I believe that in the humanity of Jesus lies the glory of us all. If Jesus is the Breath of the Spirit, if the Spirit can work through the humanity of Jesus, then the Spirit can work through our humanity, as well.

The Jesus who was “conceived by the Holy Spirit” not only reminds us of the Spirit within but shows us the character of the life we shape by opening ourselves to the impulse of God who, daily, leads us beyond ourselves. As Jesus responded to the Spirit in his own life, so we realize, can we. As Jesus was formed by it, we now know we are. The awareness of the Spirit within us is the awareness of the Cosmic, created by God and embodied in Jesus.

The Spirit opened Jesus to a world beyond his own. The Spirit does the same for us, if only we allow ourselves to become bigger than the limitations of a humanity in which the divinity has never been unleashed. We tie ourselves to the religions of the world: to national chauvinism, to religious intolerance, to racist conclusions and sexist structures and call it fidelity to the law of God. But all the while, the conception of Jesus leads us to reach out to the Samaritan Woman, the Roman soldier, the needy in our midst, where the Holy Spirit is also working, also struggling to bring life to the full.

The conception, the impulsion, the kindling of Jesus by the Spirit of the Holy calls us to become less concentrated on sin and more on grace, less concerned with the restrictions of law and more with the limitless possibilities of love, less obsessed by the limitations of being human more in awe of its potential. It is humanity that is the womb of the divine in us.

—excerpted from In Search of Belief by Joan Chittister (Liguori)