Sermons & Letters 23

Chapter I. — The greatness of the divine work, most beloved, indeed exceeds and far surpasses the faculty of human eloquence; and from thence arises the difficulty of speaking, whence comes the reason for not being silent: because in Christ Jesus the Son of God, that which was said through the prophet, 'Who shall declare His generation?' (Isaiah liii, 8), pertains not only to the divine essence, but also to the human nature. For that both substances came together into one person, unless faith believe it, speech does not explain; and therefore the matter of praise never fails, because the abundance of the one praising never suffices.

Let us therefore rejoice that we are unequal to the task of expressing so great a mystery of mercy; and since we cannot fully set forth the height of our salvation, let us feel that it is good for us to be overcome. For no one draws nearer to the knowledge of the truth than he who understands that in divine matters, however much he may advance, there always remains something more for him to seek. For whoever presumes that he has arrived at the goal toward which he strives has not found what he sought, but has failed in the searching. Yet lest we be troubled by the straits of our weakness, the voices of the Gospel and of the prophets aid us, by which we are so kindled and taught that the Nativity of the Lord, by which the Word was made flesh, seems to us

(John 1:14) not so much a thing past to be recalled, as a thing present to be beheld. For what the angel of the Lord announced to the shepherds keeping watch over the guardianship of their flocks has filled our hearing also; and therefore we preside over the Lord's sheep because we keep in the ear of our heart the words divinely uttered, as though on this present festival too it were said: Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all the people; for unto you is born this day a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David (Luke 2:10-11). To the sublimity of this preaching is joined the exultation of innumerable angels (that the testimony might be made more excellent, to which the multitude of the heavenly host sang in accord), saying in honour of God with one blessing:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will (Luke 2:14). The infancy of Christ born of a Virgin Mother is therefore the glory of God, and the restoration of the human race is deservedly referred back to the praise of its Author: since the very angel Gabriel, sent by God, had said to blessed Mary: The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; therefore also that which shall be born of thee holy, shall be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35). But on earth peace is granted to those whom it makes men of good will.

For by whatever Spirit Christ is born from the womb of an undefiled Mother, by that same Spirit the Christian is reborn from the womb of holy Church; for whom true peace is this: not to be divided from the will of God, and to delight only in those things which God loves. CHAP. II. — Celebrating therefore, dearly beloved, the birthday of the Lord, which of all the days of past times has been chosen — although, according to the ordering of bodily actions as it had been foreordained by eternal counsel, it has passed, and the whole humility of the Redeemer has been exalted into the glory of the Father's majesty, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father (Philippians

2:10-11) — yet unceasingly do we adore that very birth of the salvation-bringing Virgin, and we receive that indissoluble union of the Word and the flesh no less as He lies in the manger than as He sits upon the throne of the Father's height. For the unchangeable Godhead, although within itself it contained both its own brightness and its own power, was nevertheless not on that account not joined to the one being born, because it was not open to human sight: so that through the unwonted beginnings of a true man He might be recognized as begotten who was both the Lord and Son of king David. For He Himself sings by the prophetic Spirit, saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand (Psalm 110:1). By which testimony, as the Gospel relates, the impiety of the Jews was confuted.

For when Jesus asked the Jews whose son they said the Christ was, and they had answered, David's, straightway the Lord, rebuking their blindness, said: How then does David in the Spirit call Him Lord, saying: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit thou at my right hand (Matthew 22:43)? You have barred against yourselves, O Jews, the way of understanding, and while you regard only the nature of the flesh, you have deprived yourselves of the whole light of truth. For expecting, according to the fabulous fictions of your persuasion, a son of David of bodily stock alone, while you set your hope in a man only, you have rejected God the Son of God: so that what it is glorious for us to profess cannot profit you.

For we too, when asked whose Son Christ is, confess with the voice of the Apostle that He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh (Romans 1:3); and from the very beginning of the Gospel preaching we are instructed, reading: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David (Matthew 1:1). But we are distinguished from your impiety in this: that Him whom we know to have been born a man of the offspring of David, the same, inasmuch as the Word was made flesh (John 1:14), we believe to be God coeternal with God the Father. Wherefore, if you held, O Israel, the dignity of your name, and did not run through the prophetic proclamations with a blinded heart, Isaiah would unfold to you the evangelical truth, and, not being deaf, you would hear him saying by divine inspiration:

Behold, a Virgin shall conceive in her womb, and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23). And if you did not see Him in such propriety of the sacred name, at least in the Davidic voice you might have learned it, lest against the testimony of the New and the Old Testament you deny Jesus Christ to be the son of David, whom you do not confess to be David's Lord. CHAP. III. — Wherefore, dearly beloved, since through the ineffable grace of God the Church of the believing nations has attained that which the Synagogue of the carnal Jews did not merit, as David says: The Lord has made known His salvation, in the sight of the nations He has revealed His justice (Psalm 98:2); and Isaiah likewise proclaiming:

The people that sat in darkness has seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, a light has risen (Isaiah 9:2); and again: The nations that knew thee not shall call upon thee, and the peoples that knew thee not shall flee to thee (Isaiah 55:5): let us exult in the day of our salvation, and, taken up through the New Testament into fellowship with Him to whom it is said by the Father through the prophet: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the ends of the earth for thy possession (Psalm 2:7-8); let us glory in the mercy of Him who adopts us:

for, as the Apostle says, You have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear, but you have received the spirit of the adoption of sons, in which we cry, Abba, Father (Romans 8:15). For it is fitting and becoming that the will of the attesting Father be fulfilled by the sons of adoption; and, as the Apostle says, If we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified together (ibid. 17), let those be partakers of the humility of Christ who are to be co-heirs of glory (Romans 8:17). Let the Lord be honoured in His infancy, and let not the beginnings and bodily increments be referred as an injury to the Godhead: since to the unchangeable nature our nature neither added anything nor diminished it;

but He who in the likeness of sinful flesh deigned to be conformed to men, remains in the unity of the Godhead equal to the Father; with whom, together with the Holy Spirit, He lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen. CHAP. I. — Often, as you know, dearly beloved, we have bestowed upon you the service of a saving sermon concerning the excellence of today's festival; nor do we doubt that the power of divine goodness has so shone forth in your hearts, that what has been implanted in you by faith may also be comprehended by understanding. But because the nativity of our Lord and Saviour, not only according to the deity from the Father, but also according to the flesh from the mother, so exceeds the capacity of human speech, that it is deservedly referred to both, that which was said:

Who shall declare His generation (Isaiah 53:8)? In that very thing which cannot worthily be explained, the reason for discoursing always overflows: not because it is permitted to feel differently, but because no tongue can suffice for the dignity of the matter. The greatness therefore of the mystery, disposed before the eternal ages for the salvation of the human race, and unsealed at the end of the ages, suffers nothing to be taken from its own integrity, nor anything to be added; and as it does not lose what is its own, so it does not receive what is foreign. But many, followers of their own opinions, and readier to teach than to learn what they have not yet understood, have, as the Apostle says, made shipwreck concerning the faith (1 Timothy 1:19); whose depraved and conflicting opinions I shall touch upon with a brief indication:

so that, the darkness of errors being separated from the light of truth, both the divine benefits may be religiously honoured, and human falsehoods may be knowingly guarded against. CHAP.

II. — For certain men, from the proofs of the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ which showed Him to be a true son of man, believed Him to be nothing more than a son of man, not thinking that deity should be ascribed to Him whom both the beginnings of infancy, and the bodily increments, and the condition of sufferings even unto the cross and death, had proven not unlike other mortals. Others indeed, moved by admiration of His virtues, understanding both the newness of His origin and the power of His words and deeds to belong to the divine nature, thought that nothing of our substance was in Him, and that all that pertained to bodily action and form either proceeded from some more sublime kind of matter, or was a simulated appearance of flesh, so that the senses of those who saw and touched were deceived by a deluding image. There was moreover in certain erring men even that persuasion, by which they attempted to assert that something out of the very substance of the Word was converted into flesh, and that Jesus, born of Mary the Virgin, had nothing of His mother's nature;

but both that which was God, and that which was man, that both pertained to that which is the Word: so that indeed in Christ, through the diversity of substance the humanity was false, and through the defect of mutability the divinity was not true. CHAP. III. — These impieties therefore, dearly beloved, and others conceived by diabolical inspiration and poured out for the harm of many through vessels of perdition, the Catholic faith, whose God is both master and helper, long ago crushed, the Holy Spirit exhorting and instructing us through the testimony of the Law, through the vaticinations of the prophets, and through the evangelical trumpet and the apostolic doctrine, that we may constantly and understandingly believe that, as the blessed John says, the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (John

1:14). Among us, assuredly, whom the divinity of the Word joined to itself, whose flesh, taken from the Virgin's womb, is ourselves. And if it were not of our nature, that is, truly human, the Word made flesh would not have dwelt among us. But among us it dwelt, because it made the nature of our body its own, Wisdom building itself a house (Proverbs 9:1), not of any material whatsoever, but of our own substance, whose assumption was made manifest when it was said: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And with this most sacred preaching the doctrine of the blessed apostle Paul also agrees, saying:

See that no one deceive you through philosophy and vain fallacy according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: for in Him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and you are filled in Him (Colossians 2:8-10). The whole divinity therefore fills the whole body; and as nothing is lacking of that majesty by whose habitation the dwelling is filled, so nothing is lacking of the body that is not full of its indweller. But what was said, And you are filled in Him, signifies assuredly our nature, to which that filling would not pertain, unless the Word of God had united to itself both soul and body of our race. CHAP. IV.

— It must assuredly be acknowledged, dearly beloved, and confessed with the whole heart, that this generation, by which both the Word and the flesh, that is, God and man, is made one Son of God and one Christ, excels every origin of human creation. For neither the formation of Adam from the slime of the earth, nor the moulding of Eve from the flesh of the man (Genesis 2:7, 22), nor the condition of other men from the mingling of both sexes, can be compared to the birth of Jesus Christ. Old Abraham begot the heir of the divine promise, and Sarah, barren and past the years of fertility, conceived (Genesis 21:2). Jacob was loved by God before he was born, and by prevenient grace, before any voluntary actions, was separated from the rough hairiness of his twin brother (Genesis 25:25; Malachi

1:3; Romans 9:13). To Jeremiah it is said: Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee (Jeremiah 1:5). Anna, long deprived of fruitfulness, brought forth the prophet Samuel, whom she offered to God (1 Samuel 1:20), that she might be renowned both by her offspring and by her vow. Zachariah the priest received holy offspring from barren Elizabeth (Luke 1:24), and John, the future forerunner of Christ, received the prophetic spirit within his mother's womb, and, a child not yet born, by the sign of enclosed exultation showed his mother the Lord (ibid. 44). All these things are great, and full of the miracles of divine works; but by this very fact the more wondrous the more restrained, the more numerous they are. But the nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ surpasses all understanding,

and transcends all examples; nor can it be comparable to any, being singular among all things. To the chosen Virgin, promised of old from the seed of Abraham and from the root of Jesse through prophetic voices and mystic signs, a blessed fruitfulness is announced by the archangel without loss of modesty, one that would violate her sacred virginity neither in conception nor in childbirth. For when the Holy Spirit came upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her (Luke 1:35), the unchangeable Word of God assumed to itself, from an undefiled body, the habit of human flesh: which would draw no contagion from the concupiscence of the flesh, and would lack nothing of those things which pertain to the nature of soul and body. CHAP.

V. — Let the monsters of heretical opinions therefore withdraw far off, and go into their own darkness, and the sacrileges of insane falsehoods; let us, the heavenly multitude exulting in the praise of God, and the shepherds instructed by the angels to teach, so that, the proofs of both natures being known, we may adore both the Word in Christ the man, and Christ the man in the Word. For if, as the Apostle says, he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17), how much more is the Word made flesh one Christ? where there is nothing of the one nature that is not also of both. Let us not therefore be weakened in the counsel of the mercy of God, which reforms us both to innocence and to life;

nor, because in our Saviour we recognize the manifest signs of a twofold nature, let us doubt either in the glory of God concerning the truth of the flesh, or in the humility of the man concerning the majesty of the Godhead. The same is He in the form of God who took the form of a servant. The same is He who remains incorporeal and who assumes a body. The same is He inviolable in His own power and passible in our weakness. The same is He not divided from the Father's throne and crucified by the impious on the tree. The same is He ascending as victor over death above the heights of the heavens, and not abandoning the whole Church even to the consummation of the age. The same, finally, is He who, coming in that same flesh in which He ascended, as He endured the judgment of the impious, so shall judge concerning the action of all mortals.

Wherefore, that we may not dwell upon very many testimonies, it suffices to bring forward one from the Gospel of blessed John, in which our Lord Himself says: Amen, amen I say to you, that the hour comes, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son also to have life in Himself: and He has given Him power to do judgment, because He is the Son of man (John 5:25-27). Therefore under one sentence He shows that the same is both the Son of God and the son of man.

Whence it appears in what manner we ought to believe Christ the Lord in the unity of person, who, though He be the Son of God, through whom we were made, has also been made the son of man through the assumption of flesh, that He might die, as the Apostle says, for our sins, and rise again for our justification (Romans 4:25). CHAP. VI. — This confession, dearly beloved, fears no contradictions, yields to no errors. For we acknowledge the mercy of God promised from the beginning, and prepared before the ages, through which alone the bonds of human captivity could be loosed, by which the author of sin, giving evil counsel, had bound the first man and all his posterity, and claimed for himself the surrendered progeny by an original prejudgment.

Since therefore this chiefly avails for the justifying of men, that the Only-begotten of God deigned to be also the son of man, so that He might exist as God to the Father, that is, of one substance, and the same as true man consubstantial according to the flesh to His mother; we rejoice in both, because we are saved only by both: in nothing dividing the visible from the invisible, the corporeal from the incorporeal, the passible from the impassible, the palpable from the impalpable, the form of a servant from the form of God; because although the one remains from eternity, the other began in time; yet they came together into unity, and can have neither separation nor end;

while, exalting and exalted, glorifying and glorified, they so cleave to one another that, whether in omnipotence or in ignominy, neither do the divine things in Christ lack the human, nor the human the divine. CHAP. VII. — Believing this, dearly beloved, we are true Christians, true Israelites, and truly adopted into the fellowship of the sons of God: because all the saints too who preceded the times of our Saviour, being justified through this faith, and through this mystery made the body of Christ, awaited the universal redemption of believers in the seed of Abraham, of whom the Apostle says: To Abraham were the promises made, and to his seed.

He does not say, And to seeds, as of many, but as of one, And to thy seed, who is Christ (Galatians 3:16). On account of which Matthew the evangelist, in order to show the promise made to Abraham to be fulfilled in Christ, runs through the order of the generations, and demonstrated in whom the blessing had been appointed for all the nations. Luke the evangelist likewise wove the aged line of his lineage upward from the very birth of the Lord (Luke 3:23), that he might teach that even those ages which had preceded the flood were connected to this mystery, and that all the degrees of succession from the beginning had reached toward Him in whom alone was the salvation of all.

Therefore it is not to be doubted that besides Christ there is no other name under heaven given to men, in which we must be saved (Acts 4:12); who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, equal in the Trinity, lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.