Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| On the Feast of the Nativity, I.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
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 earth723
.”
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 result724
| 724
Effectus: the older editions read affatus (sc. the
utterances of the angel). | ,
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 God725
| 725 Dei genetrix
(θεοτόκος):
in opposing Eutyches, Leo is careful not to fall into
Nestorianism. Bright’s note 3 should be read on this
passage, and esp. his quotation from Bp. Pearson (note 2 on Art. 3)
absit ut quisquam S. Mariam Divinæ gratiæ privilegiis et
speciali gloria fraudare conetur. | . 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
made726
,” 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. 727
| 727
“Without-other” repeated in almost the same words in Letter
XXVIII. chap. 3. | 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 possible 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 other728
| 728
“Without-other” repeated in almost the same words in Letter
XXVIII. chap. 3. | .
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 will729
.” 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
Spirit730
| 730 Bingham observes (b.
xiv. c. 2, s. 1), that Leo here uses, though in a catholic sense, that
form of doxology which had become associated with Arianism. He
could well afford to do as S. Athanasius had done, who ascribes glory
to the Father “through the Son” at the conclusion of four
treatises. Bright. | , 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 Christ731
,” 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.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
