On the Incarnation of the Word
His Works Too Many to Count
If someone wants to see God, who is invisible by nature and not seen at all, he may know and grasp him from his works. In the same way, let the one who fails to see Christ with his understanding at least grasp him by the works of his body, and test whether they are human works or God’s works. If they are human, let him scoff. But if they are not human but of God, let him recognize it, and not laugh at what is no matter for scoffing. Let him rather marvel that by so ordinary a means divine things have been shown to us; that by death immortality has reached everyone; and that by the Word’s becoming man, the providence that governs all things has been made known, and its Giver and Maker, the very Word of God. For he was made man so that we might be made God. He showed himself through a body so that we might receive an idea of the unseen Father. He endured the insults of men so that we might inherit immortality. He himself was in no way harmed, since he is beyond suffering and incorruptible, the very Word and God. But the suffering men, for whose sakes he endured all this, he kept and preserved in his own freedom from suffering.
In a word, the achievements of the Savior that came from his becoming man are of such a kind and number that anyone who wished to count them would be like people who gaze at the wide sea and want to count its waves. As one cannot take in all the waves with his eyes, because those still coming on baffle the senses of anyone who tries, so for anyone who would take in all of Christ’s achievements in the body, it is impossible to take in the whole, even by reckoning them up, since those beyond his thought are more than those he thinks he has grasped. It is better, then, not to aim at speaking of the whole, where one cannot do justice even to a part, but, after mentioning one more, to leave the whole for you to marvel at. For all of them alike are marvelous, and wherever a person turns his eyes, he may see on that side the divinity of the Word and be struck with very great awe.