Credo 20 - ... by the power of the Holy Spirit

It was by the power of the Holy Spirit that Jesus Christ our Saviour took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and through this miraculous event, Mary gave birth to a son and yet remained a virgin always. The power of the Holy Spirit ensured that God could take our nature and unite it to the divine nature in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Annunciation, the very first of the mysteries of the rosary, marks the inauguration of the fullness of time. When Mary becomes pregnant with Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, the time of the fulfilment of the promise of God has arrived. Mary is asked by the angel to conceive the one in whom the whole fullness of deity would become flesh. Mary is unable to understand how she will bear a child when she has ‘known no man’, and she is answered that this event will occur by the power of the Holy Spirit: ‘the Holy Spirit will come upon you’ (Lk 1: 34 – 35).

The Holy Spirit fulfils a role that is intimately dependent on the role of the Son. Later in our reflections on the creed, we will consider the Holy Spirit as ‘the Lord, the giver of life’. By the power of the Holy Spirit, the womb of the Virgin Mary was sanctified, and she conceived the Son of the eternal Father in a humanity that was drawn from her own.

The Father’s only son, the fruit of the Virgin’s womb, is the ‘Christ’, the one anointed by the Holy Spirit since the beginning of time. This fact is made manifest to the human race only gradually from the cradle to the cross, and from the resurrection to the return in glory. Thus, the entire life of Jesus Christ will make manifest ‘how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power (Acts 10:38).