This third homily on the nativity of the Lord was supplied to us by a most ancient codex once of the monastery of Appanni, commonly Pagno in the marquisate of Saluzzo, page 16, and likewise it enjoys the testimony of the Turin codex, as the one above did. For it is announced in its index: Likewise concerning the nativity of the Lord, Homily 19. But it greatly conduces to the beauty and adornment of our edition that we produce it whole in every part. The most holy and venerable sacrament of the Lord's nativity, which with exulting spirits the whole Church venerates on this present day, we too ought to celebrate with like joys. For today that eternal Son of God, pitying human nature, descended from His royal seats to restore us.
Today that new Adam by His wondrous nativity fashioned our nature anew, and that which by the wretched fall of the old Adam had been defiled and corrupted, He led back to life by His precious nativity and His lamentable death. Today that Lord of heaven and of earth deigned to visit our infirmities. On this day that Bethlehem, city of the Most High God, which is also called the city of bread, brought forth to us that heavenly bread and drink, whereof those who have been filled and inebriated shall ever taste eternal joys. Hell grieves that He was born, God and man, who, closing its bars, transferred the dwellers of the earth to heaven.
But the heavens rejoice that through His coming an entrance was at last opened to the whole world for mortals, whereby they may be able to scale the heights of heaven. The heavenly inhabitants too exult that on this present day hope has been made for all men of dwelling in those eternal seats which God has prepared for those who love Him; and they rejoice that they shall one day be partakers of that blessedness, and companions of its joys. Finally, the most blessed Virgin, the childbearer herself, rejoices that she has brought forth that child whom, by the irradiating power of the Holy Spirit from on high, without any carnal embrace, she conceived in her womb as God and man at once.
Let us also, therefore, brethren, rejoice on this most holy day, on which the Lord is born to us, who is Christ Jesus in the city of David, and let us be glad at the celebration of so great a nativity. For him whom we now venerate as newly born, we believe to be not man only, but also God. He is man indeed in the tenderness of his limbs, but God as well, proceeding from God through the conception of his spotless mother. And that he was truly both God and man, as you have heard from the varied reading of the Gospel, both the very star which announced his rising to the Magi, and the angels conversing with the shepherds, alike make plain. We ought therefore altogether to believe that he was at once both God and man. The end.