The first man received the essence of the flesh from the earth and was animated by a rational spirit, which the Creator breathed into him (Gen. 2:7), so that, living in the image and likeness of his Creator, he would preserve in the splendor of imitation (as in a mirror image) the image of Divine goodness and justice. And if, through the firm observance of this law, he could glorify such a great dignity of his nature, then the nature of earthly flesh could be led by an intact mind to heavenly glory. But since he rashly and unhappily believed the envious deceiver, and, following the promptings of pride, preferred to seize rather than deserve the due increase in honor, not only that man, but also all his descendants heard: "Dust thou art and to dust shalt thou return" (Gen. 3:19). As the earthly is, so are the earthly (1 Corinthians 15:48), and no one is immortal, since there is no one in heaven.

III. Thus the Almighty Son of God, who fills and contains all things, who is equal in all things with the Father, and co-eternal in one essence with him, for the sake of deliverance from the fetters of death and sin, took human nature into himself, and the Creator (and also the Lord of all) was counted worthy to become one of the mortals at the moment when the Mother whom he had created was chosen for him. She, virgin in integral integrity, thus helped the bodily essence, so that in the absence of human seed, the new man would possess both purity and truth. And the Nativity is miraculous, not because the nature taken at the Birth of the Virgin is unlike ours, but because He is the true God and the true man, and there is no deception in both natures. The Word became flesh (John 1:14), for the flesh was exalted, and not diminished divinity, which so measured its power and goodness that it exalted our flesh by acceptance, and did not destroy its own by union.

In the Nativity of Christ, following David's prophecy: "Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall come down from heaven" (Psalm 84:12), the words of Isaiah were confirmed, saying: "Let the earth be opened, and bring salvation, and let righteousness grow together" (Isaiah 45:8). For human flesh, once defiled by the hypocrite, in this one and only Nativity from the blessed Virgin produced a sprout, blessed and alien to the sin of its kind. And in restoration, everyone follows His spiritual birth, and for each newly born person (John 3:3, 5) the water of Baptism becomes like the womb of the Virgin. After all, the spring is sanctified by the same Holy Spirit Who overshadowed the Virgin, and the Sacrament of Baptism mortifies sin, just as the Holy Conception leads to the Nativity of the Sinless One.

IV. To this Sacrament, beloved, is alien the insane error of the Manichaeans, who, denying His bodily birth from the Virgin Mary, have excommunicated themselves from this Sacrament, and just as they do not believe in His true Nativity, so they do not accept true suffering, do not acknowledge Him as buried, and deny the true Resurrection. And when they enter the dangerous road of the damned heresy (on which everything is dark and slippery), they throw themselves into the abyss of death from the precipices of falsehood and find nothing solid to lean on. In addition to all the reproaches, the source of which is in the devil's lies, in the most important celebration of their faith (as has been revealed by their recent confession), they rejoice in the defilement of both soul and body, observing neither the preservation of faith nor shame, and, impious in their heresies, they also remain abominable in their rites.

V. Let all other heresies, beloved, also be condemned according to their controversies, though some of them contain something true in some part. Arius, saying that the Son of God is smaller than the Father and created, and believing that the Holy Spirit Himself was created by the Father in the same way as all others, destroyed himself by such great impiety, but he did not deny the eternal and unchanging divinity, which he did not recognize in the universal unity of the Trinity, yet in essence he did not deny the Father. Macedonius, a stranger to the light of truth, did not accept the divinity of the Holy Spirit, but recognized that in the Father and the Son there is one power and one and the same nature. And Sabellius, bewildered by fruitless error, believing the inseparable unity of essence in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, gave what he should have given to equality, to separateness. And not comprehending the True Trinity, He recognized one and the same Person in three names. Photinus, deceived by the blindness of reason, accepted in Christ the true man of our nature, but did not recognize that the same God was born of God before all ages. Apollinarius, lacking firmness in the faith, decided that the Son of God had thus assumed the true nature of human flesh, that there was no soul in that body, for its place was taken by Divinity itself. So, if we go over all the errors that the catholic faith has condemned, then in both there is something that can escape condemnation. In the most impious dogma of the Manichaeans, however, there is absolutely nothing that can be tolerated in any part of its investigation.

VI. But you, beloved, for whom I cannot find words more worthy than the words of the blessed Apostle Peter: A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people taken as an inheritance (1 Peter 2:9), built on the indestructible rock of Christ (Ephesians 2:20), and grafted into us by the Lord our Saviour through the true reception of our flesh into Himself, abide steadfastly in the faith which you have confessed before many witnesses (1 Tim. 6:1). 12) and in which, born again of water and of the Holy Spirit (John 3:5), you received the saving anointing and the sign of Eternal Life. But if anyone has declared anything to you contrary to what you have learned, let him be anathema (Galatians 1:9). Do not prefer impious talk to the brightest truth, and if anything happens either to read or to listen to anything contrary to the catholic rule and the Symbol of Faith, condemn it as deadly and diabolical. Do not be deceived by deceptive art by feigned and hypocritical fasts, which lead not to purification, but to the destruction of souls. Some take upon themselves the image of love and chastity, but with this trick they cover up the indecency of their deeds and from the depths of the wicked heart they shoot ominous arrows (Psalm 54:22), with which the simple-minded are struck, and, according to the words of the prophet, in darkness they shoot at the upright in heart (Psalm 10:2).

Unshakable and true faith is a great support, and in it nothing can be added or diminished by anyone, for if it is not one, then it is no longer faith, as the Apostle says: "There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all of us" (Ephesians 4:5-6). To this unity, beloved, strive with steadfast souls, and in this faith acquire all holiness (Heb. 12:14; 1 Cor. 14:1). With it fulfill the rules of the Lord, for without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6), and without it there is nothing holy, nothing godly, nothing living. The righteous live by faith (Heb. 10:38; Rom. 1:17), but whoever destroyed it because of the devil's deception died alive (1 Tim. 5:6), for as through faith godliness is attained, so through true faith is Eternal Life, and says the Lord the Saviour: "This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent" (John 17:3). Who, having made you prosper and be strong to the end (1 Corinthians 1:8), lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.

Homily V on the Nativity of Christ

I. Be that as it may, beloved, the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in which He clothed Himself with the flesh of our nature, is inexpressible, but trusting not in my own strength, but in the inspiration that proceeds from Himself, I dare to hope that on the day chosen for the Mystery of Human Restoration, we may explain something that can benefit those who hear. And although there is no need to repeat what has already been said, for the majority of the Church of God understands what it believes, yet especially now we must give support to many who are just coming to faith with our words, and it will be better to burden the enlightened once again with the truths already known to them, than to leave the ignorant without instruction.

The Son of God, Who is not one person with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but has one essence, being destined to be a partaker of our humility, desired to become one of the afflicted and one of the mortals. It was so sublime and so amazing that even the wise of this world would not have revealed the plan of the Divine Council (1 Corinthians 2:8), if the true light had not dispelled the darkness of human ignorance. For not only in virtuous work, and not only in the observance of the commandments, but also on the path of the growth of faith, strait and narrow is the road that leads to life (Matt. 7:14). Great is the work and great distance that it is necessary to walk without knocking off one's legs along the only path of salvific teaching, being in the midst of dangerous notions of ignorant and plausible fabrications, and, when the snare of deception is spread everywhere, to avoid any dangerous error. So who is capable of this (2 Corinthians 2:16), if not the one who is taught and guided by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:14)? For the Apostle says: "But we have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit of God, that we might know the things which have been given to us from God" (1 Corinthians 2:12), and David also sings: "Blessed is the man whom Thou admonishest, O Lord, and instruct by Thy law" (Psalm 93:12).

II. And so, beloved, having a true footing in the midst of dangers and falsehoods, and being enlightened not by the words of human wisdom (1 Corinthians 2:4), but by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, we believe in what we have learned, and we preach what we believe (Psalm 115:10; 1 Corinthians 15:11), namely, that the Son of God, who was born of the Father before the ages, and co-eternal with Him by an eternal, and consubstantial equality, He came into our world from the womb of the Virgin chosen for this merciful Mystery, in Whom and from Whom Wisdom made Herself a home (Proverbs 9:1), and also that the immutable divinity inherent in the Word was clothed in the form of a slave (Phil. 2:7), in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 8:3), but at the same time She retained no less glory than the Father and the Holy Spirit (John 1:1). 1; 1:14), for [the human nature accepted by the Word] did not lead to the depreciation or distortion of the higher and eternal essence. Following our weakness, the Lord humbled Himself for those who could not contain Him, and hid under the veil of the body the splendor of His majesty, for it could not be borne by the sight of men. That is why it is also said that He humbled Himself (Phil. 2:7) (that is, as if He weakened Himself by His own will), that in the humility with which He helped us, He became inferior not only to the Father, but also to Himself. However, nothing has been diminished by this humiliation for Him Who has a common existence with the Father and the Holy Spirit. And we understood that this refers to omnipotence, and the lesser, according to our concepts, according to His own, is no less. In great power He gave light to the darkened, strength to the weak, mercy to the destitute, for the Son of God took on human nature and the basis to restore our nature, which He had begun, and to destroy death, which He did not create (Wis. 1:13).

III. Since all the notions of the wicked have been rejected and cast aside, for whom Christ is either foolishness or a stumbling block (1 Corinthians 1:23), let the faith of righteous hearts rejoice, and let it comprehend the true and only Son of God, not only by divinity, in which He is born of the Father, but also by human nature, in which He is born of the Virgin Mother. He, while remaining in the Divine majesty, at the same time dwells in our humility – the true man and the True God; eternal in His, temporal in ours; one with the Father in essence, which was never less with Him than with the Father, and one with the Mother in the body which He created. By accepting [human] nature, He became a step for us, giving us the opportunity to ascend to Him through Him. For that [Divine] essence, which always and everywhere remains intact, has dispensed with a partial descent, and, having been wholly merged into man, has not been separated from the Father. Thus there remains that which was the Word in the beginning (John 1:1), and that which exists, but was not at one time, is not applicable to Him.

After all, the Son is always the Son and the Father is always the Father. And since the Son Himself says: "He who has seen Me sees the Father also" (John 14:9), then your wickedness blinds you, O heretic, for if you did not see the greatness of the Son, you did not see the Glory of the Father. And when you say that He was born who was not there before, you acknowledge the Son to be temporary, and when you declare the Son temporary, you therefore believe that the Father is also changeable. For it is not only that which decreases that changes, but also that which increases, and if, therefore, the Begotten One is not equal to the Father (for it seems to you that by birth He begot Him Who did not exist before), then the essence of the Begetter was also imperfect, which by Birth received what it did not have before. But this impious error of yours is condemned and condemned by the catholic faith, which, admitting nothing temporary in the true divinity, acknowledges both the Father and the Son to be co-eternal, for the radiance which arises from the light is not secondary to the light, and the true light is never devoid of its radiance, and as the essence is always there, so it is always able to shine.

The manifestation of this radiance, by which Christ revealed Himself to the world, is called the sending [of the Lord into the world]. And although He always filled all things with His invisible power, yet in the innermost and highest mystery He came to those to whom He was previously unknown, destroying the blindness of ignorance, as it was written: "To them that dwell in darkness and in the darkness of death light shall shine unto them" (Isaiah 9:2).