Homily I on the Nativity of Christ

I. Let us rejoice, beloved, for our Saviour is now being born! There should be no place for sorrow where Life is born, which, having destroyed the fear of death, gives us the joy of the promised eternity. No one is excluded from participation in this rejoicing, because the reason for joy is common to all. Our Lord, the overthrower of sin and death, not finding even one innocent man, came to make everyone free. Let the saint rejoice, for he draws near to glory. Let the sinner rejoice, for forgiveness is granted to him. Let the Gentile be encouraged, for he is called to life.

The Son of God in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4; Heb. 1:10), following the incomprehensible depth of the plan of the Divine Council (Rom. 11:33), took on the nature of the human race in order to return it to His Creator, so that the father of death, the devil (Wisdom 2:24), having gained victory through it, would be defeated by it. This battle, begun for our sake, was waged according to the great and astonishing law of justice: the Almighty Lord, not in His majesty, but in our humility, entered into battle with the fiercest enemy, opposing to him precisely this image and this nature, which is a partaker of our humility, but not involved in any sin. The Nativity of the Lord is alien to what is said about all people: no one is clean from defilement, not even a child who has lived on earth only one day (Job 14:4).

Nothing entered into this unparalleled Christmas from the lust of the flesh, nothing was poured from the law of sin. A Virgin is chosen from the tribe of King David, Who, having received the Holy Fruit, receives the divine-human offspring first with the soul, and then with the body. And so that (not knowing [the secret] of the supreme plan of such an extraordinary deed) She would not be seized with fear, from the angelic conversation She learned that the Holy Spirit was at work in Her. Therefore, the One Who will soon become the Mother of God does not consider it a loss of chastity. For why should one despair at the unusualness of the conception of the One Who is promised to act from the power of the Almighty? Moreover, the miraculous fertility granted to Elizabeth, by strengthening the faith [of the Virgin], served as further proof that He who gave conception to the barren woman would not hesitate to give it to the Virgin as well.

II. Therefore the Word of God, God, the Son of God, who was with God in the beginning, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made (John 1:1-3), became man for the deliverance of man from eternal death, and so without diminishing majesty bowed Himself to the perception of our insignificance, that, [always] remaining what He was, and taking into Himself that, He combined in Himself the true image of a servant (Phil. 2:7) with the image in which He is equal to God the Father; and by such union He united the two natures, that just as glorification did not exhaust the lower of them, so the union did not diminish the higher. Thus, since the qualities of both natures, which are united in one Person, are not damaged, greatness takes on humility, strength with weakness, immortality with mortality, for the sake of our redemption, the indestructible nature is united with the nature subject to suffering, and the true God and true man are united in the unity of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that He, the only Mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5), healing us, could die as a man and rise again as God. Thus, the Birth of the Saviour did not in the least violate the purity of the Virgin, for the birth of the Truth became the guardian of chastity.

Such a Nativity, beloved, was befitting the power of God and the wisdom of God, Christ (1 Corinthians 1:24), and it corresponded to us both in human qualities and in divinity. For if there had not been a true God, He would not have given us redemption, and if there had not been a true man, He would not have given us an example. Therefore, when the Lord is born, the exultant Angels sing: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men! (Luke 2:14). For they see that the Heavenly Jerusalem is created from all the peoples of the world. How great rejoicing over this indescribable act of Divine love should be nourished by human humility, when the heavenly angels rejoice so much in it!

III. Therefore, beloved, through the Son, let us give thanks in the Holy Spirit to God the Father (Col. 1:12), who in His great mercy loved us (Eph. 2:4) and had compassion on us, and made us alive with Christ (Eph. 2:5), so that we might be in Him a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17) and a new image. Let us lay aside the old man with his works (Ephesians 4:22) and, having become partakers of the birth of Christ, let us deny the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19). Realize, O Christian, your knowledge, and, having become a partaker of the Divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), do not return to the old insignificance by an unworthy way of life. Remember Whose Head and Body you are a part of (1 Corinthians 6:15). Remember that, having been torn out of the power of darkness, thou hast been brought into the light and the kingdom of God (Col. 1:13). Through the Sacrament of Baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). Do not cast out the Dweller from you by evil actions, and do not throw yourself back into slavery to the devil, for the price [of your redemption] is the blood of Christ (1 Corinthians 6:20), and in truth you will be judged by the One Who in mercy saved you. He reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.

Homily II on the Nativity of Christ

I. Let us rejoice, beloved, in the Lord, and be filled with spiritual joy, for the day of a new redemption, an ancient plan, and eternal happiness has dawned for us!

Thanks to the annual cycle [of days], the Mystery of our salvation is again given to us, promised from the beginning, fulfilled in the last [times] (1 Corinthians 10:11), and remaining with us forever. It is worthy that we should worship this Divine mystery with hearts of grief, and that the Church should glorify with great joy what is done by the great mercy of God.

But God, the Almighty and Merciful, Whose nature is goodness, Whose will is power, Whose work is mercy, foreseeing that the devil's malice would kill us with the poison of His hatred, prepared beforehand, from the very foundation of the world, the medicines of His love intended for the renewal of people. He proclaimed to the serpent the future of the seed of the woman, who by its power would wipe out the arrogance of the transgressive head (Gen. 3:15), that is, about Christ, God and man coming in the flesh, Who, being born of a virgin, overthrew the desecrator of the human race with the immaculate Nativity. Truly the devil boasts that man, seduced by his deception, has been deprived of the Divine gifts and, being deprived of immortality, has fallen under the cruel power of death. Therefore, God, guided by a plan of strict justice in relation to man, whom He had once placed in such honor, changed the ancient sentence. It has come to pass, beloved, according to the plan of the Privy Council, that the unchanging God, Whose will cannot renounce His mercy, should fill the original plan with the hidden Mystery of His love, and that man, who has fallen into sin, succumbing to the subtle cunning of the devil, should not perish in the face of God's plan (John 3:16).

II. So, beloved, the time has come for the redemption of men. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, comes to these last times of the world, descending from the Heavenly Throne, but not departing from the glory of the Father, appearing as a new Nativity in a new form. In a new form, for He who is invisible in His [forms] is made visible in ours; immeasurable — wished to confine himself; before times — received the beginning of counting in time; hiding the dignity of His majesty, the Lord took on the slavish image characteristic of all of us; the impassible God did not refuse to become a man subject to suffering and to surrender to the power of the laws of death, being immortal. He came in a new Christmas, conceived of a Virgin, born of a Virgin, without the lust of his father's flesh and without violating his mother's chastity; for such a birth befitted the coming Saviour of men, Who, although He had in Himself the qualities of human nature, nevertheless did not know the impurities of human flesh. And the parent of God, who is born in the flesh, is God, for 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; wherefore also the Holy One who is born shall be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35).

Having a different origin [from ours], but the same nature, He had no human cares and habits, but was established in the Divine power, for the Virgin conceived, the Virgin gave birth, and remained a Virgin. Let not the work of the Birther be thought of here, but the will of the Birthing One, Who was born a man because He willed and was able. If you seek righteousness about [His] nature, then study human nature; but if you try to penetrate into the plan of Birth, then glorify the Divine power. The Lord Jesus Christ came to remove our illnesses, not to endure them, not to become a victim of vices, but to overcome them. He came to heal every disease and all the ulcers of unclean souls. Therefore it was necessary to be born in a new order to the One Who brought to human flesh a new mercy of unblemished purity. It was fitting that the chastity of the Mother who gives birth should preserve her firstborn virginity, and the protection from shame, and the refuge of holiness, containing the infused power of the Divine Spirit (Luke 1:35), Who decreed that which had been cast down should be raised, that which had been broken should be fastened, and that the multiplied power of chastity should be bestowed upon [men] to overcome the temptations of the flesh; that virginity, which cannot be preserved in them after the birth of offspring, may be made possible to them [in the spiritual sense] by [Baptism], the new birth [in Christ].

III. For this, beloved, that Christ chose to be born of a Virgin, is not evident the supreme plan that—O miracle! The devil did not know about the birth of the salvation of the human race, and since the spiritual conception was hidden, which he considered to be the same as in other cases, he did not believe that Christ was born differently from the others. For whose nature is similar to all others, he, he believed, also has the same principle as all, and therefore did not notice the Free from the fetters of sin and did not recognize the mortal man alien to weakness. For the True and Merciful God (Psalm 85:15), having unspeakably many things at his disposal for the restoration of the human race, chose the best way of realization, that is, to destroy the devil's work, He did not use the power of power, but the plan of justice. For the pride of the ancient enemy, not without reason, arrogated to itself power over all men, and by a well-deserved dominion oppressed those whom it had voluntarily seduced from the commandment of God to obedience to its own will. And he would certainly not have lost his original power over the human race, if he had not been defeated by what he had once enslaved people. This happened when Christ was conceived without male seed from a Virgin, who was impregnated not by human intercourse, but by the Holy Spirit. And although in all mothers conception does not take place without the defilement of sin, yet She received redemption from Him from Whom the conception came. Since there was no mixing of the father's seed, the beginning of sin was not mixed. The inviolable virginity of lust has not known, it has tamed nature. Nature was taken from the Mother of the Lord, and not sin. The image of a slave without a slave state was created, for the new man was thus mixed with the old (Ephesians 2:15; 4:22), in order to accept the true essence of the human race, but to exclude original sin.