The Lord be with you
As we move towards Advent (November 27 is the first Sunday in Advent this year), my thoughts turn to that season and Christmas. It is at this time that we especially celebrate the mystery of the incarnation. I love St. Augustine’s sermons as he deals with this mystery. Below is a quote from one he delivered “before 396” on Christmas Day.
Born of his (Christ’s) mother, he commended this day (Christmas) to the ages, while born of his Father he created all ages. That birth could have no mother, while this one required no man as father. To sum up, Christ was born both of a Father and of a mother; both without a father and without a mother; of a Father as God, of a mother as man; without a mother as God, without a father as man. Therefore, who will recount his begetting (Is 53:8), whether that one without time or this one without seed; that one without beginning or this one without precedent; that one which never was not, or this one which never was before or after; that one which has no end, or this one which has its beginning in its end?
Rightly therefore did the prophets foretell that he would be born, while the heavens and the angels announced that he had been. The one who holds the world in being was lying in a manger; he was simultaneously speechless infant and Word. The heavens cannot contain him, a woman carried him in her bosom. She was ruling our ruler, carrying the one in whom we are, suckling our bread. O manifest infirmity and wondrous humility in which was thus concealed total divinity! Omnipotence was ruling the mother on whom infancy was depending; was nourishing on truth the mother whose breasts it was sucking. May he bring his gifts to perfection in us, since he did not shrink from making his own our tiny beginnings; and may he make us into children of God, since for our sake he was willing to made a child of man.
Saint Augustine The Works of Saint Augustine A translation for the 21st Century III/6: Sermons, Sermon 184, 18-19