Christmas Eve, 1620. [Offered to the Visitation sisters as a little catechism on the subject of the Incarnation, not a sermon or exhortation]
First: Who is the author of the Incarnation? It is the Father who gave his Son to the World [Jn. 3/16] However, the Incarnation is an act of the three persons of the Trinity, and only the second Person became incarnate. The analogy may be drawn from the ceremony of Vestition: The Superior, the Novice Mistress and the candidate are involved. While the first two place the habit on the candidate, the latter cooperates by allowing herself to be clothed. She is the only one, thus, who is clothed.
Second: What is the Incarnation? It is the intimate union of the human and the divine [called hypostatic union] in one and the same person. In the person of the Incarnate Jesus there are three substances: the body, the divine nature, and the soul. This may be better understood by the analogy of Manna. [cf. Sermon 4 above, The Coming of the Divine Child, Christmas Eve, 24/12/1613] According to the Fathers of the Church, Manna prefigures the Incarnation and the Eucharist – with the only difference that in the Incarnation we see the Incarnate God, whereas in the Eucharist we see Him in a hidden and obscure form.
Manna was a food with which Yahweh fed the children of Israel. [Ex. 16/13-14; Num. 11/7-9]. Manna had three distinct tastes: that of honey, of oil and of bread. [Ex. 16/31; Num. 11/8; Wis. 16/20]. In the true Manna, the Incarnate Jesus, we find honey, which represents His Divinity, the oil, which represents his soul, and, bread, which represents His body. Honey comes from heaven and drops on that beautiful flower – the humanity of our Saviour, with which it was joined and remained united. Oil comes neither from Heaven nor earth. Oil is a liquid which floats on all substances. It represents the most holy soul of Christ. While the Saviour’s sacred body was formed from the purest blood of the Virgin, His most blessed soul was directly created by the Father and the Holy Spirit at the very moment when They formed His body – when the Holy Virgin gave her consent, the Holy Spirit animated the body of Christ. Our Saviour’s soul, then did not exist before the Incarnation, but simultaneously with it. The third taste of manna was bread – which clearly grows from the earth – and this represents his third substance, his Body. As with Manna that had three tastes, but there was only one manna, so in the one person of Our Lord Incarnate, there are three substances.
Had our Lord not become incarnate, He would have remained always hidden in the bosom of His Eternal Father and unknown to us. In the Incarnation He has made us see that which otherwise the human mind could hardly have imagined or understood, namely, that God was man and man God, the immortal mortal; the one incapable of suffering, suffering – subject to heat, cold, hunger and thirst; the infinite, finite; the eternal, temporal – in short, man divinzed and God humanized in such a way that God without ceasing to be God, is man; and man, without ceasing to be man, is God.
Analogy of an iron plate cast into the furnace. When the iron plate is taken out we find it so inflamed that it is not possible to say whether the plate is iron or fire – so completely have these two substances merged with each other … that one could term the iron place ‘flaming iron’ and the fire could be called ‘fire of iron’. Yet this union is without prejudice to either, for the iron, cast into the fire, does not cease being iron, nor does the fire in the iron cease to be fire. One needs only to dip the iron plate into water, and it will return to its original form. Likewise, Divinity is, as it were, the burning furnace into which this humanity is cast; both so intimately merged in such a way that man has become God and God has become man without either ceasing to be what they were before.
However, while analogy helps, it does not, however, provide a complete explanation. … Indeed, it is not possible to find a comparison round enough so that there would not be something that remains to be round off. In the case of the flaming iron – water serves to return both elements to their original form. Whereas, in the case of the Incarnation, from the moment that the divine nature was joined to human nature, it was never separated from it by any water of tribulation that was cast upon them. The two natures have always remained most intimately united, with an indissoluble and inseparable union.
Another analogy is provided by the fleece of Gideon [Jg. 6/36-40] Here again, Divinity, this divine dew, never left the fleece of humanity, neither in life nor in death. It has always remained in union with Our Lord’s body and soul. And even though His body and soul were separated in death, Divinity remained with both the one and the other; with the Saviour’s soul in Limbo, and with His sacred body in the tomb. There is also this difference: though it was the fleece that sustained the water, it is not the humanity which sustains the Divinity, but rather the Divinity which sustains the humanity.
Another analogy is sponge, which grows in the sea; every part of this sponge is filled with water, with the sea above, beneath, around and within it. There is not the least particle that is not saturated with water. However, although the sea is in all parts of the sponge, the sponge does not absorb the sea – for the immensity of the sea cannot be contained in the sponge. The sponge symbolizes the Lord’s sacred humanity and the sea His Divinity. His humanity is so imbued with the Divinity that there is not a single part of Our Lord’s body and soul which is not filled with the Divinity, yet without this human nature ceasing to be integrally human. However, the humanity is not everywhere that the Divinity is, for the Divinity is like an infinite sea which surrounds everything but cannot itself be contained by anyone or anything.
Third: Why did the Incarnation take place ? To lift us up [after Adam’s fall] and to lead us to live meaningful human lives. Whereas we were like a thirsty horse, which on seeing water, in order to quench its thirst, will, even if it is bridled, will throw off its reins and rider, in order to find sensual satisfaction, Our Lord became incarnate to teach us by word and example, how to bridle and check our fallen nature, that has now been redeemed. Indeed, there is no beast, however brutal who does not recognize the hand that feeds it.
The Incarnate Saviour also wished to teach us, by example, spiritual sobriety, namely, conformity with the Will of God. [Jn. 6/38]
Religious life is ‘a school for the renunciation of one’s will – a Cross on which one must be crucified’. We come here to suffer, not to be consoled, If you desire sugar and sweets, you had better go to a candy store. In religious one is served bitter food, painful to the flesh but profitable to the heart.
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