Sermons 139–143

[On forgiving a brother's offense.] As gold lies hidden in the earth, so divine meaning is concealed in human words; and so, as often as the Lord's sayings are opened to us, let the mind be awake and the soul attentive, so that understanding may enter the secret of heavenly knowledge. Let us hear why the Lord began as he did today. “Take heed to yourselves,” he says (Luke 17). What does this new way of speaking mean? Where does this unusual warning tend? “Take heed to yourselves,” he says. He takes heed to himself who does not, importunate, shameless and curious, turn his attention to others' actions. “Take heed to yourselves,” he says. The roving eye, the lustful look, the shameless glance does not look at its own ruin, but runs and runs down to others' falls; blind to its own crimes, it sees clearly the errors of others; ignorant of its own evils, it is accuser and witness of others'; lukewarm toward its own guilt, it flames and blazes in examining another, even an innocent one. In short, as the Lord said: the eye that does not see the beam in itself sees the speck in another (Matt 7). Is not the eye the author of transgression? “And the woman saw,” it says, “that the tree was good to eat and pleasing to the eyes to look at” (Gen 3). The door of death, the torch of envy, the furnace of spite runs through others' affairs with the whole blaze of desire more swiftly than fire runs through dry and earthy grass. It is God's doing that the eye, opened so wide toward the world, is narrowed into a tiny pupil, so that it may see what it sees with moderation, not envy; foresee, not snatch; look forward, not look down; let the eye be the window of the soul, the mirror of the mind, the light of the body, the guide of the members, not the entrance of vices. But let us return to what was said first. “Take heed to yourselves,” he says. He said “yourselves,” not “yourself,” because whatever a man notes in another he notes for himself; and as much as he sees in another, another will see in him, as is clear from what follows: “If your brother sins against you,” he says, “rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him.” Come, man, at God's command forgive, forgive sins: be merciful to offenses, be the remitter of sins committed against you; only do not lose in yourself the insignia of divine power; whatever you do not remit in another, you will deny to yourself in another. “If your brother sins against you,” he says, “rebuke him.” Rebuke as judge, forgive as brother, for love joined to freedom of speech and freedom mixed with love both checks terror and raises up the brother. A brother is in a fever when he wounds; he is in a frenzy against his neighbor when he offends; he is not himself, he is a stranger to humanity. Whoever does not help such a one by compassion, does not cure him by patience, does not heal him by pardon, is not healthy; he is sick, infirm, he has no heart, and he shows himself a stranger to human feeling. Your brother rages: ascribe it to sickness, help him as a brother; ascribe what is done to fever, and you will not be able to charge the offense to your brother; you will wisely lay the fault on the illness and give the brother pardon, so that his health may come back to your glory, his pardon overflow to your reward. “If your brother sins against you,” he says, “rebuke him; if he repents, forgive him.” Let no one, hearing this, take the role of censor to himself while excusing himself, and with empty presumption put on a character against the offending brother, and so think it hard to forgive offenses. Let a man consider that he is a sinner, that he will sin: and then he begins to love pardon, not to love vengeance. You hear that you ought to forgive, and you do not hear that you ought to be forgiven? You will sin against him tomorrow who sinned against you today; and he will be your judge who was before your offender, and he will give you pardon if you gave it; if you did not, he will either deny pardon or, if he gives it, he will reproach you more than he grants. Forgive the sinner, forgive the penitent, so that when you have sinned pardon may be repaid you, not merely given. Pardon is always good, but sweetest when it is owed. He has conquered punishment, forestalled the judge, escaped judgment, who by forgiving has provided pardon for himself before he offends. “And if he sins against you seven times in a day,” he says, “and turns back to you seven times in a day, saying, I repent, you shall forgive him.” Why does he bind pardon by law, narrow it by number, enclose it with a limit, when he so urges it through mercy and relaxes it through grace? If seven times, what if eight? Does number conquer grace? Does a calculation stand against goodness? Does one fault hand over to punishment one whom seven offenses have already given pardon? Far from it. For as happy is the one who forgave seven times, so happier is the one who forgave seventy times seven. Peter, not remembering this command, asks the Lord, saying: “If my brother sins against me, how often shall I forgive him? Seven times?” (Matt 18). The Lord answered: “Not only seven times, but seventy times seven.” The prescribed number, then, does not narrow pardon but widens it; and what it limits by precept it leaves without limit to free choice, so that if you forgive as much as he commanded, it counts as obedience, as reward. But the number seven, which seems a small number, is found most ample in mystery: for the number seven, going through the days, makes the sabbath, which the Lord blessed and appointed for rest both from his work and from human labor. The number seven running through weeks of days so multiplies weeks by seven that it brings to completion for us Pentecost, fulfilled in the solemnity of its mystery, and then pours out with a heavenly sound the whole shower of the Holy Spirit on the Church's harvest. The number seven, when it hastens through months, consecrates for us the feasts of the seventh month with the whole holiness of fasting (Lev 23). The number seven, when it goes through years, makes weeks of years, makes the year that gives rest to the land and looses all the bonds of a brother's obligation (Deut 15). The number seven, when it goes round weeks of years, brings the fiftieth year, which is called the jubilee, to the whole fullness of pardon and remission (Lev 25), so that slavery may be taken away and freedom return; so that the records and memorials of bonds may be torn up; the debtor may rise again and the debt be buried; the poor man's field may return and the whole contract made by the rich man's greed may perish. And if the number seven, multiplied by seven through days, months and years, brought all this remission and pardon, let the Christian hearer consider and notice what the number seven, multiplied seventy times seven, can bring. Then truly will the contract of loan and debt cease, then truly will the whole condition of slavery be abolished, then that, that freedom without end will come, then the eternal field will return to live forever. True remission will come, it will come, when even the very necessity of sinning is abolished, when, impurity perishing, the world will truly be called clean, when, life returning, there will be no death, when, Christ reigning, the devil will perish. Pray, brothers, that the Lord may increase our faith, so that we may be able to believe, see and hold these good things.

[On the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.] Let the gaze of our eyes now be pure enough to look upon the brightness of the divine birth: for if the full health and clarity of our eyes can scarcely bear the radiance of the rising sun, how great a purity of inner sight must be prepared to bear the splendor of its Author as he rises and shines? “In the sixth month,” it says, “the angel Gabriel was sent to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph” (Luke 1). The holy evangelist marks the place, the time, the person, so that the truth of the account may be proved by clear evidence of the facts themselves. “The angel was sent,” it says, “to a virgin betrothed.” God sends a winged bearer to the Virgin: for he who brings grace gives the pledge and receives the dowry; he who soon releases the pledge of the Virgin's consent carries back her troth and hands over the gifts of virtue. The swift messenger flies to the bride, to keep and hold back from God's bride the affection of a human betrothal, not to take the Virgin from Joseph but to give her back to Christ, to whom she was pledged in the womb when she was being formed. So Christ receives his own bride; he does not snatch another's; nor does he make a separation when he joins to himself his whole creature in one body. But let us hear what the angel did. “Coming in to her, he says: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” In this word there is an offering, the offering of a gift, not the simple courtesy of a greeting. “Hail”: that is, receive grace. Do not tremble, do not be anxious about nature. “Full of grace”: because in others there is grace, but in you the whole fullness of grace will come together. “The Lord is with you.” Why is the Lord with you? Because he comes to you not with the purpose of visiting you, but enters into you by a new mystery of being born. He fittingly added: “Blessed are you among women.” Because in that same womb where cursed Eve was punished, blessed Mary now rejoices, is honored, is looked up to. And she who by nature had become the mother of the dying has now become truly by grace the mother of the living. “When she heard this, she was troubled at his word.” Why is it that she sees the person and is troubled at the word? Because the angel had come gentle in appearance, strong in war, mild in bearing, terrible in speech, uttering human things, promising divine. Hence the hearing greatly troubled the Virgin whom the sight had slightly stirred; and the authority of the one who sent him shook her with its whole weight, whom the presence of the one sent had moved little. What more? At once she felt that the Judge above was being received within her, where she had first seen and contemplated the heavenly one who prepares his lodging. For although God by a gentle movement and holy affection was turning the Virgin into his mother, the Lord turning the handmaid into his parent, yet her inmost parts were troubled, her mind shrank back, her very condition trembled, when God, whom all creation cannot hold, received and placed himself wholly within a human breast. “And the Virgin,” it says, “was considering what this greeting might be.” Let your charity notice, as we said, that the Virgin assented to a greeting not of words but of realities, and that the voice was not one of common courtesy but was the whole force of power from above. So the Virgin considers, because to answer quickly belongs to human levity, but to consider belongs to the greatest weight and most mature judgment. He knows too little how great God is who is not amazed at this Virgin's mind and does not marvel at her soul: heaven trembles, angels quake, creation cannot bear it, nature does not suffice, and one girl so takes God into her breast, receives him, delights him with hospitality, that as rent for the house itself and as payment for her very womb she obtains peace for the earth, glory for heaven, salvation for the lost, life for the dead, kinship of earthly with heavenly beings, the commerce of God himself with flesh, and fulfils the prophet's word: “Behold, the inheritance of the Lord is sons, the reward the fruit of the womb” (Ps 127:3 [LXX 126:3]). But let the sermon now close, so that, God granting and time allowing, we may speak more pleasingly of the Virgin's childbirth. [Sermon 141. On the Incarnation of Christ.] How secret is the king's chamber, with what reverence and trembling is the place regarded where the ruler's very power rests; how access to it is open and permitted to no stranger, to no unclean person, to no faithless one; how clean, how chaste, how faithful are the services that wait there: this is taught by the manifest insignia of the imperial court. What base person, what unworthy person comes near the very doors of the palace? Certainly no one is admitted to the bridegroom's bedchamber unless he is very near, very intimate, of good conscience, of praiseworthy reputation, of approved life. But within the bedchamber itself God takes the Virgin alone; untouched virginity alone is received. Hence, O man, warned by these examples, weigh who you are, how great you are, what sort you are, and only then consider whether you can penetrate the secret of the Lord's birth, whether you deserve to come to the chamber of that breast where the whole majesty of the King above, of the Godhead, rests; whether you ought, as a rash examiner, to look into the Virgin's conception with human eyes and bodily senses; whether you can, as a bold and curious arbiter, look on the very hands of God working within the mother's womb the holy temple of his body, lay bare to your gaze the mystery hidden for ages, reveal to yourself the mystery invisible to the angels themselves; and so preside over the heavenly building as to grasp clearly how God entered the inner chamber of closed flesh, how in that venerable womb he painted the features of the holy body without the Virgin's knowledge, how without the awareness of the one conceiving he made firm bones that would last for ages; how, beyond the order of man, he produced the true form of a man; how, beyond the concern of the flesh, he assumed the whole reality of flesh; by what reason, beyond the nature of our flesh, he took up its whole quality? And if free access to these things is not open to you, could God not now take from flesh what in the beginning he took from mud? Rather, since everything is possible to God, and it is not possible for you to attain even the least of God's works, do not examine the Virgin's conception, but believe it; think reverently that God willed to be born, for you do an injury if you inquire; receive by faith the great mystery of the Lord's birth, for without faith you will not be able to attain even the least of God's works, as Scripture says: “All his works are in faith” (Ps 33:4 [LXX 32:4]). But here you want everything to rest on reason, where everything rests on faith; which nevertheless does not stand without reason, but by God's reason, not yours, O man. What is so reasonable as that God can do whatever he wills? He who cannot do what he wills is not God. So what God commands, the angel carries out, the Spirit fulfils, power accomplishes, the Virgin believes, nature receives, the heavens tell, the firmament announces, the stars show, the magi proclaim, the shepherds worship, the beasts recognize, as the prophet attests: “The ox knows its owner, and the ass its Lord's manger” (Isa 1). You, man, if you do not recognize him at once with the angels, recognize him at least very late with the beasts, lest while you delay you be placed after the very beasts to which you were once compared. See, the beasts fawn with their tails, wag their ears, lick with their tongues, and with what movement they can confess that their Maker has come, against nature, into your nature; and you, with the Jews, examine and carp, they who shut out from their lodgings their Lord whom the beasts received in their mangers. So if at last you will give a devout hearing at least to angels, accept, if not happily then at least worthily, what is to be said by the angel: which a sermon necessary enough for you compels us, holy brothers, to put off today and relate in the next sermon.

[On the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.] You have heard today, dearest brothers, an angel dealing with a woman about the restoration of man. You have heard it arranged that man should return to life by the same courses by which he had slipped into death. The angel deals, he deals with Mary about salvation, because an angel had dealt with Eve about ruin. You have heard an angel building with unspeakable art, out of the clay of our flesh, a temple for the divine majesty. You have heard God placed on earth and man in heaven by an incomprehensible mystery. You have heard God and man mingled in one body in an unheard-of way. You have heard the frail nature of our flesh strengthened by the angel's encouragement to bear the whole glory of the Godhead. Finally, so that the fine sand of our body might not give way under so great a weight of the heavenly building in Mary, and the slender rod in the Virgin that was to bear the fruit of the whole human race might not break, the angel's voice at once went before to put fear to flight, saying: “Do not fear, Mary” (Luke 1). Before the cause, the Virgin's dignity is announced by her name: for Mary in the Hebrew language is called in Latin “lady”; the angel therefore calls her lady, so that the trembling of servitude may leave the mother of the Lord, whom the very authority of her offspring caused and obtained to be born and to be called lady. “Do not fear, Mary, for you have found grace.” It is true: whoever has found grace does not know how to fear. “You have found grace.” With whom? With God. Blessed is she who alone among men deserved to hear this above all. “You have found grace.” How much? As much as he had said above: full. And truly full, since it was to pour on and into the whole creation in a plentiful shower. “For you have found grace with God.” When he says this, the angel himself marvels either that a woman alone, or that all men through a woman, have deserved life: the angel is astonished that the whole God comes within the narrow limits of a virgin's womb, God to whom the whole creation together is narrow. Hence the angel lingers, hence he calls the Virgin by her merit, addresses her by grace, scarcely reveals the cause to her as she listens, so as to bring her understanding forward, and settles her only after long trembling. Consider, brothers, with what reverence, with what trembling it befits and suits us to take part in so great a mystery, when the angel himself dispels the hearer's fear not without fear. “Behold, you will conceive in the womb.” Well may you conceive what the flesh does not know, what our condition does not have, what nature does not admit. “Behold, you will conceive in the womb.” Who comes to the fruit before feeling the labor and sweat of the earth? Who picks fruit before giving and spending his work on the plants? Who comes to the last lodging without the road? Who receives the growth of his nature beyond nature? Blessed, then, and truly blessed is Mary, who, without the cares of begetting, without the burdens of a mother's pain, came to such great glory of offspring. Blessed is she whom the divine pledge so received and kept in its breast that the whole outward body knew nothing of it. Blessed is she who so entrusted and confided to her mind alone what she had received from above at the angel's word. Within the Virgin's house the heavenly business is so carried on that, its bars remaining, the enclosed house itself does not feel it. “You will conceive and bear a son.” He who comes in and goes out and leaves no trace of his entrance or exit is a divine dweller, not a human one; and he who keeps the virgin a virgin in his conception and leaves her a virgin at his birth is not an earthly man but a heavenly one. So let the order of our flesh withdraw; let our nature claim nothing for itself here, where the heavenly order establishes a divine nature for a divine offspring. Let the word “conception” and “childbirth” not weary the hearer's mind nor lightly disturb a Christian's understanding, where the divine insignia of God's power are carried out for a heavenly offspring. “You will conceive and bear a son.” He did not say “for you”; he said “your.” Why? Because “the holy one will be called the Son of God.” Virgin, grace made you a mother, not nature; kindness willed you to be called a parent, which integrity did not allow; in your conception, in your childbirth, modesty grew, chastity increased, integrity was strengthened, virginity was made firm, all the virtues remained. Virgin, if all things are safe for you, what have you given? If a virgin, how a mother? If a bride, how a parent? He by whom all things were increased for you has diminished nothing, O Virgin. Virgin, your Maker is conceived from you, your origin rises from you, your begetter is in your offspring, your God is in your flesh; and he who gave light to the world received the light of the world through you. Warned, then, by the angel, O Virgin, do not presume to call him your son, but as soon as you have given birth, call on him as Savior: for virginity does not bear a son for itself, but bears the pledge of its Maker; and integrity carries its Lord, not its nursling, as the angel says: “And you shall call his name Jesus,” which in the Latin word is called Savior. “And Mary said to the angel: How will this be?” See, Mary asks a question: and if one who asks doubts, why does Zechariah alone incur punishment as a querulous questioner? Because the knower of hearts saw not the words but the hearts; he judged not what they said but what they thought; for the cause of the two questioners was unlike and their manner quite different. She believed against nature; he doubts on account of nature; she asks the order of a thing she believes complete, he writes down that what God commands cannot happen; he, though examples urged him on, does not come to faith; she, without an example, runs to faith; she marvels at a virgin's childbirth, he disputes about a married conception. Rightly, then, she speaks; she recognizes and confesses God in her body; he is silent until, convicted, he gave back from his own body John, whom he was denying. “How will this be?” Why? “Because I do not know a man.” Woman, what man do you seek? The one you lost in paradise? Give back the man, woman, give back God's deposit, give back from yourself the one you lost through yourself: pass over the order of nature, recognize the order of the Creator. He will take a man from you and make him, who in the beginning made you, taking you from a man; do not seek a man, let the work of man cease, for divine art suffices for the restoration of man. Hence God himself comes to you, because you repented of having come to a man. No longer flesh to flesh, but “the Holy Spirit will come upon you.” Because “what is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3). He who is born of the Spirit, then, is beyond dispute God, because the Spirit is God. “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” The power of God overshadows, lest human frailty give way as it is about to bear God. “And the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” She whom the shade of divine power protects does not know the heat of our body; nor does she seek the secrecy of a worldly dwelling, who sees herself enclosed by the veil of heavenly splendor. “Therefore the holy one who will be born of you will be called the Son of God.” Let no one here take “holy” in a common sense, but in that singularity in which it is proclaimed in heaven: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts” (Isa 6). Mary is sent to Elizabeth, a virgin to a barren woman, a young girl to an old woman, so that in a holy contest both might take and receive alike, the one faith from the novelty, the other strength from the necessity. Having heard this, Mary answered: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.” She who is called lady by the angel recognizes and confesses herself a handmaid. For a devout mind grows toward service by the insignia of benefits: it increases toward gratitude; it does not leap up to arrogance nor swell to pride. “Let it be done to me according to your word.” She who believes the word rightly conceives the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1); and she came to the whole reality who consented to the secret of faith by hearing. How greatly the heretic sins, who does not believe after the event, when he sees that she believed so much before the event!

[On the same.] A Christmas sermon is indeed owed to you, but it is more fitting to believe than to relate the unspeakable mystery of the Lord's Nativity. A virgin has given birth. What nature does not have, experience does not know, reason is ignorant of, the mind does not grasp, heaven fears, earth is astonished at, creation marvels at, how will human speech tell it? So the evangelist, as he opens the Virgin's conception and the Virgin's childbirth in human speech, closes it in divine secrecy; and he does this so that man may not presume to examine what he has been commanded to believe. Who reaches the secret of God, the Virgin's childbirth, the causes of things, the business of the ages, the commerce of Godhead and flesh, man and God one God? The evangelist says this: “The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, and the virgin's name was Mary” (Luke 1). “The angel was sent from God”: where an angel is the mediator, let human opinion cease; where the messenger is from heaven, let earthly interpretation be driven out. Let human curiosity grow numb where there is an interpreter from above. “The angel was sent from God.” Whoever hears attentively that he was sent from God shrinks from searching into the secret of the Godhead. What God commands through an angel, he deserves to know who fears to know. Hear the Lord saying: “On whom shall I look but on the humble and meek and the one who trembles at my words?” (Isa 66, following the LXX). Humble and meek: as meek as he is who obeys commands, so unmeek is he who examines commands. “The angel was sent to a virgin.” Because virginity is always akin to the angels. To live in the flesh beyond the flesh is not an earthly life but a heavenly one. And if you want to know, to acquire angelic glory is greater than to have it; to be an angel belongs to good fortune, to be a virgin to virtue; for virginity obtains by strength what the angel has by nature. The angel and the virgin, then, perform a divine office, not a human one. “The angel,” it says, “came in to her and said: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you, blessed are you among women.” “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you”: you see with what gifts the virgin was pledged. “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” “Hail,” that is, receive. What? The powers of gifts, not of shame. “Hail, full of grace.” This is the grace that gave glory to the heavens, God to the earth, faith to the nations, an end to vices, order to life, discipline to morals. This grace the angel brought; the Virgin received it, to give back salvation to the ages. “Hail, full of grace.” Because to each one grace has given itself in parts, but to Mary the fullness of grace gave itself whole at once. “We have all,” says the evangelist, “received from his fullness” (John 1). Hence David too says: “He will come down like rain upon the fleece” (Ps 72:6 [LXX 71:6]). The fleece, though it comes from a body, does not know the passions of the body; so virginity, though it is in the flesh, does not know the vices of the flesh. The heavenly shower, then, poured itself with a gentle fall into the virginal fleece, and the whole flood of the Godhead hid itself in the absorbing fleece of our flesh, until, wrung out through the gibbet of the cross, it poured forth on all lands as a rain of salvation. “And like drops falling on the earth” (ibid.): so that, divided into life-giving drops, it might water the seeds of faith in their seasons, not kill them. “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.” The angel was sent from God, and what does he say? “The Lord is with you.” So he who had sent to the Virgin was with the Virgin. God went before his messenger, but did not depart from God: he cannot be held by places who is found in all places; and he is whole everywhere, without whom the whole is nothing. “Blessed are you among women.” Truly blessed is the virgin, who both possesses the honor of virginity and has borne the dignity of a mother. Truly blessed, who both deserved the grace of a heavenly conception and carried off the crown of integrity. Truly blessed, who both received the glory of divine offspring and became queen of all chastity. Truly blessed, who was greater than heaven, stronger than the earth, wider than the world; for she alone held God, whom the world does not hold. She carried him who carries the world, gave birth to her begetter, nourished the nourisher of all living things. But let us see what the evangelist says: “Mary,” it says, “when she heard the angel, was troubled at his word.” The flesh was troubled, the inmost parts shaken, the mind trembled, the whole depth of the heart was astonished: because at the angel's entrance the virgin felt the entrance of the Godhead. The temple of the human body was troubled, and the narrow limits of the fleshly dwelling were moved, when the whole greatness of God hid itself in the virginal breast. But, if you please, before we enter the secret of Christian faith, let us speak to those who regard the Virgin's childbirth, the great mystery of godliness, the restoration of human salvation, as an injury to the Godhead. God comes to a virgin, that is, the craftsman to his work, the Creator to his creature. When does the restoration of a work not redound to the honor of the craftsman? When is it not counted as glory if the maker repairs what he made? So as not to lose his work, does a man not recall it when it grows old, raise it when it falls, and reshape it for the better when it is destroyed? Therefore what is done in the Virgin's childbirth is not an injury to the Creator but the salvation of the creature. If God made man, who blames him for remaking him? And if it is worthily believed that he formed him from mud, why is it judged unworthy that he reformed him from flesh? Which is more precious, flesh or mud? So the more precious the material of our restoration, the greater the glory. Or when is God not the fashioner of man in the womb? Hear Job: “Your hands made me and fashioned me.” And afterward: “You curdled me like cheese; you knit me together with bones and sinews; you gave me life and mercy” (Job 10). And David: “You formed me, and laid your hand upon me” (Ps 139:5 [LXX 138:5]). And God to Jeremiah: “Before you were in the womb I knew you, and in the womb I sanctified you” (Jer 1). If, then, he drew Job's features in his parent's belly, if he joined David's limbs in his mother's womb, if he sanctified Jeremiah in his mother's womb, if he filled John with the Holy Spirit in the womb of a barren woman, what wonder now if he dwelt in a virgin's womb, who took woman from the side of man? He who formed the virgin from the body of a man took man back from the womb of a woman; and so, O man, what seem new to you are old to God. But you say: “What need of being born had God, to whom the power of making was enough?” What need? That by being born he might remake the very nature he had made by working: for nature, which had been made to beget for life, was begetting for death. Through the sin of the first man nature received a deadly wound and began to be the origin of death, which had been the beginning of life. This, then, was the business of the nativity that compelled Christ to be born: that the Maker's nativity might give nature its cure, and the cure of nature might be the giving of life to its children.