The Incarnation
“And the Word was made flesh.”—John 1:14
St. Thomas the Angelic Doctor calls the mystery of the Incarnation of the eternal Word, Miraculum Miraculorum—“the Miracle of Miracles.” And what greater prodigy could the world see than to behold a woman become mother of God, and a God clothed in human flesh! Let us consider today therefore these two great prodigies:
First Point—Mary through her humility made mother of her creator.
Second Point—The creator through his goodness made son of his creature.
First Point—Mary through her humility made mother of her creator.
1. God having resolved to manifest to the world his immense goodness in humbling himself to become man in order thus to redeem lost man; and having to choose a virgin mother, he went looking among the virgins to see who was the most humble. He found that the Virgin Mary, as much as she surpassed the others in sanctity, so much did she exceed them in humility, and her he chose for his mother: Respexit humilitatem ancillae suae—“He hath regarded the humility of his handmaid” (Luke 1:48). “Non ait,” writes St. Lawrence Justinian, “respexit virginitatem, innocentiam, sed humilitatem tantum”—“It does not say He regarded virginity or innocence, but humility alone” (Sermon 1 on the Nativity of the Virgin). And before him St. Jerome said: Maluit Deus de Virgine incarnari propter humilitatem, quam propter aliam virtutem—“God preferred to be incarnate of the Virgin on account of humility, rather than on account of any other virtue.”
2. Now let us understand that Mary was she who was proclaimed in the sacred Canticles under the likeness of spikenard, a small and lowly herb, which with its sweet fragrance drew the King of heaven, the eternal Word from the bosom of the Father, in which he reposed, to clothe himself in human flesh in her womb: “While the king was at his repose, my spikenard sent forth the odor thereof” (Cant. 1:11). Behold how St. Antoninus explained it: Nardus est herba parva, & significat B. Virginem, quae dedit humilitatis odorem—“Spikenard is a small herb, and signifies the Blessed Virgin, who gave forth the fragrance of humility.” And St. Bernard had said the same before him: Digna plane quam respiceret Deus, cujus decorem concupisceret Rex, cujus odore suavissimo ab aeterno illo paterni sinus attraheretur accubitu—“Worthy indeed that God should regard her, whose beauty the King should desire, by whose most sweet fragrance he should be drawn from that eternal repose of his Father’s bosom” (Sermon 4 on the Assumption). Thus God, drawn by the humility of the Virgin, chose her as his mother in becoming man for the redemption of men. He did not wish, however, to become her son without first having her consent, for the greater glory and merit of this mother: Noluit carnem sumere ex Ipsa, non dante ipsa—“He did not wish to take flesh from her, she not giving her consent,” says Abbot William (On the Canticles, 2).
3. And behold, while the humble virgin is in her poor house sighing and praying to the Lord, as was revealed to St. Elizabeth of Schönau, a Benedictine virgin, that he would send the Redeemer to the world; the Archangel Gabriel comes to bring her the great message on behalf of God; he comes, and greets her: Ave gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus—“Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1). God save you, O Mary, full of grace, for you are rich in that grace which surpasses the grace given to all men and angels. The Lord is with you, and has always been with you, assisting you with his grace. You are the blessed one among all women, since all the others have incurred the curse of sin; but you as mother of the Blessed were preserved from every stain, and have been, and shall always be blessed.
To this greeting filled with so many praises, how does the humble Mary respond? She does not respond, but astonished at such praises, she is confused and troubled: Quae cum audisset, turbata est in sermone ejus, & cogitabat qualis esset ista salutatio—“Who having heard, was troubled at his saying, and thought within herself what manner of salutation this should be” (Luke 1:29).
And why is she troubled? Perhaps from fear of illusion? No, for she is assured that it is a celestial spirit speaking to her. Is she troubled perhaps from modesty, seeing that angel in the appearance of a man, as some have thought? No, because the text says, Turbata est in sermone ejus—“troubled at his saying,” to which Eusebius Emissenus adds, non in vultu, sed in sermone ejus—“not at his countenance, but at his saying.”
This disturbance therefore was entirely from humility, caused by those great praises which were far from her own thoughts of herself. Hence, the more she hears the angel exalt her, the more she humbles herself and sinks deep into her nothingness. St. Bernardine of Siena writes that if the angel had told her that she was the most wicked woman in the world, Mary would not have been troubled; but on hearing so many praises, of which she judged herself unworthy, she marvels and is troubled: Si dixisset: O Maria, Tu es maior ribalda, quae est in mundo, non ita admirata fuisset; unde turbata fuit de tantis laudibus—“If he had said: O Mary, you are the greatest wretch who is in the world, she would not have been so astonished; therefore she was troubled by such great praises” (Sermon 35 on the Love of the Incarnation, part 3).
4. But the Blessed Virgin (I say) was already well-versed in the sacred Scriptures, well knew that the time foretold by the prophets for the coming of the Messiah had arrived, she understood that the Weeks of Daniel were already completed, and that the scepter had already passed from Judah into the hand of a foreign king, who was Herod, according to the prophecy of Jacob; she knew moreover that the mother of the Messiah was to be a virgin; she then hears herself greeted by the angel with those praises which seemed to befit none other than a mother of God; did the thought then come to her, or at least the doubt, that she might be that chosen mother?
No, her humility did not allow her even to entertain this doubt. Those praises only filled her with great fear, so that it was necessary for the angel himself to encourage her not to fear, as St. Peter Chrysologus writes: Sicut Christus per Angelum voluit confortari, ita per Angelum debuit Virgo animari—“Just as Christ wished to be comforted by an angel, so the Virgin had to be encouraged by an angel.”
Therefore St. Gabriel said to her: Ne timeas Maria, invenisti gratiam apud Deum—“Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God” (Luke 1:30). As if saying to her: What have you to fear, O Mary? Do you not know that God exalts the humble? With your own eyes you see yourself so small and lowly, and therefore by his goodness he exalts you to make you his mother. “Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus” (Luke 1:31).
5. And meanwhile the angel awaits to know if she consents to be mother of God. Here St. Bernard turns to speak to her and says: Expectat Angelus responsum, expectamus & nos, o Domina, verbum miserationis, quos miserabiliter premit sententia damnationis—“The angel awaits your response, and we also await, O Lady, a word of mercy, we whom the sentence of damnation miserably oppresses” (Homily 4 on the Missus). Lady, the angel awaits your consent in your response, we also await it, we miserable ones condemned to eternal death.
Ecce offertur Tibi pretium salutis nostrae; statim liberabimur, si consentis—“Behold there is offered to you the price of our salvation; we shall immediately be freed, if you consent.” O holy Virgin, to you is offered the price of our salvation, which will be the blood that your Son, made man in your womb, will shed to pay for our sins and free us from death; if you accept it, we shall immediately be freed: Ipse quoque Dominus, quantum concupivit decorem tuum, tantum desiderat & responsionis assensum, in qua nimirum proposuit salvare Mundum—“The Lord himself also, as much as he has desired your beauty, so much does he desire also the assent of your response, in which indeed he has resolved to save the world” (Same St. Bernard, loc. cit.).
Our Lord himself: as much as he values your beauty, so much does he desire your consent, in which he has resolved to save the world. Responde jam Virgo sacra, vitam quid tricas Mundo?—“Respond now, holy Virgin, why do you delay life to the world?” resumes St. Augustine (Sermon 21 on Time). Quickly respond, Lady, do not delay any longer for the world the salvation that depends on your consent.
6. Behold, Mary responds to the angel: Ecce ancilla Domini, fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum—“Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). O admirable response, which gladdened heaven and brought to earth an immense treasure of goods! Response that drew from the bosom of the eternal Father his only-begotten Son to become man! For scarcely had those words been uttered by Mary when Verbum caro factum est—“the Word was made flesh,” and the Son of God was also made the Son of Mary.
O fiat potens! exclaims St. Thomas of Villanova, o fiat efficax! o fiat super omni fiat venerandum!—“O powerful fiat! O efficacious fiat! O fiat above every fiat to be venerated!” (Sermon 1 on the Annunciation). With such a fiat, heaven descended to earth, and earth was raised to heaven.
7. But let us cast a deeper glance at Mary’s response: Ecce ancilla Domini—“Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” With this response the humble Virgin wished to say: Behold the servant of the Lord, bound to do what her Lord commands her: if he chooses me, who have nothing of my own, and all that I have is his gift, who can say that he chooses me through any merit of mine? Ecce Ancilla Domini—“Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” what merit indeed can a servant have, to be made mother of her Lord? Let the servant not be praised then, but only the goodness of the Lord who has wished to regard a creature so lowly and make her so great.
O Humilitas, admires Abbot Guerric, angustia sibi, ampla Divinitati! insufficiens sibi, sufficiens Ei, quem non capit Orbis!—“O humility, narrow to herself, ample to the Divinity! Insufficient to herself, sufficient to him whom the world does not contain!” O humility of Mary that renders her small in her own eyes, but great in the divine eyes! Unworthy in her own judgment, but according to God worthy to enclose in her womb him whom the world cannot contain!
Let us hear also St. Bernard’s exclamations of wonder at this: Quanta Humilitatis virtus, cum tanta puritate, cum innocentia tanta, imo cum tanta Gratiae plenitudine!—“What great virtue of humility, with such great purity, with such great innocence, indeed with such great fullness of grace!” And then St. Bernard continues to say: Unde Tibi Humilitas, & tanta humilitas o beata?—“Whence comes to you humility, and such great humility, O blessed one?” Lucifer, seeing himself enriched by God with great beauty, aspired to place his throne above the stars and make himself like God, saying: “I will exalt my throne above the stars of God… and I will be like the most High” (Isa. 14:13).
Now what would the Proud One have said if he had ever seen himself adorned with the gifts of Mary? He, exalted by God, became proud and was sent to hell; but humble Mary, the more she sees herself enriched with gifts, the more she concentrates herself in her nothingness, and God raises her to make her his mother, in short, to make her so sublime beyond comparison that apart from God (as St. Andrew of Crete says) there is none who can be compared to her: Excepto Deo omnibus est altior—“Except for God, she is higher than all” (Oration on the Dormition of the Mother of God).
Therefore St. Anselm then said: Nihil Tibi, Domina, est aequale; omne enim quod est, aut supra Te est, aut infra: quod supra, solus Deus, quod infra, est omne quod Deus non est—“Nothing is equal to you, Lady; for everything that is, is either above you or below you: that which is above, God alone; that which is below, is everything that is not God” (In Peter of Larentia’s Stellarium, part 2, part 3, article 2).
8. And to what greater height could a creature be raised than to be made mother of her creator? Esse Matrem Dei, wrote St. Bonaventure, est gratia maxima purae creaturae conferibilis; ipsa est quam majorem facere non potest Deus; majorem Mundum facere potest Deus, majus Caelum, majorem quam Matrem Dei facere non potest—“To be the mother of God is the greatest grace that can be conferred on a pure creature; it is that than which God cannot make greater; God can make a greater world, a greater heaven, but greater than the mother of God he cannot make” (Spec. B. V. Lect. 10). And this the Virgin herself wished to express when she said: “He that is mighty hath done great things to me” (Luke 1:49).
But here the Abbot of Celles turns to speak to her: Non tantum Sibi Te fecit, sed Te Angelis dedit in instaurationem, Hominibus in reparationem, daemonibus in hostem; nam per te Deus homini pacificatur, diabolus vincitur et conteritur—“Not only did he make you for himself, but he gave you to the angels for their restoration, to men for their reparation, to the demons as their conqueror; for through you God is reconciled to man, and the devil is vanquished and crushed” (Prologue on the Contemplation of the Virgin). Thus God created Mary not only for himself, but also for man, that is, to repair the ruins brought to man by his sin; and let us pass to the second Point.
Second Point—The creator through his goodness made son of his creature.
9. Behold Adam our progenitor, ungrateful for so many gifts received from God, rebels against him by eating the forbidden fruit. God is therefore obliged to cast him from his presence and to condemn him with all his descendants to eternal death. But then having compassion on him, moved by the depths of his mercy (ardens ex alto—“burning from on high”), he chooses to come to earth and make himself man, and thus satisfy divine justice by paying with his sufferings the penalty we deserved for our sins.
10. Descendit de Caelo, & homo factus est—“He descended from heaven, and was made man,” thus the holy Church teaches us. Et homo factus est—“And was made man,” oh prodigy, oh excess of the love of a God, a God made man! If a prince of the earth, seeing a worm dead in its hole, wished to revive it, and were told that to restore life to that worm it would be necessary that he also become a worm, descend into that small hole where that worm lies dead, and there make a bath of his own blood, laying down his life in it, since only by being immersed in that blood could the worm return to life; what would that prince respond? Would he not say: And what does it matter to me whether the worm rises or remains dead, that I should have to shed my blood and die to make a worm live?
What did it matter to God that men remained lost, as they already deserved for their sins? Without men, would he perhaps have lost anything of his happiness?
11. But no, because too great is the love that this God bears for men. He descends to earth, he makes himself little, assumes human flesh from a Virgin, and taking the form of a servant he makes himself man, that is to say, he makes himself a worm like us: “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man” (Phil. 2:7). He is God like the Father, immense, omnipotent, sovereign, and in all things equal to the Father; but made man in the womb of Mary, he is a creature, he is a servant, he is weak, and he is less than the Father.
Behold him humbled in the womb of Mary, where he accepts the obedience laid upon him by the Father, who after 33 years of sufferings wills him to die, executed upon a cross: “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). Let us behold him as an infant in the womb of his mother, how he, all conformed to the will of the Father and all inflamed with love toward us, offers himself voluntarily (oblatus est, quia ipse voluit—“he was offered because he himself willed it.” [Isa. 53:7]), he offers himself (I say) to suffer everything for our salvation.
He foresees there the scourges, and offers his flesh: he foresees the thorns, and offers his head: he foresees the nails, and offers his hands and feet: he foresees the cross, and offers his life. And why does he wish to suffer so much for us, ungrateful and sinners? Because he loves us. “He loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood” (Apoc. 1:5). He looks upon us filthy with sins, and he prepares for us a bath of his blood, to wash us from them and render us dear to God.
“He loved us, and delivered himself for us” (Eph. 5:2). He sees us condemned to death and he prepares himself to die, to obtain life for us; and seeing us cursed by God because of our sins, he is content to burden himself with all the curses we deserved, to see us saved. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. 3:13).
12. St. Francis of Paola therefore had every reason, considering a God made man and dead for our love, to exclaim often: O charity, O charity, O charity! If faith did not assure us of all that the Son of God has done and has suffered for us, who could ever believe it? Ah my Christians, the love that Jesus Christ has had and has for us presses us greatly and compels us to love him. “For the charity of Christ presseth us” (2 Cor. 5:14).
Most tender is the sentiment expressed on these words of St. Paul by St. Francis de Sales in his Theotimus; he says: “Knowing therefore that Jesus, true God, has loved us even to suffering death for us, and death of the cross, is this not to have our hearts under a press, and to feel them forced and squeezed by force, and to have love pressed out by a violence that is all the stronger because it is more lovable?”
13. But here come the tears of St. John: “he came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). And why indeed has the Only-begotten of God wished to come to this earth to make himself man, to suffer, and to die for us, if not to be loved by us? Deus factus est homo, ut familiariter ab homine diligeretur—“God was made man, that he might be familiarly loved by man,” writes Hugh of St. Victor (In the Book of Sentences).
Principally, says St. Augustine, Jesus Christ came to this earth to make known to man how much he loves him: Maxime propterea Christus advenit, ut cognosceret Homo, quantum eum diligat Deus—“Christ came chiefly for this, that man might know how much God loves him” (St. Aug. Chapter 4 on Catechizing). And if a God loves us so much, he justly requires that we love him: Notam fecit dilectionem suam (speaks St. Bernard), ut experiatur & tuam—“he made known his love, that he might experience also yours” (Sermon 43 on the Canticles). To this end he has shown us the great love he bears us, so that he might obtain from us, at least through gratitude, our love.
14. O eternal Word, who have come from heaven to earth to make yourself man and to die for men in order to be loved by them; how does it come about then that among men there are so few who love you? Ah, infinite beauty, infinitely lovable, worthy of infinite love, behold I am one of those ungrateful ones who have been so much loved by you and have not known how to love you; indeed, instead of loving you I have so greatly offended you; but you made yourself man and died to pardon sinners who detest their sins and wish to love you.
Lord, behold I am a sinner, it is true, but I repent of the offenses I have committed against you, and I wish to love you; have pity on me. And you, holy Virgin, who through your humility were made worthy to be mother of God, and as such are also the mother, the refuge, the advocate of sinners; you, pray for me, recommend me to this Son who loves you so much and denies you nothing of what you ask of him. Tell him to pardon me, tell him to give me his holy love, tell him to save me, so that together with you I may come one day to love him face to face in paradise. So be it.
Points for Reflection
1. “O holy Virgin, to you is offered the price of our salvation, which will be the blood that your Son, made man in your womb, will shed to pay for our sins and free us from death” (§5)
2. “O eternal Word, who have come from heaven to earth to make yourself man and to die for men in order to be loved by them; how does it come about then that among men there are so few who love you?” (§14)
3. “And you, holy Virgin, who through your humility were made worthy to be mother of God . . . you, pray for me, recommend me to this Son who loves you so much and denies you nothing of what you ask of him” (§14)