On the Feast of the Nativity, Eighth Sermon

All the divine sayings urge us, dearly beloved, to “rejoice in the Lord always.” Yet today, no doubt, we are stirred to a full spiritual joy, as the mystery of the Lord’s birth shines brightly on us, so that we may turn to that unspeakable stooping down of God’s mercy, by which the Creator of men was pleased to become man, and we ourselves may be found in the nature of him whom we worship in ours. For God the Son of God, the only Son of the eternal and unbegotten Father, remained eternal “in the form of God.” Unchangeably and outside time he possessed the property of being in no way different from the Father, and he received “the form of a slave” without loss of his own majesty, so that he might raise us to his state and not lower himself to ours. And so, with both natures keeping their own properties, the union produces such a oneness that whatever of Godhead is there cannot be separated from the manhood, and whatever of manhood is there cannot be divided from the Godhead. [a]

In celebrating, then, the birthday of our Lord and Savior, dearly beloved, let us hold pure thoughts about the blessed Virgin’s childbearing. Let us believe that at no moment of time was the power of the Word absent from the flesh and soul she conceived. The temple of Christ’s body did not first receive its form and its soul so that its Inhabitant might then come and take possession. Rather, through himself and in himself the beginning was given to the New Man, so that in the one Son of God and Man there might be Godhead without a mother and manhood without a father. For her virginity, made fruitful by the Holy Spirit, at one and the same time brought forth, without any trace of corruption, both the offspring and the Maker of her race. That is also why the Lord himself, as the evangelist relates, asked the Jews whose son they had learned from the Scriptures the Christ would be. When they answered that the tradition was that he would come from David’s seed, he said, “How does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as the footstool of your feet’?” And the Jews could not answer the question put to them, because they did not understand that in the one Christ both the stock of David and the divine nature were foretold there. [b]

But the majesty of the Son of God, in which he is equal with the Father, feared no lessening in its garment of a slave’s lowliness, and needed no increase. The very work of mercy that he spent on the restoring of man he was able to bring about by the power of his Godhead alone, so as to rescue the creature made in the image of God from the yoke of his cruel oppressor. But the devil had not been so violent in his attack on the first man as to bring him over to his side without the consent of the man’s own free will. So man’s voluntary sin and hostile desires had to be destroyed in such a way that the standard of justice would not stand in the way of the gift of grace. And therefore, in the general ruin of the whole human race, there was only one remedy, hidden in the divine plan, that could help the fallen: that one of the sons of Adam should be born free and innocent of the original transgression, to prevail for the rest both by his example and by his merits. Further, natural birth did not allow this, and there could be no offspring from our faulty stock without seed, of which Scripture says, “Who can make clean what is conceived of unclean seed? Is it not you, who alone are?” So David’s Lord was made David’s Son, and from the fruit of the promised branch sprang one without fault. The twofold nature joined together into one person, so that by one and the same conception and birth our Lord Jesus Christ might spring forth, in whom was present both true Godhead for doing mighty works and true manhood for enduring sufferings. [c]

The catholic faith, then, dearly beloved, may scorn the errors of the heretics who bark against it. Deceived by the emptiness of worldly wisdom, they have forsaken the gospel of truth, and, unable to understand the incarnation of the Word, they have made for themselves out of the source of light an occasion of blindness. For after looking into the opinions of nearly all false believers, even those who presume to deny the Holy Spirit, we come to this conclusion: hardly anyone has gone astray except by refusing to believe in the reality of the two natures in Christ, confessed as one person. For some have ascribed to the Lord only manhood, others only Godhead. Some have said that though there was true Godhead in him, his flesh was unreal. Others have admitted that he took true flesh, but say that he did not have the nature of God the Father; and by assigning to his Godhead what belonged to his human substance, they have made for themselves a greater and a lesser God, although in true Godhead there can be no grades, since whatever is less than God is not God. Others, seeing that there is no difference between Father and Son, have held that the Father is the same as the Son, because they could not understand oneness of Godhead except as oneness of person. In that case, to be born and nursed, to suffer and die, to be buried and rise again, belonged to the same Father, who bore throughout the person of both the man and the Word. Some have thought that our Lord Jesus Christ had a body not of our substance but taken from higher and finer elements. Others have held that there was no human soul in the flesh of Christ, but that the Godhead of the Word itself filled the place of the soul. But their foolish claim passes into this form: though they admit that there was a soul in the Lord, they say it had no mind, because the Godhead by itself was enough for every purpose of reason, for the man as well as for the God in Christ. Lastly, the same people have dared to claim that a certain portion of the Word was turned into flesh. So in the many varieties of this one doctrine, not only the nature of the flesh and of the soul but also the essence of the Word itself is dissolved. [d]

There are many other astonishing falsehoods as well, beloved, which we must not weary your ears by listing. But after all these various impieties, which are closely bound together by the kinship between one form of blasphemy and another, we call your devout attention to avoiding these two errors in particular. One of them, with Nestorius as its author, tried some time ago to gain ground, but without success. The other, equally damnable, has sprung up more recently, with Eutyches as its promoter. The first dared to maintain that the blessed Virgin Mary was the mother of Christ’s manhood only, so that no union of the Word and the flesh might be believed to have taken place in her conceiving and childbearing; for, it said, the Son of God did not himself become Son of Man, but merely by stooping down linked himself with a created man. This can by no means be tolerated by catholic ears, which are so steeped in the gospel of truth that they know for certain there is no hope of salvation for mankind unless he who was his mother’s Creator were himself the Son of the Virgin. On the other hand, this blasphemous promoter of the more recent profanity has confessed the union of the two natures in Christ, but has maintained that the effect of this very union is that, of the two, one remained while the substance of the other no longer existed. That substance, of course, could not have come to an end except by either destruction or separation. But this is so opposed to sound faith that it cannot be held without loss of one’s Christian name. For if the incarnation of the Word is the uniting of the divine and human natures, but by the very fact of their coming together what was twofold became single, then it was only the Godhead that was born of the Virgin’s womb, and went through the deceptive appearance of taking nourishment and growing in body. And, to pass over all the changes of the human state, it was only the Godhead that was crucified, died, and was buried. So, according to those who think this way, there is no reason to hope for the resurrection, and Christ is not “the firstborn from the dead,” because he was not one who ought to have been raised again if he had not been one who could be slain. [f]

Keep the poisonous lies the devil breathes into you far from your hearts, dearly beloved. Know that the eternal Godhead of the Son underwent no growth while he was with the Father, and be wise enough to consider that to the same nature to which it was said in Adam, “You are earth, and to earth you shall go,” it is said in Christ, “Sit at my right hand.” In the nature by which Christ is equal to the Father, the only Son was never inferior to the Father’s loftiness, nor was the glory he had with the Father something held only for a time. For he is at the very right hand of the Father, of which it is said in Exodus, “Your right hand, O Lord, is glorified in power,” and in Isaiah, “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” The man, therefore, taken up into the Son of God, was received into the unity of Christ’s person from the very beginning of his bodily life in such a way that without the Godhead he was not conceived, without the Godhead he was not brought forth, without the Godhead he was not nursed. It was the same person in the wonderful works and in the enduring of insults. Through his human weakness he was crucified, died, and was buried; through his divine power, raised on the third day, he ascended to heaven, sat down at the right hand of the Father, and in his nature as man received from the Father what in his nature as God he himself also gave. [h]

Meditate on these things with devout hearts, dearly beloved, and always remember the instruction of the apostle, who warns everyone, saying, “See that no one deceives you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men and not according to Christ; for in him the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him.” He did not say “spiritually” but “bodily,” so that we may understand the substance of the flesh to be real where the fullness of the Godhead dwells in a body. With that fullness, of course, the whole church is filled as well, which, clinging to the Head, is the body of Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen. [i]