Chapter II. The properties of the Man-God

Article I

The sdf-annikiiations of the Man-God.

The Word annihilated Himself.

It may be said that the Divinity in some wise annihilated itself in this mystery of the incarnation, by uniting itself personally to a nature drawn from nothingness.

We see in the Incarnate Word three kinds of self-annihilation.

The first, in that He made Himself man. It would seem as if He could not have descended lower, supposing He could unite Himself hypostatically only to the angelic nature or to human nature, because those being the only reasonable natures, they alone are capable of being united to a Divine Person. Had the Word taken the nature of the highest seraph, or of any possible creature, the most excellent that could be, He would still have infinitely abased Himself. What, then, was it to become man 1 The second, in that He made Himself the child and son of a daughter of Adam, the head of sinners. Who among men, having the use of reason, would consent to return to the state in which he was while his mother bore him in her womb ? The Son of God. might have created a body of a matured age, and united Himself thereto ; but He chose to remain nine months in the womb of His Mother.

The third, in that He divested His Body of the qualities of glorious bodies, and numberless admirable effects which would rightly have belonged to it in virtue of its union with the Person of the Word and its state of glory ; as brightness, subtlety, impassibility, immortality, and the exercise of the power inherent in it of performing continual miracles. Who amongst the blessed would consent to return to this mortal life? Jesus Christ did more ; He wrought a miracle to render His Body passible and mortal It seems as if He took it only that He might immolate it for us on the cross, and then leave it to us in the Holy Eucharist for the sanctification of our souls, which He operates by the application of His merits to us.

The holy Soul of the Incarnate Word, beholding this self-annihilation of the Divinity, desired on its part to annihilate itself as much as it could, and abased itself to the manger and the cross ; to an infant state ; to a life poor, laborious, obscure ; to persecutions and to death, rendering, in a manner, all these divine. We ought also to annihilate ourselves after His example.

Jesus Christ, by virtue of the hypostatic union, ought to have had a body exempt from the humiliations of infancy, and endowed with the advantages of a matured age, and the qualities of a state of glory. He deprived Himself of them for love of us; and what is it we do for the love of Him ?

We love Him only for our own interest. We seek to acquire devotion only for the satisfaction of our taste. We desire perfection only with a view to our own excellence ; just as every one seeks to excel in his profession, — ^a soldier in the use of arms, an artisan in his trade. There are very few souls that love and serve God purely, without reference to themselves. Our works are full of self-interest, and a multitude of deceits, by which we disguise ourselves from ourselves, and delude our own souls. Scarcely in the course of a whole year do we perform one single action from the pure love of God.

We must quit this wretched slavery to our own interests, and serve our Lord purely for the love of Him. Seeing that He has given Himself to us, for the sake of the glory of His Father, and the love which He bore us, we ought to give ourselves to Him purely for His love, and pay Him a disinterested service from the sole desire of pleasing Him.

Article II

The oMomces of the 8(icred Hv/ma/nity of Jesus Christ wiih the three Persons of the Holy Trinity.

In the mystery of the incarnation the sacred Humanity contracts admirable alliances with the three Persons of the Trinity.

1. With the Son : it is impossible to conceive a closer union than this. Nothing participates so truly in another as the Humanity participates in the Person of the Son, and as the Person of the Son reciprocally participates in the sacred Himianity. The connexion of soul and body, and the intercommunion that subsists between these two parts of man, is not so close. Human nature is as much the nature of the Word as my nature is mine, although the two natures, the divine and the human, remain always distinct.

2. With the Father : because this divine union of the Word and the sacred Humanity is the Son of God by nature ; and sonship is the first degree of relationship. The son is the heir of the father ; he has a right to every thing that the father possesses. Thus Jesus Christ, inasmuch as He is man, is heir of all the possessions of God. He is King. He is sovereign Judge. Our adorations are due to His Person, His Soul, His Body, and His Blood.

3. With the Holy Spirit : because this divine Spirit, proceeding from the Son as well as from the Father, bears as close a relation to the Son as the Son bears to the Father, although the relation is different. We may say that Jesus Christ is the principle of the Holy Spirit : and it is for this reason that the fulness of this divine Spirit was not given to the Church till after the coming of Jesus Christ into the world.

Article III

Of the three crotvns which Jesus Christ received from His holy Mother in His Inca/mation, " Go forth, ye daughters of Sion, and see King Solomon in the diadem wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the joy of his heart."

This day is that of the incarnation. On this day the holy Virgin gave three admirahle crowns to her Son.

The first is that of the life divinely human, which on this account is called theandric, and which consists in the union of the Divine Essence and the Person of the Word with human nature; because, according to St. John of Damascus and certain other doctors, the Blessed Virgin co-operated even actively with the Holy Spirit in the incarnation of the Word.

The second is that of the life of glory, which consists in the beatific vision, which the sacred Humanity of Jesus Christ began to enjoy from the first moment of His conception. For this life being a necessary consequence of the preceding, since the Son of God received the first from the Blessed Virgin, it cannot be denied that He received the second also, according to that maxim of philosophers, that "he who gives being is accounted as giving all that must follow being."

The third is that of the life of influence in His mystical members, by which He communicates to them grace, as their head ; and it is by the incarnation that He is made head of men and the source of all sanctity to them, having merited as many graces as God can create, and as much sanctity as there is in God, and together with this the power of communicating it.

Article IV

Of the royalty of Jeaua Christ, [The royalty of Jesus Christ is described in Psalm Ixxi.] 1. He is King by all sorts of titles ; by right of nature and of heritage ; by right of excellence and of merit ; by right of conquest ; by right of election.

Never was any one king in such wise. Seldom do the kings of the earth possess even one just title to reign.

2. He is King of the whole world and of all beings. His kingdom has no limits upon earth. It extends beneath the earthy to purgatory and hell, which are the prisons of justice j and above the earth, into heaven, which is the citadel of His empire and the theatre of His glory. The greatest monarchs of this world have but a portion of His earthly kingdom, whatever be the extent of their territories.

3. He is "the King of ages," the " immortal" King, whose kingdom shall never end. Other kings are niortal ; they reign only for a few years, then their power is lost in nothingness. But Jesus Christ reigns for ever and ever : regni ejus non erit finis, St. Theresa could not hear these words of the Nicene Creed without being ravished with joy ; and we should share the feelings of this great Saint, if we had the same love that she had for our Lord.

4. He is "the King of kings and the Lord of lords." " All the kings of the earth shall adore Him, and all nations shall serve Him." One day He shall see the pride of monarchs annihilated at His feet, and all nations, whether by love or by force, shall do homage to His glory.

5. He is the King of all hearts and of the interior life itself. Other kings have power only over the goods and the bodies of their subjects ; they cannot govern the interior save by the exterior. Their empire extends not over hearts. That domain God has reserved to Himself alone ; and He is so jealous of it that He will not have creatures divide it with Him. All our affections must be subjected to His laws, and to Him we owe the tribute of all the movements of our heart.

6. He never ceases from the actual exercise of His royalty. The kings of the earth cannot give an unceasing application to the government of their states. Their capacity is too limited, and their personal wants do not allow them to devote an uninterrupted attention to their subjects. But Jesus Christ, at every moment and throughout the whole universe, exercises all the functions of His royalty, and He will exercise them eternally both in heaven and in hell.

7. It is not from His subjects that He receives His riches and power, like other kings, who in themselves possess nothing beyond the rest of men. In themselves they are poor and weak ; and therefore it is that their subjects must pay tribute and take up arms to defend them and maintain their interests. But Jesus Christ has all His greatness, power, and riches from Himself, without our being able to add any thing thereto, except a little accidental glory.

8. His subjects are happy under His empire, because He is infinitely rich and infinitely bountiful, and the goods that He bestows are the only true and solid goods. The subjects of other kings are often miserable, and burdened with taxes and subsidies. If their princes are themselves poor, they cannot afford to be very liberal ; and however rich they may be, if they are liberal, their largesses exhaust their finances. After all, the goods they possess are but dust compared with those of Jesus Christ. His merits, His satisfactions, His graces, which are the riches of His royal treasure, are inexhaustible. He is so lavish of them, that He offers them unceasingly to all the world, more ready to give than we are to receive. "Come," says He, " and buy, without money and without price." These are the only goods, spiritual and eternal, which fully satisfy hearts, and the possession of which can make us perfectly happy.

9. What the kings of the earth give to some, they have taken away from others; and it is often with the spoils of the poor that they enrich their favourites. But what Jesus Christ gives to some does not diminish the share of others ; rather it augments it, and each of His subjects may profit by the abundance of his neighbour.

10. The favour of the kings of the earth is inconstant and of short duration. It is subject to a thousand casualties, and followed often with some sad disgrace or tragical catastrophe. But that of Jesus Christ is sure and as lasting as His kingdom, provided we do not render ourselves unworthy of it. Whoever is in favour with Him may, if he will, secure his good fortune for an eternity. His faithful subjects become so many kings ; and the greater their subjection to Him, the more are they exalted.

What tribute shall we pay to this sovereign monarch, who loads us with good things? Let us render Him the homage of a faithful heart, a heart pure and burning with charity, frill of zeal for His glory, and an ardent desire to sacrifice a thousand lives, if we had them, to His love and service.

Article V

Of the three principles of the actions of Jesus Christ The actions of Jesus Christ had three principles.

The first, the powers of His soul, enriched with all the frilness of grace, and the senses and members of His body, adorned with all qualities befitting the majesty of a Man-God. Thus His actions were free from all imperfection and infinitely holy, as proceeding from an infinite holiness, and consequently infinitely noble and infinitely precious.

The second is the Person of the Word, which rendered the actions of the sacred Humanity divine, in the same way as those of angels are angelical, and those of men human. Thus the actions of Jesus Christ are adorable on account of their principle and of the subject in which they reside, that is to say, a nature, as it were, deified. Whence we may judge what man is worth, and what he has cost God; that the price he has cost is infinite; and that his value is incalculable since his redemption by the Blood of a Man-God ; and that for the same reason we are under infinite obligation to Him.

For although the grace and glory Jesus Christ has merited for us are not infinite, yet the actions by which He has merited grace and glory for us are infinite. It is as if a person who was infinitely rich had given all his riches to redeem a captive ; the latter would be under an infinite obligation to him, though the liberty he had restored him was not an infinite good.

The third is the Holy Spirit, who governed the whole order and economy of the actions of Jesus Christ in general, and each action in particular. It was by this principle that the sacred Humanity wrought the same things that it saw wrought by the Divinity. The same effects of mercy, for example, justice, sweetness, severity, love, and hatred ; so that it was, as it were, the seal of the Divinity, whereon the features of its original are stamped, so far as the Humanity was capable thereof. This was done by the direction of the Holy Spirit, who wished to trace out for us in the life and actions of Jesus Christ a way to conduct us safely to the glory and sovereign bliss of eternity.

Our Lord having been conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, willed to be guided in all His actions^ not only by the Person of the Word, but also by that of the Holy Spirit, in order to teach us that, as this Divine Spirit is the principle of our spiritual regeneration in baptism. He must also be the principle of our conduct; that He must govern us in all things, and that we must depend absolutely on His direction, since the members must be animated with the same spirit as the head.

It is not, then, from the senses, the passions, or from the mere reason, that we must take our direction, but solely from the Holy Spirit. Let us consider whether we allow ourselves to be governed by Him, and whether it is not the spirit of the flesh or of the world that governs us. If it be the Holy Spirit, we shall rejoice in the liberty of the children of God. If it be another spirit, we shall be the very slaves of that spirit, following its movements and its directions.