Sermons 7–11

On the Fast of the Tenth Month

I.  The prosperous must show forth their thankfulness to God, by liberality to the poor and needy.

The transcendent power of God’s grace, dearly beloved, is indeed daily effecting in Christian hearts the transference of our every desire from earthly to heavenly things.  But this present life also is passed through the Creator’s aid and sustained by His providence, because He who promises things eternal is also the Supplier of things temporal.  As therefore we ought to give God thanks for the hope of future happiness towards which we run by faith, because He raises us up to a perception of the happiness in store for us, so for those things also which we receive in the course of every year, God should be honoured and praised, who having from the beginning given fertility to the earth and laid down laws of bearing fruit for every germ and seed, will never forsake his own decrees but will as Creator ever continue His kind administration of the things that He has made.  Whatever therefore the cornfields, the vineyards and the olive groves have borne for man’s purposes, all this God in His bounteous goodness has produced:  for under the varying condition of the elements He has mercifully aided the uncertain toils of the husbandmen so that wind, and rain, cold and heat, day and night might serve our needs.  For men’s methods would not have sufficed to give effect to their works, had not God given the increase to their wonted plantings and waterings.  And hence it is but godly and just that we too should help others with that which the Heavenly Father has mercifully bestowed on us.  For there are full many, who have no fields, no vineyards, no olive-groves, whose wants we must provide out of the store which God has given, that they too with us may bless God for the richness of the earth and rejoice at its possessors having received things which they have shared also with the poor and the stranger.  That garner is blessed and most worthy that all fruits should increase manifold in it, from which the hunger of the needy and the weak is satisfied from which the wants of the stranger are relieved, from which the desire of the sick is gratified.  For these men God has in His justice permitted to be afflicted with divers troubles, that He might both crown the wretched for their patience and the merciful for their loving-kindness.

II.  Almsgiving and fasting are the most essential aids to prayer.

And while all seasons are opportune for this duty, beloved, yet this present season is specially suitable and appropriate, at which our holy fathers, being Divinely inspired, sanctioned the Fast of the tenth month, that when all the ingathering of the crops was complete, we might dedicate to God our reasonable service of abstinence, and each might remember so to use his abundance as to be more abstinent in himself and more open-handed towards the poor.  For forgiveness of sins is most efficaciously prayed for with almsgiving and fasting, and supplications that are winged by such aids mount swiftly to God’s ears:  since as it is written, “the merciful man doeth good to his own soul,” and nothing is so much a man’s own as that which he spends on his neighbour.  For that part of his material possessions with which he ministers to the needy, is transformed into eternal riches, and such wealth is begotten of this bountifulness as can never be diminished or in any way destroyed, for “blessed are the merciful, for God shall have mercy on them,” and He Himself shall be their chief Reward, who is the Model of His own command.

III.  Christians’ pious activity has so enraged Satan that he has multiplied heresies to wreak them harm.

But at all these acts of godliness, dearly-beloved, which commend us more and more to God, there is no doubt that our enemy, who is so eager and so skilled in harming us, is aroused with keener stings of hatred, that under a false profession of the Christian name he may corrupt those whom he is not allowed to attack with open and bloody persecutions, and for this work he has heretics in his service whom he has led astray from the catholic Faith, subjected to himself, and forced under divers errors to serve in his camp.  And as for the deception of primitive man he used the services of a serpent, so to mislead the minds of the upright he has armed these men’s tongues with the poison of his falsehoods.  But these treacherous designs, dearly beloved, with a shepherd’s care, and so far as the Lord vouchsafes His aid, we will defeat.  And taking heed lest any of the holy flock should perish, we admonish you with fatherly warnings to keep aloof from the “lying lips” and the “deceitful tongue” from which the prophet asks that his soul should be delivered; because “their words,” as says the blessed Apostle, “do creep as doth a gangrene.”  They creep in humbly, they arrest softly, they bind gently, they slay secretly.  For they “come,” as the Saviour foretold, “in sheeps’ clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves;” because they could not deceive the true and simple sheep, unless they covered their bestial rage with the name of Christ.  But in them all he is at work who, though he is really the enemy of enlightenment, “transforms himself into an angel of light.”  His is the craft which inspires Basilides; his the ingenuity which worked in Marcion; he is the leader under whom Sabellius acted; he the author of Photinus’ headlong fall, his the authority and his the spirit which Arius and Eunomius served:  in fine under his command and authority the whole herd of such wild beasts has separated from the unity of the Church and severed connexion with the Truth.

IV.  Of all heresies Manicheism is the worst and foullest.

But while he retains this ever-varying supremacy over all the heresies, yet he has built his citadel upon the madness of the Manichees, and found in them the most spacious court in which to strut and boast himself:  for there he possesses not one form of misbelief only, but a general compound of all errors and ungodlinesses.  For all that is idolatrous in the heathen, all that is blind in carnal Jews, all that is unlawful in the secrets of the magic art, all finally that is profane and blasphemous in all the heresies is gathered together with all manner of filth in these men as if in a cesspool.  And hence it is too long a matter to describe all their ungodlinesses:  for the number of the charges against them exceeds my supply of words.  It will be sufficient to indicate a few instances, that you may, from what you hear, conjecture what from modesty we omit.  In the matter of their rites, however, which are as indecent morally as they are religiously, we cannot keep silence about that which the Lord has been pleased to reveal to our inquiries, lest any one should think we have trusted in this thing to vague rumours and uncertain opinions.  And so with bishops and presbyters sitting beside me, and Christian nobles assembled in the same place, we ordered their elect men and women to be brought before us.  And when they had made many disclosures concerning their perverse tenets and their mode of conducting festivals, they revealed this story of utter depravity also, which I blush to describe but which has been so carefully investigated that no grounds for doubt are left for the incredulous or for cavillers.  For there were present all the persons by which the unutterable crime had been perpetrated, to wit a girl at most ten years old, and two women who had nursed her and prepared her for this outrage.  There was also present the stripling who had outraged her, and the bishop, who had arranged their horrible crime.  All these made one and the same confession, and a tale of such foul orgies was disclosed as our ears could scarcely bear.  And lest by plainer speaking we offend chaste ears, the account of the proceedings shall suffice, in which it is most fully shown that in that sect no modesty, no sense of honour, no chastity whatever is found:  for their law is falsehood, their religion the devil, their sacrifice immorality.

V.  Every one should abjure such men, and give all the information they possess about them to the authorities.

And so, dearly beloved, renounce all friendship with these men who are utterly abominable and pestilential, and whom disturbances in other districts have brought in great numbers to the city:  and you women especially refrain from acquaintance and intercourse with such men, lest while your ears are charmed unawares by their fabulous stories, you fall into the devil’s noose, who, knowing that he seduced the first man by the woman’s mouth, and drove all men from the bliss of paradise through feminine credulity, still lies in watch for your sex with more confident craft that he may rob both of their faith and of their modesty those whom he has been able to ensnare by the servants of his falseness.  This, too, dearly beloved, I entreat and admonish you loyally to inform us, if any of you know where they dwell, where they teach, whose houses they frequent, and in whose company they take rest:  because it is of little avail to any one that through the Holy Ghost’s protection he is not caught by them himself, if he takes no action when he knows that others are being caught.  Against common enemies for the common safety all alike should exercise the same vigilance lest from one member’s wound other members also be injured, and they that think such men should not be given up, in Christ’s judgment be found guilty for their silence even though they are not contaminated by their approval.

VI.  Zeal in rooting out heresy will make other pious duties more acceptable.

Display then a holy zeal of religious vigilance, and let all the faithful rise in one body against these savage enemies of their souls.  For the merciful God has delivered a certain portion of our noxious foes into our hands in order that by revelation of the danger the utmost caution might be aroused.  Let not what has been done suffice, but let us persevere in searching them out:  and by God’s aid the result will be not only the continuance in safety of those who still stand, but also the recovery from error of many who have been deceived by the devil’s seduction.  And the prayers, and alms, and fasts that you offer to the merciful God shall be the holier for this very devotion, when this deed of faith also is added to all your other godly duties.  On Wednesday and Friday, therefore, let us fast, and on Saturday let us keep vigil in the presence of the most blessed Apostle Peter; who, as we experience and know, watches unceasingly like a shepherd over the sheep entrusted to him by the Lord, and who will prevail in his entreaties that the Church of God, which was founded by his preaching, may be free from all error, through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

On the Fast of the Tenth Month, VI

Sermon XVII.

On the Fast of the Tenth Month, VI.

I.  The duty of fasting is based on both the Old and New Testaments, and is closely connected with the duties of prayer and almsgiving.

The teaching of the Law, dearly beloved, imparts great authority to the precepts of the Gospel, seeing that certain things are transferred from the old ordinances to the new, and by the very devotions of the Church it is shown that the Lord Jesus Christ “came not to destroy but to fulfil the Law.”  For since the cessation of the signs by which our Saviour’s coming was announced, and the abolition of the types in the presence of the Very Truth, those things which our religion instituted, whether for the regulation of customs or for the simple worship of God, continue with us in the same form in which they were at the beginning, and what was in harmony with both Testaments has been modified by no change.  Among these is also the solemn fast of the tenth month, which is now to be kept by us according to yearly custom, because it is altogether just and godly to give thanks to the Divine bounty for the crops which the earth has produced for the use of men under the guiding hand of supreme Providence.  And to show that we do this with ready mind, we must exercise not only the self-restraint of fasting, but also diligence in almsgiving, that from the ground of our heart also may spring the germ of righteousness and the fruit of love, and that we may deserve God’s mercy by showing mercy to His poor.  For the supplication, which is supported by works of piety, is most efficacious in prevailing with God, since he who turns not his heart away from the poor soon turns himself to hear the Lord, as the Lord says:  “be ye merciful as your Father also is merciful.…release and ye shall be released.”  What is kinder than this justice? what more merciful than this retribution, where the judge’s sentence rests in the power of him that is to be judged?  “Give,” he says, “and it shall be given to you.”  How soon do the misgivings of distrust and the puttings off of avarice fall to the ground, when humanity may fearlessly spend what the Truth pledges Himself to repay.

II.  He that lends to the Lord makes a better bargain than he that lends to man.

Be stedfast, Christian giver:  give what you may receive, sow what you may reap, scatter what you may gather.  Fear not to spend, sigh not over the doubtfulness of the gain.  Your substance grows when it is wisely dispensed.  Set your heart on the profits due to mercy, and traffic in eternal gains.  Your Recompenser wishes you to be munificent, and He who gives that you may have, commands you to spend, saying, “Give, and it shall be given to you.”  You must thankfully embrace the conditions of this promise.  For although you have nothing that you did not receive, yet you cannot fail to have what you give.  He therefore that loves money, and wishes to multiply his wealth by immoderate profits, should rather practise this holy usury and grow rich by such money-lending, in order not to catch men hampered with difficulties, and by treacherous assistance entangle them in debts which they can never pay, but to be His creditor and His money-lender, who says, “Give, and it shall be given to you,” and “with what measure ye measure, it shall be measured again to you.”  But he is unfaithful and unfair even to himself, who does not wish to have for ever what he esteems desirable.  Let him amass what he may, let him hoard and store what he may, he will leave this world empty and needy, as David the prophet says, “for when he dieth he shall take nothing away, nor shall his glory descend with him.”  Whereas if he were considerate of his own soul, he would trust his good to Him, who is both the proper Surety for the poor and the generous Repayer of loans.  But unrighteous and shameless avarice, which promises to do some kind act but eludes it, trusts not God, whose promises never fail, and trusts man, who makes such hasty bargains; and while he reckons the present more certain than the future, often deservedly finds that his greed for unjust gain is the cause of by no means unjust loss.

III.  Money-lending at high interest is in all respects iniquitous.

And hence, whatever result follow, the money-lender’s trade is always bad, for it is sin either to lessen or increase the sum, in that if he lose what he lent he is wretched, and if he takes more than he lent he is more wretched still.  The iniquity of money-lending must absolutely be abjured, and the gain which lacks all humanity must be shunned.  A man’s possessions are indeed multiplied by these unrighteous and sorry means, but the mind’s wealth decays because usury of money is the death of the soul.  For what God thinks of such men the most holy Prophet David makes clear, for when he asks, “Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle, or who shall rest upon thy holy hill?” he receives the Divine utterance in reply, from which he learns that that man attains to eternal rest who among other rules of holy living “hath not given his money upon usury:”  and thus he who gets deceitful gain from lending his money on usury is shown to be both an alien from God’s tabernacle and an exile from His holy hill, and in seeking to enrich himself by other’s losses, he deserves to be punished with eternal neediness.

IV.  Let us avoid avarice, and share God’s benefits with others.

And so, dearly beloved, do ye who with the whole heart have put your trust in the Lord’s promises, flee from this unclean leprosy of avarice, and use God’s gift piously and wisely.  And since you rejoice in His bounty, take heed that you have those who may share in your joys.  For many lack what you have in plenty, and some men’s needs afford you opportunity for imitating the Divine goodness, so that through you the Divine benefits may be transferred to others also, and that by being wise stewards of your temporal goods, you may acquire eternal riches.  On Wednesday and Friday next, therefore, let us fast, and on Saturday keep vigil with the most blessed Apostle Peter, by whose prayers we may in all things obtain the Divine protection through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

On the Fast of the Ten Month, VIII

Sermon XIX.

On the Fast of the Ten Month, VIII.

I.  Self-restraint leads to higher enjoyments.

When the Saviour would instruct His disciples about the Advent of God’s Kingdom and the end of the world’s times, and teach His whole Church, in the person of the Apostles, He said, “Take heed lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and care of this life.”  And assuredly, dearly beloved, we acknowledge that this precept applies more especially to us, to whom undoubtedly the day denounced is near, even though hidden.  For the advent of which it behoves every man to prepare himself, lest it find him given over to gluttony, or entangled in cares of this life.  For by daily experience, beloved, it is proved that the mind’s edge is blunted by over-indulgence of the flesh, and the heart’s vigour is dulled by excess of food, so that the delights of eating are even opposed to the health of the body, unless reasonable moderation withstand the temptation and the consideration of future discomfort keep from the pleasure.  For although the flesh desires nothing without the soul, and receives its sensations from the same source as it receives its motions also, yet it is the function of the same soul to deny certain things to the body which is subject to it, and by its inner judgment to restrain the outer parts from things unseasonable, in order that it may be the oftener free from bodily lusts, and have leisure for Divine wisdom in the palace of the mind, where, away from all the noise of earthly cares, it may in silence enjoy holy meditations and eternal delights.  And, although this is difficult to maintain in this life, yet the attempt can frequently be renewed, in order that we may the oftener and longer be occupied with spiritual rather than fleshly cares; and by our spending ever greater portions of our time on higher cares, even our temporal actions may end in gaining the incorruptible riches.

II.  The teaching of the four yearly fasts is that spiritual self-restraint is as necessary as corporeal.

This profitable observance, dearly beloved, is especially laid down for the fasts of the Church, which, in accordance with the Holy Spirit’s teaching, are so distributed over the whole year that the law of abstinence may be kept before us at all times.  Accordingly we keep the spring fast in Lent, the summer fast at Whitsuntide, the autumn fast in the seventh month, and the winter fast in this which is the tenth month, knowing that there is nothing unconnected with the Divine commands, and that all the elements serve the Word of God to our instruction, so that from the very hinges on which the world turns, as if by four gospels we learn unceasingly what to preach and what to do.  For, when the prophet says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork:  day unto day uttereth speech, and night showeth knowledge,” what is there by which the Truth does not speak to us?  By day and by night His voices are heard, and the beauty of the things made by the workmanship of the One God ceases not to instil the teachings of Reason into our hearts’ ears, so that “the invisible things of God may be perceived and seen through the things which are made,” and men may serve the Creator of all, not His creatures.  Since therefore all vices are destroyed by self-restraint, and whatever avarice thirsts for, pride strives for, luxury lusts after, is overcome by the solid force of this virtue, who can fail to understand the aid which is given us by fastings? for therein we are bidden to restrain ourselves, not only in food, but also in all carnal desires.  Otherwise it is lost labour to endure hunger and yet not put away wrong wishes; to afflict oneself by curtailing food, and yet not to flee from sinful thoughts.  That is a carnal, not a spiritual fast, where the body only is stinted, and those things persisted in, which are more harmful than all delights.  What profit is it to the soul to act outwardly as mistress and inwardly to be a captive and a slave, to issue orders to the limbs and to lose the right to her own liberty?  That soul for the most part (and deservedly) meets with rebellion in her servant, which does not pay to God the service that is due.  When the body therefore fasts from food, let the mind fast from vices, and pass judgment upon all earthly cares and desires according to the law of its King

III.  Thus fasting in mind as well as body, and giving alms freely, we shall win God’s highest favour.

Let us remember that we owe love first to God, secondly to our neighbour, and that all our affections must be so regulated as not to draw us away from the worship of God, or the benefiting our fellow slave.  But how shall we worship God unless that which is pleasing to Him is also pleasing to us?  For, if our will is His will, our weakness will receive strength from Him, from Whom the very will came; “for it is God,” as the Apostle says, “who worketh in us both to will and to do for (His) good pleasure.”  And so a man will not be puffed up with pride, nor crushed with despair, if he uses the gifts which God gave to His glory, and withholds his inclinations from those things, which he knows will harm him.  For in abstaining from malicious envy, from luxurious and dissolute living, from the perturbations of anger, from the lust after vengeance, he will be made pure and holy by true fasting, and will be fed upon the pleasures of incorruptible delights, and so he will know how, by the spiritual use of his earthly riches, to transform them into heavenly treasures, not by hoarding up for himself what he has received, but by gaining a hundred-fold on what he gives.  And hence we warn you, beloved, in fatherly affection, to make this winter fast fruitful to yourselves by bounteous alms, rejoicing that by you the Lord feeds and clothes His poor, to whom assuredly He could have given the possessions which He has bestowed on you, had He not in His unspeakable mercy wished to justify them for their patient labour, and you for your works of love.  Let us therefore fast on Wednesday and Friday, and on Saturday keep vigil with the most blessed Apostle Peter, and he will deign to assist with his own prayers our supplications and fastings and alms which our Lord Jesus Christ presents, Who with the Father and the Holy Ghost lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.

On the Feast of the Nativity, I

Sermon XXI.

On the Feast of the Nativity, I.

I.  All share in the joy of Christmas.

Our Saviour, dearly-beloved, was born today:  let us be glad.  For there is no proper place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity.  No one is kept from sharing in this happiness.  There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord the destroyer of sin and death finds none free from charge, so is He come to free us all.  Let the saint exult in that he draws near to victory.  Let the sinner be glad in that he is invited to pardon.  Let the gentile take courage in that he is called to life.  For the Son of God in the fulness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author:  in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered through that (nature) which he had conquered.  And in this conflict undertaken for us, the fight was fought on great and wondrous principles of fairness; for the Almighty Lord enters the lists with His savage foe not in His own majesty but in our humility, opposing him with the same form and the same nature, which shares indeed our mortality, though it is free from all sin.  Truly foreign to this nativity is that which we read of all others, “no one is clean from stain, not even the infant who has lived but one day upon earth.”  Nothing therefore of the lust of the flesh has passed into that peerless nativity, nothing of the law of sin has entered.  A royal Virgin of the stem of David is chosen, to be impregnated with the sacred seed and to conceive the Divinely-human offspring in mind first and then in body.  And lest in ignorance of the heavenly counsel she should tremble at so strange a result, she learns from converse with the angel that what is to be wrought in her is of the Holy Ghost.  Nor does she believe it loss of honour that she is soon to be the Mother of God.  For why should she be in despair over the novelty of such conception, to whom the power of the most High has promised to effect it.  Her implicit faith is confirmed also by the attestation of a precursory miracle, and Elizabeth receives unexpected fertility:  in order that there might be no doubt that He who had given conception to the barren, would give it even to a virgin.

II.  The mystery of the Incarnation is a fitting theme for joy both to angels and to men.

Therefore the Word of God, Himself God, the Son of God who “in the beginning was with God,” through whom “all things were made” and “without” whom “was nothing made,” with the purpose of delivering man from eternal death, became man:  so bending Himself to take on Him our humility without decrease in His own majesty, that remaining what He was and assuming what He was not, He might unite the true form of a slave to that form in which He is equal to God the Father, and join both natures together by such a compact that the lower should not be swallowed up in its exaltation nor the higher impaired by its new associate.  Without detriment therefore to the properties of either substance which then came together in one person, majesty took on humility, strength weakness, eternity mortality:  and for the paying off of the debt, belonging to our condition, inviolable nature was united with passible nature, and true God and true man were combined to form one Lord, so that, as suited the needs of our case, one and the same Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, could both die with the one and rise again with the other.

Rightly therefore did the birth of our Salvation impart no corruption to the Virgin’s purity, because the bearing of the Truth was the keeping of honour.  Such then beloved was the nativity which became the Power of God and the Wisdom of God even Christ, whereby He might be one with us in manhood and surpass us in Godhead.  For unless He were true God, He would not bring us a remedy, unless He were true Man, He would not give us an example.  Therefore the exulting angel’s song when the Lord was born is this, “Glory to God in the Highest,” and their message, “peace on earth to men of good will.”  For they see that the heavenly Jerusalem is being built up out of all the nations of the world:  and over that indescribable work of the Divine love how ought the humbleness of men to rejoice, when the joy of the lofty angels is so great?

III.  Christians then must live worthily of Christ their Head.

Let us then, dearly beloved, give thanks to God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Spirit, Who “for His great mercy, wherewith He has loved us,” has had pity on us:  and “when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together in Christ,” that we might be in Him a new creation and a new production.  Let us put off then the old man with his deeds:  and having obtained a share in the birth of Christ let us renounce the works of the flesh.  Christian, acknowledge thy dignity, and becoming a partner in the Divine nature, refuse to return to the old baseness by degenerate conduct.  Remember the Head and the Body of which thou art a member.  Recollect that thou wert rescued from the power of darkness and brought out into God’s light and kingdom.  By the mystery of Baptism thou wert made the temple of the Holy Ghost:  do not put such a denizen to flight from thee by base acts, and subject thyself once more to the devil’s thraldom:  because thy purchase money is the blood of Christ, because He shall judge thee in truth Who ransomed thee in mercy, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.

On the Feast of the Nativity, II

Sermon XXII.

On the Feast of the Nativity, II.

I.  The mystery of the Incarnation demands our joy.

Let us be glad in the Lord, dearly-beloved, and rejoice with spiritual joy that there has dawned for us the day of ever-new redemption, of ancient preparation, of eternal bliss.  For as the year rolls round, there recurs for us the commemoration of our salvation, which promised from the beginning, accomplished in the fulness of time will endure for ever; on which we are bound with hearts up-lifted to adore the divine mystery:  so that what is the effect of God’s great gift may be celebrated by the Church’s great rejoicings.  For God the almighty and merciful, Whose nature as goodness, Whose will is power, Whose work is mercy:  as soon as the devil’s malignity killed us by the poison of his hatred, foretold at the very beginning of the world the remedy His piety had prepared for the restoration of us mortals:  proclaiming to the serpent that the seed of the woman should come to crush the lifting of his baneful head by its power, signifying no doubt that Christ would come in the flesh, God and man, Who born of a Virgin should by His uncorrupt birth condemn the despoiler of the human stock.  Thus in the whole and perfect nature of true man was true God born, complete in what was His own, complete in what was ours.  And “ours” we call what the Creator formed in us from the beginning and what He undertook to repair.  For what the deceiver brought in and the deceived admitted had no trace in the Saviour.  Nor because He partook of man’s weaknesses, did He therefore share our faults.  He took the form of a slave without stain of sin, increasing the human and not diminishing the Divine:  because that “emptying of Himself” whereby the Invisible made Himself visible and Creator and Lord of all things as He was, wished to be mortal, was the condescension of Pity not the failing of Power.

II.  The new character of the birth of Christ explained.

Therefore, when the time came, dearly beloved, which had been fore-ordained for men’s redemption, there enters these lower parts of the world, the Son of God, descending from His heavenly throne and yet not quitting His Father’s glory, begotten in a new order, by a new nativity.  In a new order, because being invisible in His own nature He became visible in ours, and He whom nothing could contain, was content to be contained:  abiding before all time He began to be in time:  the Lord of all things, He obscured His immeasurable majesty and took on Him the form of a servant:  being God, that cannot suffer, He did not disdain to be man that can, and immortal as He is, to subject Himself to the laws of death.  And by a new nativity He was begotten, conceived by a Virgin, born of a Virgin, without paternal desire, without injury to the mother’s chastity:  because such a birth as knew no taint of human flesh, became One who was to be the Saviour of men, while it possessed in itself the nature of human substance.  For when God was born in the flesh, God Himself was the Father, as the archangel witnessed to the Blessed Virgin Mary:  “because the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee:  and therefore, that which shall be born of thee shall be called holy, the Son of God.”  The origin is different but the nature like:  not by intercourse with man but by the power of God was it brought about:  for a Virgin conceived, a Virgin bare, and a Virgin she remained.  Consider here not the condition of her that bare but the will of Him that was born; for He was born Man as He willed and was able.  If you inquire into the truth of His nature, you must acknowledge the matter to be human:  if you search for the mode of His birth, you must confess the power to be of God.  For the Lord Jesus Christ came to do away with not to endure our pollutions:  not to succumb to our faults but to heal them.  He came that He might cure every weakness of our corruptness and all the sores of our defiled souls:  for which reason it behoved Him to be born by a new order, who brought to men’s bodies the new gift of unsullied purity.  For the uncorrupt nature of Him that was born had to guard the primal virginity of the Mother, and the infused power of the Divine Spirit had to preserve in spotlessness and holiness that sanctuary which He had chosen for Himself:  that Spirit (I say) who had determined to raise the fallen, to restore the broken, and by overcoming the allurements of the flesh to bestow on us in abundant measure the power of chastity:  in order that the virginity which in others cannot be retained in child-bearing, might be attained by them at their second birth.

III.  Justice required that Satan should be vanquished by God made man.

And, dearly beloved, this very fact that Christ chose to be born of a Virgin does it not appear to be part of the deepest design?  I mean, that the devil should not be aware that Salvation had been born for the human race, and through the obscurity of that spiritual conception, when he saw Him no different to others, should believe Him born in no different way to others.  For when he observed that His nature was like that of all others, he thought that He had the same origin as all had:  and did not understand that He was free from the bonds of transgression because he did not find Him a stranger to the weakness of mortality.  For though the true mercy of God had infinitely many schemes to hand for the restoration of mankind, it chose that particular design which put in force for destroying the devil’s work, not the efficacy of might but the dictates of justice.  For the pride of the ancient foe not undeservedly made good its despotic rights over all men, and with no unwarrantable supremacy tyrannized over those who had been of their own accord lured away from God’s commands to be the slaves of his will.  And so there would be no justice in his losing the immemorial slavery of the human race, were he not conquered by that which he had subjugated.  And to this end, without male seed Christ was conceived of a Virgin, who was fecundated not by human intercourse but by the Holy Spirit.  And whereas in all mothers conception does not take place without stain of sin, this one received purification from the Source of her conception.  For no taint of sin penetrated, where no intercourse occurred.  Her unsullied virginity knew no lust when it ministered the substance.  The Lord took from His mother our nature, not our fault.  The slave’s form is created without the slave’s estate, because the New Man is so commingled with the old, as both to assume the reality of our race and to remove its ancient flaw.

IV.  The Incarnation deceived the Devil and caused him to break the bond under which he held men.

When, therefore, the merciful and almighty Saviour so arranged the commencement of His human course as to hide the power of His Godhead which was inseparable from His manhood under the veil of our weakness, the crafty foe was taken off his guard and he thought that the nativity of the Child, Who was born for the salvation of mankind, was as much subject to himself as all others are at their birth.  For he saw Him crying and weeping, he saw Him wrapped in swaddling clothes, subjected to circumcision, offering the sacrifice which the law required.  And then he perceived in Him the usual growth of boyhood, and could have had no doubt of His reaching man’s estate by natural steps.  Meanwhile, he inflicted insults, multiplied injuries, made use of curses, affronts, blasphemies, abuse, in a word, poured upon Him all the force of his fury and exhausted all the varieties of trial:  and knowing how he had poisoned man’s nature, had no conception that He had no share in the first transgression Whose mortality he had ascertained by so many proofs.  The unscrupulous thief and greedy robber persisted in assaulting Him Who had nothing of His own, and in carrying out the general sentence on original sin, went beyond the bond on which he rested, and required the punishment of iniquity from Him in Whom he found no fault.  And thus the malevolent terms of the deadly compact are annulled, and through the injustice of an overcharge the whole debt is cancelled.  The strong one is bound by his own chains, and every device of the evil one recoils on his own head.  When the prince of the world is bound, all that he held in captivity is released.  Our nature cleansed from its old contagion regains its honourable estate, death is destroyed by death, nativity is restored by nativity:  since at one and the same time redemption does away with slavery, regeneration changes our origin, and faith justifies the sinner.

V.  The Christian is exhorted to share in the blessings of the Incarnation.

Whoever then thou art that devoutly and faithfully boastest of the Christian name, estimate this atonement at its right worth.  For to thee who wast a castaway, banished from the realms of paradise, dying of thy weary exile, reduced to dust and ashes, without further hope of living, by the Incarnation of the Word was given the power to return from afar to thy Maker, to recognize thy parentage, to become free after slavery, to be promoted from being an outcast to sonship:  so that, thou who wast born of corruptible flesh, mayest be reborn by the Spirit of God, and obtain through grace what thou hadst not by nature, and, if thou acknowledge thyself the son of God by the spirit of adoption, dare to call God Father.  Freed from the accusings of a bad conscience, aspire to the kingdom of heaven, do God’s will supported by the Divine help, imitate the angels upon earth, feed on the strength of immortal sustenance, fight fearlessly on the side of piety against hostile temptations, and if thou keep thy allegiance in the heavenly warfare, doubt not that thou wilt be crowned for thy victory in the triumphant camp of the Eternal King, when the resurrection that is prepared for the faithful has raised thee to participate in the heavenly Kingdom.

VI.  The festival has nothing to do with sun-worship, as some maintain.

Having therefore so confident a hope, dearly beloved, abide firm in the Faith in which you are built:  lest that same tempter whose tyranny over you Christ has already destroyed, win you back again with any of his wiles, and mar even the joys of the present festival by his deceitful art, misleading simpler souls with the pestilential notion of some to whom this our solemn feast day seems to derive its honour, not so much from the nativity of Christ as, according to them, from the rising of the new sun.  Such men’s hearts are wrapped in total darkness, and have no growing perception of the true Light:  for they are still drawn away by the foolish errors of heathendom, and because they cannot lift the eyes of their mind above that which their carnal sight beholds, they pay divine honour to the luminaries that minister to the world.  Let not Christian souls entertain any such wicked superstition and portentous lie.  Beyond all measure are things temporal removed from the Eternal, things corporeal from the Incorporeal, things governed from the Governor.  For though they possess a wondrous beauty, yet they have no Godhead to be worshipped.  That power then, that wisdom, that majesty is to be adored which created the universe out of nothing, and framed by His almighty methods the substance of the earth and sky into what forms and dimensions He willed.  Sun, moon, and stars may be most useful to us, most fair to look upon; but only if we render thanks to their Maker for them and worship God who made them, not the creation which does Him service.  Then praise God, dearly beloved, in all His works and judgments.  Cherish an undoubting belief in the Virgin’s pure conception.  Honour the sacred and Divine mystery of man’s restoration with holy and sincere service.  Embrace Christ born in our flesh, that you may deserve to see Him also as the God of glory reigning in His majesty, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit remains in the unity of the Godhead for ever and ever.  Amen.