Deification/Theosis

God became Man to make Man God.

Our assistant pastor, Father Joe, gave a homily about this subject last week, and it stuck with me. I had never heard this before, and when you first read it it seems kind of strange, right? Clearly we aren’t gods or angels; if we are, why don’t we just follow the ancient Roman belief system, right? Or why isn’t everyone Buddhist?

Turns out, it actually is in the Catechism of the Catholic Church–paragraph 460:

460 The Word became flesh to make us “partakers of the divine nature“:⁷⁸ “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.”⁷⁹ “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”⁸⁰ “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”⁸¹

Because God is one, we can’t actually become God, or become part of the Trinity (three parts–they’re all full!). Sorry to disappoint you Catholics out there who might have been curious about the Buddhism possibility. 🙂 HOWEVER, in communion with God–by partaking of His Body and Blood at every Mass, we are able to take on his true image (the way we were created) and share in His holiness. St. Maximus the Confessor says:

A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the Incarnation of God, which makes man God to the same degree as God Himself became man … . Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For it is clear that He Who became man without sin will divinize human nature without changing it into the Divine Nature, and will raise it up for His Own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man’s sake. This is what St[.] Paul teaches mystically when he says, ‘[]that in the ages to come he might display the overflowing richness of His grace’ (Eph.2:7)

In becoming the image of God, which He created us to be, we become, like Him, holy. (!)

Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, says that it’s BECAUSE of the likeness we share with God that we are able to be so deified by God through grace:

Now the gift of grace surpasses every capability of created nature, since it is nothing short of a partaking of the Divine Nature, which exceeds every other nature. And thus it is impossible that any creature should cause grace. For it is as necessary that God alone should deify, bestowing a partaking of the Divine Nature by a participated likeness, as it is impossible that anything save fire should enkindle.

The one I think clears this up the most, however, is St. John of the Cross’s brilliant words:

In thus allowing God to work in it, the soul … is at once illumined and transformed in God, and God communicates to it His supernatural Being, in such wise that it appears to be God Himself, and has all that God Himself has. And this union comes to pass when God grants the soul this supernatural favour, that all the things of God and the soul are one in participant transformation; and the soul seems to be God rather than a soul, and is indeed God by participation; although it is true that its natural being, though thus transformed, is as distinct from the Being of God as it was before.

Our souls are so transformed by God’s grace that they become indistinguishable from God himself. Thanks to His transformation, our souls can be “God by participation” and yet are still distinct from His being.

This is awesome, right? Just thinking about it blows my mind! Our God is seriously powerful!