Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to The Catechism in a Year podcast,

where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed down

through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in the year is brought to you by

Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journeyed together toward our heavenly home. It's day 65. We're reading paragraphs 456 to 4.63. It is a whole new section, you guys, a new section on, well, a new article at least, where we look at the statement, who is conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, we're looking at the son of God became man and answering the big question, why? Why did the word become flesh? Why did the Son of God become one of us? Oh, so incredible. I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. If you want to download your own catechism in a year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash cIY, and you can also click follow or subscribe in your podcast app to receive daily updates and daily notifications. Just a quick, you know, I just want to take a moment to thank all of you. Not just for pressing play. That's incredible. I love this community. It's been such a blessing as we begin this journey. If we continue this journey, really here on Day 65, but also for all those who have supported the production of this podcast with your prayers and with your financial gifts, truly couldn't do this without you. And I'm just so, so incredibly grateful. As I kind of said, there in the little intro, today we're on article

three, which is the next statement in the Apostles Creed. That statement is, who was conceived by the

Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. Paragraph one here, this what we're going to read today is

the son of God became man, and we're actually asking the question, Why? Why did the word become flesh? Now,

the church is going to offer us four reasons. It's remarkable. I love this. Now, the Nicene Creed says

for us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven. Yes, that is a great reason. In fact,

that's the first reason. In paragraph 457, it says,

The Word became flesh for us in order to save us by reconciling us with God. So that's the first

run. Why did the Word became flesh? To save us by reconciling us to God. The second reason in

458, if you're following along, you can see this right now. The Word became flesh so that thus

we might know God's love.

Or imagine this.

Imagine not even hearing this.

I know a lot of us struggle to believe that.

But imagine never, never really hearing that even.

Or even saying, okay, God loves me when, how, why?

And not even realizing that here's how he loves us. And this, the love of God was made manifest. God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through him. So the second reason,

why did God become man? Why did the word become flesh so that we might know God's love? The third reason

in paragraph 459, the word became flesh to be our model of holiness. It came to show us the way. The fourth reason

...