Our Saviour, most beloved, is born today; let us rejoice. For there ought to be no place for sadness where the birthday of joys is celebrated. This joy therefore pertains to all, because Christ came for all. Let no one, then, think himself a stranger to the gladness of this day. If anyone is holy, let him rejoice, because he will receive a reward. If anyone is a sinner, let him rejoice, because he is invited to pardon. If anyone is a Gentile, let him rejoice, because he is admitted to salvation. God took upon Himself the flesh of the human race for our sake. If only we do not make ourselves strangers to Christ, we are already in Christ. Let us therefore acknowledge our redemption, let us acknowledge our salvation. He makes himself a stranger to the fellowship of Christ, who denies himself to be in the body of Christ.
But let us consider, most beloved, that according to the Scriptures which have been read, we acknowledge the Lord to be born today; let us see how He was born at the end of the age who is the Creator of the ages: for He Himself spoke and they were made; He commanded, and they were created (Psalm 148:5). Christ therefore, our Saviour, most beloved, is believed to be man and God: God from the Father, man from the mother; God from the Godhead, bodily from the flesh; and therefore God before the ages, man after the ages; God before all beginnings, man among the last things, who in the beginning created by His majesty, today came to save by the flesh. The creation of men was the first power; salvation the second act of piety.
BenignitatismotusafTectuDominusvoluitutnobisredaeretmisericordiaquidquidabstuleratoffensa. Descenditergoilleutnosascenderemus, coelestiasubmisitutterrestriasublevaret, fecitsehominisparticipemuthominemfacoretDeiesseconsortem;factus,sicutperApostolumaudistis, exmulierefactussublege (Galat. iv, 4). SednemocummulieremauditmatremDomini, denominisoffensionemoveatur.VirgoconcepitexSpiritusancto, sedmuliernominaturexsexu. Etideoevangelista, quilectusest, virginem; apostolusautemmulieremnuncupavit: utomnesinpartuVirginisomnipotentiamagnoscerentDivinitatis; inappellationeautemmulieris, nomenconditionisaudirent. CAp. III.
By the impulse of His loving-kindness the Lord willed that He should restore to us by mercy whatever offence had taken away. He therefore descended that we might ascend, He lowered heavenly things that He might lift up earthly things, He made Himself a partaker of man that He might make man a sharer of God; made, as you have heard through the Apostle, of a woman, made under the law (Galatians 4:4). But let no one, when he hears a woman called the mother of the Lord, be troubled by any offence in the word. The Virgin conceived by the Holy Spirit, but she is named a woman from her sex. And therefore the Evangelist who was read called her a virgin, but the Apostle called her a woman: that all might acknowledge in the birth of the Virgin the omnipotence of the Godhead, and in the name of woman might hear the name of her condition.
Our Lord therefore was born of the flesh indeed, but not of carnal corruption; born as man, but not begotten as man. He so took flesh that He preserved the honour of His majesty. And thus, separating the purity of His nativity from the defilement of human filth, He accomplished indeed in His birth the full dispensation of a man, yet did not forsake the dignity of God. And therefore, being in this world such as He was by His nativity, He preserved the purity of His origin also in the sincerity of His life. For He alone is the One in whose mouth, as it is written, was no guile: so that He who had not known human defilement in His creation, should not know it also in His manner of life. For when, says the Apostle, He was in the form of God, He took the form of a servant, and so forth.
All men, most beloved, were servants of sins, and therefore the Apostle rightly says that He assumed only the form of a servant, because, being indeed true man, but not defiled by human vices, He had only the form of a servant, not the conscience: because although He had the appearance of a man, yet He had not the conscience of a sinner: because, as the Apostle says, When He was in the form of God, He took the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man (Philippians 2:6-7). In fashion a man, but in power God; as a servant in form, but Lord in nature: outwardly showing the weakness of the mother, inwardly possessing the majesty of the Father; outwardly humble in body, inwardly mighty in Divinity.
In short, His very conversation among men displayed both together: in His sufferings a man, in His mighty works God. For He hungered, but He fed the hungry when the loaves were multiplied through blessing. That He hungered was flesh; that He fed was God. It was of the man that He wept; of the Divinity that He bestowed. He showed Himself man in that He poured forth prayer, prayed, was heard. In all things therefore He displayed in Himself a twofold nature, and therefore He is the Mediator of both substances: because while He lowered heavenly things, He exalted human things; He made from diversity the highest concord, so that in Him both should become one — He who retains both in Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages.