 years and culminates with His sacrifice on the Cross. EVERYTHING Jesus did was "for us men and for our salvation".
If this be false, if Jesus taking care of his parents or of his widowed mother after St. Joseph died or if all the work he did with his hands to earn a living had no salvific value, then the teaching of the Church and the message of Opus Dei is a lie.
This incidentally is precisely where many of us Christians fail to imitate our personal Lord and Saviour: we are big on imitating what our Lord did in the last 3 years of His life but absolutely nothing about imitating Him in how He lived the first 30 years of His life. We are keen on the miracles and speaking in tongues and preaching and singing hymns and cures and prophecies - the spectacular stuff, but completely ignore His first 30 years of hidden, ordinary, day-to-day, salvific work. For us those years were an unnecessary, uncharacteristic waste of time on God's part. We forget that Christ was so good at his work that He was at times referred to by his profession: "Isn't this THE carpenter?" Precious few of us are known by our profession: THE housewife, THE driver, THE manager, THE student, THE accountant, THE sportsman...
Why did Christ live out those 30 years of ordinary work instead of fast-forwarding to the "interesting" part? Because He wanted to teach us something: ordinary work done professionally as well as possible is salvific, just like His.
30thDecember 2015