You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprauth.

Today is Wednesday, December 22, 2021.

It is also the fourth week of Advent.

And as we finish up this fourth week of Advent, the final stretch for Christmas,

we are using St. Thomas's Sumo Theologica, which is based a lot on the writing of St. Thomas Aquinas, to remind us of why the incarnation, God himself,

becoming fully human while remaining fully God, is so important. We already talked about the gift

of faith, hope, charity, or love, and also the fact

that the incarnation gave us the perfect example of how we should strive for holiness.

So reason number five from St. Thomas is that through the incarnation, we get to participate, participate in God's life in a new way.

So to understand this, and remember, St. Thomas was very, very smart.

So sometimes going through his teachings can be a little challenging.

But realize this, when Christ became a human being, he fully participated in everything that

it is to be a human. He lived in a family. He had friendships. He had a job where he worked

probably pretty hard. He was not only a carpenter,

but some translations say he was a laborer. So maybe he like build walls and carried heavy

rocks and cut down trees, but he worked hard. He also knew all of the difficult parts of life

that we experience from physical pain, which we see him suffer on the cross, also emotional pain, the abandonment of friends, the rejection of the Jewish community.

He felt all that we feel as humans.

He fully participated in the human experience. Now, St. Thomas and St. Thomas

or St. Thomas and St. Augustine both point out that Christ became human to participate in our

humanity so that we might participate in the life of God.

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