We have spoken sufficiently about this homily in the commentary on the life of Saint Maximus and in the preface, and we judge that nothing further need be added, save that it was received from the same codex of Saint Dalmatius, number 9, on the Nativity of the Lord; but in the Turin codex it is homily 15. In both it bears the title: Likewise also on the Nativity of the Lord. This most holy day of the Lord's birth, brethren, which the whole Church, exulting together with us, celebrates in common, let us too observe with fitting joys. Today that eternal Son of God descended for our sake from heaven to earth, that he might call up to heaven the whole world which he had created from the beginning. Today, at the end of the ages, was born as man he who before all ages proceeded, only-begotten, from the Father.
A new man indeed in time, yet from eternity God; a new Christ indeed, yet Lord of all the ages. Today that most blessed Virgin Mary brought forth a man whom she did not receive from man, and who both before and after childbirth remained an inviolate virgin. Blind and foolish heathenism laughs at the depth of so great a mystery; that impious blasphemy too mocks, which in recent days, when it presumed to disparage and corrupt the Virgin's childbearing, blasphemed that Christ our Lord could not be brought forth from a virgin. The holy Church of Milan shuddered at this blasphemy; our synodal assembly condemned it with one voice; and that pious imperial power itself abhorred the same.
For indeed, while he dared to set marriage on a level with virginity, he blasphemes that Christ could not be begotten of a virgin—though he does not dare to deny that women who have brought forth the offspring of men in childbirth remain virgins. But what, pray, is this shameless and rash deceit, to say that Christ our Lord could not be begotten of a virgin, when by them he is believed to have been able to create a man without a woman? If he was able, without any union of female and male sex, to bring a woman into the light, why is it said that he could not beget a new man without any carnal union? If in the conception of the first Adam you believe that the omnipotence of God alone sufficed,
why, brother, in the coming of the second Adam—through whom eternal salvation has descended upon us, through whom we all have been restored—will you deny the divine power? But if it is not against nature that a virgin can conceive, since God has been able to do all things whatsoever he willed in heaven and on earth, why do you assert that it is against nature for a virgin, by the working power of almighty God, with virginity unharmed... for God has done all things whatsoever he willed in heaven and on earth. He willed to form man from clay, and he did it. Heaven, earth (ten lines are missing, because the writing has perished) he willed, and they were made. He willed the people of Israel to pass with dry foot through the waves of the sea, and it was done. At the prayers of Gideon he commanded the sun to stand still in its course, and it stood still.
Finally he willed that an untouched virgin should bear a boy while her virginity remained to her, and she bore him. Therefore, what in that heavenly birth (a leaf is missing; afterward it concludes thus). Therefore, brethren, clinging with unshakeable faith and accustomed devotion always to the many admonitions of the priest, walking along the ways of the religious journey and the paths of truth which the whole Church holds, trample more and more upon the crooked and devilish fabrications of the heretics. For the faithful soul, which believes that God has been able to do whatsoever he willed, ought not (two lines are missing); who will consume with eternal fires. The end.