Chapter VIII. How greatly the mystery of the Incarnation serves to advance us in the way of perfection

The incarnation of the Son of God conduces to our perfection, first, by removing the hindrances thereto; secondly, by providing us with more powerful and more abundant means to arrive thereat.

The hindrances to perfection are the various attachments we have to creatures. For our perfection consists in our union with God, which also constitutes our beatitude. Now what leads us to attach ourselves to creatures, instead of tending to God, in order to unite ourselves to Him, is, that we do not suflBciently understand either the dignity of our nature or the infinite good we might acquire by uniting ourselves to God; but the incarnation frees us from this error, teaching us both the value God sets upon us and the price we cost Him, as also the happiness to be attained by union with Him, and the ease with which we might arrive at the enjoyment of that happiness.

The means we possess to this end are the virtues. Now in the incarnation we find new attractions to excite us to the love and practice of the moral virtues ; for ever since a God made man has practised them, they are endued with an excellence and a beauty quite different from what they had before. They are, as it were, deified in the Person of Jesus Christ ; besides which, He has taught us many which were unknown, or very little known, before — as humility, poverty, the love of enemies. A Man-God is the model of virtues, the most noble, the most perfect, the most attractive that can be proposed to the imitation of men.

With regard to the theological, virtues, which, by uniting us to God, begin, as it were, our beatitude even in this life, the incarnation marvellously facilitates the practice of them. In the first place, faith ; seeing that God, who aforetime spoke only by the prophets, has come in His own Person to teach the truths we are to believe. Secondly, hope ; since God, having given to us His Son, and that too after such a manner, can no longer refuse us any thing. Thirdly, dbarity; su Qod, having prevented us by that excess of love wlii He exhibits towards us in the incarnation, even making Himself like unto us and becoming our broib demands our love by every kind of title, and we on c part are under every conceivable obligation to k Him.