On the Feast of the Nativity, First Sermon

Our Savior, dearly beloved, was born today: let us rejoice. For there is no proper place for sadness when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings us the joy of promised eternity. No one is shut out from sharing in this happiness. All have one common measure of joy, because, as our Lord, the destroyer of sin and death, finds no one free from guilt, so he has come to set us all free. Let the saint exult, because he draws near to victory. Let the sinner be glad, because he is invited to pardon. Let the Gentile take courage, because he is called to life. For the Son of God, in the fullness of time that the unsearchable depth of the divine counsel had fixed, took on himself the nature of man, to reconcile it to its Maker, so that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through the very nature he had conquered. And in this contest undertaken for us, the fight was fought on great and wonderful terms of fairness. For the almighty Lord enters the arena against his savage foe not in his own majesty but in our lowliness, opposing him with the same form and the same nature, which shares our mortality indeed, but is free from all sin. This nativity is truly a stranger to what we read of all others: “No one is clean from stain, not even the infant who has lived only one day on earth.” So nothing of the lust of the flesh passed into that matchless birth; nothing of the law of sin entered it. A royal Virgin of the line of David is chosen, to be made pregnant with the holy seed, and to conceive the offspring, divine and human, first in mind and then in body. And so that she would not tremble at so strange an outcome, not knowing the heavenly plan, she learns from her conversation with the angel that what is to be done in her is from the Holy Spirit. Nor does she think it a loss of honor that she is soon to be the Mother of God. For why should she despair over the newness of such a conception, when the power of the Most High has promised to bring it about? Her complete faith is confirmed also by the witness of a miracle that goes before it: Elizabeth receives an unexpected fertility, so that there might be no doubt that he who had given conception to the barren would give it even to a virgin. [a]

So the Word of God, himself God, the Son of God, who “in the beginning was with God,” through whom “all things were made,” and “without” whom “nothing was made,” became man in order to deliver man from eternal death. He stooped to take on our lowliness without any lessening of his own majesty, so that, remaining what he was and taking on what he was not, he might unite the true form of a slave to the form in which he is equal to God the Father, and join both natures together in such a bond that the lower would not be swallowed up by its exaltation, nor the higher impaired by its new partner. So, without loss to the properties of either substance, which then came together in one person, majesty took on lowliness, strength took on weakness, eternity took on mortality. And to pay off the debt that belonged to our condition, the nature that cannot be harmed was united with the nature that can suffer, and true God and true man were joined to form one Lord, so that, as our need required, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other. [c] Rightly, then, the birth of our Salvation brought no corruption to the Virgin’s purity, because to bring forth the Truth was to keep her honor. Such, then, beloved, was the birth fitting for the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, Christ, by which he might be one with us in manhood and surpass us in Godhead. For unless he were true God, he would not bring us a remedy; unless he were true man, he would not give us an example. So the song of the rejoicing angels when the Lord was born is this: “Glory to God in the highest,” and their message, “peace on earth to men of good will.” For they see that the heavenly Jerusalem is being built up out of all the nations of the world. And over that indescribable work of the divine love, how greatly ought lowly men to rejoice, when the joy of the angels on high is so great? [d]

Let us then, dearly beloved, give thanks to God the Father, through his Son, in the Holy Spirit, who “because of his great mercy with which he loved us” has had pity on us, and “when we were dead in sins, made us alive together in Christ,” so that we might be in him a new creation and a new workmanship. Let us put off, then, the old man with his deeds, and having obtained a share in the birth of Christ, let us renounce the works of the flesh. Christian, recognize your dignity. Now that you have become a partner in the divine nature, refuse to go back to your old baseness by degenerate conduct. Remember the Head and the Body of which you are a member. Remember that you were rescued from the power of darkness and brought into God’s light and kingdom. By the mystery of baptism you were made the temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive so great a dweller away from you by base acts, or make yourself subject once more to the devil’s slavery, because the price paid for you is the blood of Christ, because he who ransomed you in mercy will judge you in truth, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns forever and ever. Amen. [e]