26 — THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION

December 22

Presence of God. — I place myself in the presence of Jesus with the lively desire to penetrate that infinite mystery of divine love that led Him, God, to make Himself “one of us.”

Meditation

1 — God is charity: all that He works in Himself and outside Himself is a work of love. Being the infinite Good, He cannot love anything outside Himself moved, as we are, by the desire to increase His happiness: in Himself He has everything. Therefore in God to love, and thus to will creatures, is purely to spread outside Himself His infinite good, His perfections, to share with others His being, His happiness: “Bonum diffusivum sui,” says St. Thomas. It is thus that God loved man with eternal love and, loving him, called him to existence, giving him natural life and supernatural life. Loving us, God not only drew us from nothingness, but elected us and raised us to the state of His children, destined to share His intimate life, His eternal beatitude. This was the first plan of God’s immense charity toward man; but when man fell into sin, God, who had created him in an act of love, willed to redeem him in an act of love greater still. Behold the mystery of the Incarnation presenting itself to us as the supreme manifestation of God’s excessive charity for man: “In this the charity of God toward us was manifested: that God sent His only-begotten Son into the world, so that through Him we might have life. In this is charity... that He first loved us and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn. 4, 9 and 10). After giving man natural life, after destining him to supernatural life, what more could He give him than to give him Himself, His Word made flesh for his salvation?

2 — God is charity, and therefore it is no wonder if the history of His action on behalf of man is a whole poem of love, and of merciful love. The first canto of this poem was our eternal destination to the vision and enjoyment of God’s intimate life. The second canto expresses even more movingly the sublimity of His mercy: it is the mystery of the Incarnation.

The sin of our first parents had destroyed the first plan of our elevation to the supernatural state: we had fallen from this order with no possibility, on our part, of repair. God could forgive all, but for His infinite holiness and justice it was fitting to require an adequate satisfaction of which man was absolutely incapable. And then the most sublime work of God’s mercy was accomplished: one Person of the Most Holy Trinity, the second, came to do for us what we could not do. Behold the Word, God’s Only-Begotten, “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate” (Creed). God’s merciful love thus reaches the summit of its manifestation: if there is no ingratitude and misery greater than sin, there can be no love greater than that which stoops over so much ingratitude and such abasement to restore it to its original splendor. And God does this, not through a prophet or the most sublime of angels, but He does it personally: the whole Most Holy Trinity works the Incarnation, whose term is the conjunction of a human nature with the Person of the Word. Here appears and shines all the immensity of God’s love and mercy for man.

Colloquy

“O my God, make me worthy to know the mystery of the most ardent charity that is in You, namely the most high fact of the Incarnation, which You have set as the beginning of our salvation. This ineffable benefit of Yours does two things for us: first, it fills us with love, and second it makes us certain of our salvation. How ineffable this charity is: truly there is none greater, than that God, universal Creator, be made creature to make me become like Him! O intimate love, You have emptied, I would say, Yourself to make me; You have taken the lowliest form of servant to give me a being almost divine. Yet when You took my form, You were not diminished, nor lacked in Your substance; nor did You lose anything of Your Deity; but the abyss of Your most humble Incarnation makes me say and urges me to break out in these words: O You incomprehensible, You have become for me comprehensible! O uncreated, You have become created! O impalpable, You have become palpable!

“O happy fault! not by you, but by God’s mercy, you merited for us that the most hidden depth of divine charity should be shown to us, which was hidden from us. Truly one cannot think of greater charity. O infinite and transformed love, O love too ineffable! Blessed are You, Lord, who make me understand that You have become incarnate. Oh, how glorious it is to know and understand this, and that I may see and understand that You are born for me! This understanding certainly is full of all sweetness and delight. O wonderful God, how wonderful are those things that for us You have done! Make me worthy, O uncreated God, to know the depth of Your love and the abyss of Your most ardent charity, which You communicated to us when You showed us Your Jesus Christ in this Incarnation” (Bl. Angela of Foligno).

Allow me to say, O Lord, that my mind and my heart lose themselves before the abyss of Your charity! It is a mystery in which I lose myself without being able to see the bottom. Grant me, O Lord, to believe firmly, unshakably believe in Your excessive charity; grant that I too may say with full conviction: I have known and I have believed in God’s charity for me! And the stronger my conviction, the more totally I will entrust myself to Your charity, to Your infinite merciful love.

This immense charity, this ineffable mercy, through Your Incarnate Word, stoops indiscriminately over all men and women; it stoops also over me: Your love surrounds me, nourishes me, gives me life, carries me to You, my God! O Lord, may Your love invade my soul, or rather, grant me the grace to recognize and believe in that love which from the first instant of my existence surrounds and invades me.