God shows us in Jesus Christ the full depth of his merciful love. 

Through Jesus Christ the invisible God becomes visible. He becomes a man like us. This shows us how far God’s love goes: He bears our whole burden. He walks every path with us. He is there in our abandonment, our sufferings, our fear of death. He is there when we can go no farther, so as to open up for us the door leading into life. 

Yes. Jesus “worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved” (Second Vatican Council, GS 22, 2). 

The humanity of Jesus is complete and includes also the fact that Jesus possessed a soul and developed psychologically and spiritually. In this soul dwelled his human identity and his special self-consciousness. Jesus knew about his unity with his heavenly Father in the Holy Spirit, by whom he allowed himself to be guided in every situation of his life.

When Jesus calls himself “God’s only-begotten Son” (or “only Son” , Jn 3:16) and Peter and others bear witness to this, the expression means that of all men only Jesus is more than a man.

In many passages of the  NEW TESTAMENT (Jn 1:14, 18; 1 Jn 4:9; Heb 1:2, and so on) Jesus is called “Son”. At his baptism and his Transfiguration, the voice from heaven calls Jesus “my beloved Son”. Jesus discloses to his disciples his unique relationship to his heavenly Father: “All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mt 11:27). The fact that Jesus Christ really is God’s Son comes to light at the Resurrection.

“You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am” (Jn 13:13)

The early Christians spoke as a matter of course about Jesus as “Lord”, knowing that in the OLD TESTAMENT this title was reserved as a form of addressing God. Through many signs Jesus had shown them that he had divine power over nature, demons, sin, and death. The divine origin of Jesus’ mission was revealed in his Resurrection from the dead. Thomas confessed, “My Lord and my God!” (Jn 20:28). For us this means that since Jesus is “the Lord”, a Christian may not bend his knee to any other power.

“For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven” (Nicene CREED).

In Jesus Christ, God reconciled the world to himself and redeemed mankind from the imprisonment of sin. “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son” (Jn 3:16). In Jesus, God took on our mortal human flesh (INCARNATION), shared our earthly lot, our sufferings, and our death, and became one like us in all things but sin.

God willed that Jesus Christ should have a true human mother but only God himself as his Father, because he wanted to make a new beginning that could be credited to him alone and not to earthly forces. 

Mary’s virginity is not some outdated mythological notion but rather fundamental to the life of Jesus. He was born of a woman but had no human father. Jesus Christ is a new beginning in the world that has been instituted from on high. In the Gospel of Luke, Mary asks the angel, “How can this be, since I have no husband?” (= do not sleep with a man, Lk 1:34); the angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you” (Lk 1:35). Although the Church from the earliest days was mocked on account of her belief in Mary’s virginity, she has always believed that her virginity is real and not merely symbolic.