Father Thomas Welbers' Homily	Jump back to Homily Index
Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, January 11, 2004 Isaiah 42:1-4, 6-7 Acts 10: 34-38 Luke 3:15-16, 21-22	Listen to Audio

On this feast of the Baptism of the Lord, I can think of no more relevant nor more important topic for a homily than to preach on monothelitism. What was that word again? Monothelitism.

I suspect 99% of you are asking in your mind, “What’s that? What is monothelitism?” The two or three of you who may know what monothelitism is are probably asking, “Why is he bringing that up? What does that have to do with this feast of the Baptism of the Lord, or for that matter, with anything relevant to our lives as Christians today?”

Well. Monothelitism was something that Christians struggled with in the sixth and seventh centuries. It was a belief that Jesus Christ did not have a human will but only had only one will, the divine will. The word “monothelitism” comes from two Greek words, the prefix “mono-” meaning one, and the word “thelema,” meaning “will.” This belief, that Jesus had only one will, God’s will, was of course a very attractive way of understanding the divinity of Christ. He was God, our Savior, worthy of all worship. True enough. It also affirmed that he was sinless because, having only the will of God, he obviously could not sin. Not quite true.

However, this belief, attractive as it was, was declared to be heretical at the Third Council of Constantinople in 681 after about a hundred years of controversy and debate. Now that you all have some idea of what monothelitsim is, you can all join together in the question, “So what?”

The solemn teaching of an ecumenical council is not something that a bunch of bishops just got together and decided, “Oh, let’s invent a new doctrine!” Rather, it was the result of carefully weighing and debating an important question: “Does this way of understanding who and what Jesus was and is correspond to the Jesus we know from Scripture, and is it in accord with the way Christians have believed since the beginning?”

The problem with monothelitism, believing that Jesus did not have a human will but only a divine will, is that it bottom-line denies the full humanity of Jesus Christ. It means that Jesus was God in human clothing, play-acting but not really one of us. And, if that’s the case, it’s all a sham, a game that God’s playing with us – God has not really become one of us, and we are not saved.

An essential element of our faith is that Jesus Christ, God the Son, became fully human, a man like us in all things except sin. The “except sin” part was not automatic, it can be known only from hindsight – he in fact did not sin. But it was achieved through his human will uniting himself to God’s will, the divine will. He was fully like us in all the human weakness, human suffering, and human temptation that we experience. To unite his human will to God’s will, as he did in everything, he had to experience and struggle with temptation just as much as we do – he did not just follow a script or an automatic program.

And, it is our faith, that even though personally sinless, he took upon himself the guilt and the consequences of our sinfulness. So there is no aspect of humanity that Jesus does not know from experience. What this mean is that we are not saved by God’s condescension – having pity on us from on high. We are saved by God’s full participation in everything that it means to be human. In Jesus, God not only knows us as Creator; God knows us totally from the inside, as one of us.

So often, when facing our own weakness, our own suffering, and our own sinfulness, we are tempted – actually we are tempted to monothelitism! – we are tempted to think, “Jesus was God, he couldn’t possibly have known or experienced what I’m facing or what I’m going through. Or he could not possibly know what it’s like to carry around the same burden of guilt and sin that I do.” That thought itself is a temptation to make Jesus something other than he is, and it’s part of Satan’s cunning to remove us from Jesus, to create a barrier in our own minds and hearts that prevents Jesus from being who he is for us, and from doing what he wants to for and in us.

If we can have the assurance, which our faith gives us, that Jesus knows fully well what we are like from the inside, and continues to love us, then we can open ourselves to receive what he wants to give – his healing and his forgiveness.

And, in receiving his healing and forgiveness, we can allow him then to open us up to others, to take part in his mission. Not just to be on the receiving end, but as he has participated in us, so we take part in him, and his mission.

That’s the meaning of this feast of the Baptism of the Lord. More than any other event of Jesus’ early life and ministry, his submission to John’s baptism – a sign that acknowledges the sinfulness of our humanity and the need for forgiveness and healing – was his way of assuring us that he, even as the Son of God, was also fully one of us. He immersed himself in our human condition totally, without holding back. And that is Good News indeed.

© Thomas Welbers 2004

Note: see the article on monothelitism is the online Catholic Encyclopedia.