sprang from the earth (Ps 85:11) and Day from Day2 was bom into our day, has
SERMON 184
ON CHRISTMAS DAY
Date: before 396'
Let the humble hold fast to the humility of God
1. The birthday of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the day on which Truth sprang from the earth (Ps 85:11) and Day from Day2 was bom into our day, has dawned once more,3 brought round again by the cycle of the year to be celebrated by us; Let us rejoice and make merry on it (Ps 118:24). For what the humility of such sublime greatness has bestowed upon us is grasped by the faith of Christians, while far from the comprehension of the godless; since God has hidden these things from the wise and the prudent, and revealed them to the little ones (Lk 10:21). So let the humble hold fast to the humility of God, in order that, helped by this wonderful conveyance as by a kind of vehicle for their weakness,4 they may arrive at the heights of God. As for the wise and the prudent there, they aim at the loftiness of God without believing in his humble lowliness; and so, by overstepping this and not reaching that, they have remained, empty and weightless, inflated and elated, at a windy middle level, suspended between heaven and earth.
They are indeed wise and prudent, but in the affairs of this world, not of the one by whom the world was made. Because if they were possessed of the true wisdom, which is from God and is God, they would understand that it was possible for flesh to be taken on by God without his being changed into flesh; they would understand that he took to himself what he was not, while remaining what he was; and that he came to us in a man without ever departing from the Father; and that he continued to be what he is, while appearing to us as what we are; and that his divine power was confined in the body of an infant without being withdrawn from the whole mass of the universe.
The whole universe is his work as he remains with the Father; his work as he comes to us is the virgin's child-bearing. The virgin mother indeed provided a demonstration of his greatness, being found a virgin after giving birth just as she was a virgin before conceiving, being found, not put, with child by her husband;5 without male intervention carrying a male in her womb; all the more blessed and admirable for receiving the gift of fertility without losing that of