On the Feast of the Nativity, Second Sermon

Let us be glad in the Lord, dearly beloved, and rejoice with spiritual joy, for there has dawned for us the day of ever-new redemption, of ancient preparation, of eternal happiness. For as the year comes round, the commemoration of our salvation returns to us. It was promised from the beginning, it was accomplished in the fullness of time, and it will endure forever. On this day we are bound, with hearts lifted up, to adore the divine mystery, so that what is the work of God’s great gift may be celebrated by the church’s great rejoicing. For God, almighty and merciful, whose nature is goodness, whose will is power, whose work is mercy, foretold at the very beginning of the world the remedy his loving-kindness had prepared for restoring us mortals, as soon as the devil’s malice had killed us by the poison of his hatred. He declared to the serpent that the seed of the woman would come and by its power crush the lifting up of his deadly head. By this he no doubt meant that Christ would come in the flesh, God and man, and that, born of a virgin, he would by his uncorrupted birth condemn the plunderer of the human race. So true God was born in the whole and perfect nature of a true man, complete in what was his own, complete in what was ours. And by “ours” we mean what the Creator formed in us from the beginning and what he took upon himself to repair. For what the deceiver brought in, and the deceived man admitted, left no trace in the Savior. Nor, because he shared in human weaknesses, did he therefore share our faults. He took the form of a slave without the stain of sin, enlarging the human and not lessening the divine. For that “emptying of himself,” by which the Invisible made himself visible, and the Creator and Lord of all things, remaining what he was, chose to be mortal, was the stooping down of compassion, not the failing of power. [a]

So when the time came, dearly beloved, that had been fixed beforehand for the redemption of humankind, the Son of God enters these lower regions of the world. He comes down from his heavenly throne without leaving his Father’s glory, and is born in a new order, by a new birth. In a new order, because, invisible in his own nature, he became visible in ours. He whom nothing could contain was willing to be contained. Existing before all time, he began to exist in time. The Lord of all things veiled his boundless majesty and took on himself the form of a servant. Being God, who cannot suffer, he did not disdain to be man, who can; and immortal as he is, he did not disdain to subject himself to the laws of death. And he was born by a new birth: conceived by a virgin, born of a virgin, without a father’s desire, without harm to his mother’s chastity. For such a birth, which knew no stain of human flesh, was fitting for the one who was to be the Savior of humankind, while it held in itself the nature of human substance. For when God was born in the flesh, God himself was the Father, as the archangel testified to the blessed Virgin Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and therefore what will be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God.” The origin is different, but the nature is alike. It was brought about not by union with a man but by the power of God: for a virgin conceived, a virgin gave birth, and a virgin she remained. Consider here not the condition of the mother but the will of the one who was born, for he was born a man as he willed and as he was able. If you ask about the truth of his nature, you must acknowledge that the material is human. If you search into the manner of his birth, you must confess that the power is God’s. For the Lord Jesus Christ came to take away our defilements, not to suffer them; not to give way to our faults but to heal them. He came to cure every weakness of our corruption and all the sores of our defiled souls. That is why he had to be born in a new order, since he brought to human bodies the new gift of unstained purity. For the uncorrupted nature of the child had to guard the original virginity of his mother, and the power of the divine Spirit poured into her had to keep spotless and holy the sanctuary he had chosen for himself. That Spirit, I say, had determined to raise the fallen, to restore the broken, and, by overcoming the allurements of the flesh, to give us in abundant measure the power of chastity, so that the virginity which others cannot keep in childbearing they might attain at their second birth. [d]

And, dearly beloved, does not this very fact, that Christ chose to be born of a virgin, seem to belong to the deepest design? I mean that the devil was not to know that salvation had been born for the human race. Because that spiritual conception was hidden, when he saw him no different from others, he was to believe that he had been born in no different way from others. For when he saw that his nature was like that of everyone else, he thought he had the same origin as all. And he did not understand that he was free from the bonds of transgression, because he did not find him a stranger to the weakness of mortality. For though the true mercy of God had countless ways at hand for restoring humankind, it chose the particular plan which used, for destroying the devil’s work, not the force of might but the demands of justice. For the pride of the ancient enemy not undeservedly established a tyrant’s rights over all people, and with no unwarranted supremacy it lorded it over those who of their own accord had been lured away from God’s commands to be the slaves of his will. And so there would be no justice in his losing the age-old slavery of the human race unless he were conquered by that which he had brought into subjection. To this end Christ was conceived of a virgin without a man’s seed, and she was made fruitful not by human intercourse but by the Holy Spirit. And whereas in all mothers conception does not take place without the stain of sin, this one received cleansing from the very source of her conception. For no taint of sin entered where no intercourse took place. Her untouched virginity knew no lust when it supplied the substance. The Lord took from his mother our nature, not our fault. The form of a slave is created without the condition of a slave, because the New Man is so mingled with the old as both to take on the reality of our race and to remove its ancient flaw. [e]

So when the merciful and almighty Savior arranged the beginning of his human life so as to hide the power of his Godhead, which could not be separated from his manhood, under the veil of our weakness, the cunning enemy was caught off guard. He thought that the birth of the child, who was born for the salvation of humankind, was as much subject to him as all others are at their birth. For he saw him crying and weeping, he saw him wrapped in swaddling clothes, subjected to circumcision, offering the sacrifice the law required. Then he observed in him the usual growth of boyhood, and he could have had no doubt that he would reach manhood by natural steps. Meanwhile he inflicted insults, multiplied injuries, and used curses, affronts, blasphemies and abuse. In a word, he poured on him all the force of his fury and tried every kind of trial. And knowing how he had poisoned human nature, he had no idea that the one whose mortality he had confirmed by so many proofs had no share in the first transgression. The shameless thief and greedy robber kept on attacking the one who had nothing of his own. In carrying out the general sentence on original sin, he went beyond the bond on which he relied, and demanded the punishment of wickedness from the one in whom he found no fault. And so the malicious terms of the deadly agreement are canceled, and through the injustice of demanding more than was owed, the whole debt is wiped out. The strong one is bound with his own chains, and every scheme of the evil one recoils on his own head. When the prince of the world is bound, all that he held captive is set free. Our nature, cleansed from its old contagion, regains its honorable state. Death is destroyed by death, birth is restored by birth. For at one and the same time redemption does away with slavery, regeneration changes our origin, and faith justifies the sinner. [f]

Whoever you are, then, who devoutly and faithfully glory in the Christian name, value this atonement at its true worth. You were an outcast, banished from the realms of paradise, dying in your weary exile, reduced to dust and ashes, with no further hope of living. To you the incarnation of the Word gave the power to return from far away to your Maker, to recognize your parentage, to become free after slavery, to be raised from an outcast to a son. So you, who were born of corruptible flesh, may be reborn by the Spirit of God, and obtain by grace what you did not have by nature; and if you acknowledge yourself a son of God by the spirit of adoption, you may dare to call God Father. Freed from the accusations of a bad conscience, aspire to the kingdom of heaven. Do God’s will, upheld by divine help. Imitate the angels on earth. Feed on the strength of immortal food. Fight fearlessly on the side of godliness against hostile temptations. And if you keep your oath of allegiance in the heavenly warfare, do not doubt that you will be crowned for your victory in the triumphant camp of the eternal King, when the resurrection prepared for the faithful has raised you to share in the heavenly kingdom. [g]

So, dearly beloved, having so confident a hope, stand firm in the faith in which you are built. Otherwise that same tempter, whose tyranny over you Christ has already destroyed, may win you back by one of his tricks, and spoil even the joys of the present festival by his deceitful art. For he misleads simpler souls with the deadly notion held by some, to whom this solemn feast of ours seems to take its honor not so much from the birth of Christ as, so they say, from the rising of the new sun. Such people’s hearts are wrapped in total darkness, and they have no growing perception of the true Light. For they are still drawn away by the foolish errors of paganism, and because they cannot lift the eyes of their mind above what their bodily sight sees, they give divine honor to the lights that serve the world. Let no Christian soul entertain such a wicked superstition and monstrous lie. Things temporal are removed beyond all measure from the Eternal, things bodily from the Bodiless, things governed from the Governor. For though they have a wonderful beauty, they have no Godhead to be worshiped. That power, then, that wisdom, that majesty is to be adored which created the universe out of nothing, and by his almighty ways shaped the substance of earth and sky into whatever forms and sizes he willed. Sun, moon and stars may be most useful to us and most beautiful to look at, but only if we give thanks to their Maker for them and worship God who made them, not the creation that serves him. Praise God, then, dearly beloved, in all his works and judgments. Hold an undoubting belief in the Virgin’s pure conception. Honor the sacred and divine mystery of humanity’s restoration with holy and sincere service. Embrace Christ born in our flesh, so that you may be worthy to see him also as the God of glory reigning in his majesty, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit remains in the unity of the Godhead forever and ever. Amen. [i]