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.

IV. The merciful and Almighty Saviour so measured the principles of human conception that, being inseparable from the man who was akin to Him, He hid the Divine power under the veil of our weakness, the cunning of the careless enemy was ridiculed, who decided that the Nativity of the Child, intended for the salvation of the human race, was as subject to him as the birth into the world of all those who are born. For He saw Him wrapped in swaddling clothes (Luke 2:12), Who was circumcised and passed through the lawful series of initiation. He recognized that everything here corresponded to an ordinary childhood, and up to adulthood he did not doubt the correspondence to the laws of nature. At the same time, he inflicted humiliation, multiplied injustices, used backbiting, reproach, blasphemy, ridicule, and finally poured out everything that corresponded to the very essence of his rage, tried all methods of temptation; and, knowing to what extent human nature was poisoned, he did not believe in any way that the original sin had been escaped by Him whom He recognized as mortal by so many signs. And so, the cruel robber and insatiable executioner persistently continued to rebel against the One Who had nothing to do with him. And while he strives to execute the ancient sentence on the defiled principle of the human race, demanding punishment for Him in Whom he did not seek any guilt, he goes beyond the boundaries of the ordination on which he relied. Therefore the defective conclusion of a deadly bargain is eliminated, and general debts are for the most part settled by the injustice of the claim. Possessing power, he is bound by his own fetters, and every evil plan is directed against himself. And when the prince of the world is bound (John 12:31), then the means of captivity are removed (Matt. 12:29). Nature, cleansed of the ancient fall, is restored to its honor, death is conquered by death, birth is given by Christmas, because just as redemption removes slavery, so regeneration changes our foundation, and faith justifies the sinner (Romans 1:17).

V. Whosoever, therefore, is reverently and sincerely proud of the name of Christianity, let him appreciate the mercy of this restoration by a just judgment. For you, once cast down, deprived of the thrones of paradise (Matt. 19:28), dying in dust and dust, who no longer had any hope for life, were given through the incarnation of the Word (John 1:12) the opportunity (John 1:12) to return from afar to your Creator, to recognize the Parent, to become free from a slave and from a stranger to become a son; that thou, born of corruptible flesh, may be reborn of the Spirit of God (John 3:5), and receive by mercy that which thou hadst not by nature. Through the Spirit of adoption, having acknowledged yourself to be the son of God, dare to call on God the Father (Romans 8:15). Free from the accusation of a corrupt conscience (Heb. 10:22), yearning for the Heavenly Kingdom and doing the will of God (Heb. 10:36); strengthened by Divine help on earth, imitate the Angels, feed on the power of the immortal essence, fight without fear for love against the temptations of the enemy (Ephesians 6:11), and if you keep the vows of heavenly battle, then do not doubt that for victory you will be crowned in the triumphal palace of the Eternal King, and the resurrection prepared for the pious will rapture you, drawing you to participation in the Kingdom of Heaven.

VI. Having the boldness to trust in this way (2 Corinthians 3:12), beloved, be firm in the faith which has strengthened you (Col. 1:23), lest the same tempter, whose dominion over you Christ has destroyed, by some temptations again deceive you, and darken the joy of the day by the subtlety of his deception, misleading the naïve souls of those to whom this day of our triumph seems to be revered not so much because of the Nativity of Christ, how much because of the beginning, as they say, of the New Year. Their hearts are shrouded in deep darkness and they are deprived of even a particle of true light (Ephesians 4:18), for they are still guided by the most foolish errors of the pagans, and in addition to the fact that they look with carnal eyes and are unable to strain the power of reason, they also give divine honors to the luminaries who serve the world.

So let there be no impious superstition and abominable untruth in Christian souls. Infinitely far is the temporal from the imperishable, the corporeal from the incorporeal, the subordinate from the Lord; and though those who have gone astray have a beauty worthy of wonder, they do not have a divinity worthy of worship.

For that power, wisdom and dominion are worthy of reverence, by which the manifold world was created out of nothing (2 Mac. 7:28), in the images and dimensions of which the earthly and heavenly essences were enclosed by an all-powerful plan. Let the sun, moon, and stars be convenient for those who use them, beautiful for those who behold them, but in such a way that they may be thanked to the Creator and worshiped God (Who created them), but not by the creature whose lot is servitude. Praise God, beloved, in all His works (Sir. 39:19) and plans. May your unshakable faith in the Immaculate Conception and Birth abide in you. Consider holy and sincere the service of the sacred and Divine Mystery of human restoration. And love Christ, who is born in a human body, that you may be worthy to see the God of glory ruling in His majesty, and with the Father and the Holy Spirit abiding in the unity of divinity forever and ever. Amen.

Homily III on the Nativity of Christ

I. You, beloved, of course know and have often heard about the Mystery of today's celebration. As the visible light brings pleasure to the unharmed eyes, so the Nativity of the Saviour gives eternal joy to the pure hearts, which we must not pass over in silence, even if we cannot explain it properly. For we seek to comprehend [following the saying: ... Who can explain His generation? (Isaiah 53:8)] not only the Sacrament, in which the Son of God is co-existent with the Father, but also the Birth, in which the Word was made flesh (John 1:14).