My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
+
God Made Man
We chant: "He Who is equal in Honor with the Father and Spirit, out of compassion, has clothed Himself in our substance...and He Who before the morning star was begotten without mother of the Father, is today without father made flesh upon earth of thee" (Vespers Sticheron of Forefeast, Mode Four). Saint Paul confirms His manhood, saying, "But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order that might redeem those under the law, that we might receive what is our due, the adoption as sons" (Galatians 4:4).
Saint Athanasius comments, "Therefore what came forth from Mary, according to the divine Scripture, was human, and the Lord's body was real; real, I say, since it was the same as ours. For Mary is our sister, in that we are all sprung from Adam" (Saint Athanasius). The two natures would be united without confusion or loss of identity as God or man. The humanity of Jesus was the same as sour own; and, according to His divinity, He was of one essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Saint Kyril of Alexandria writes that "an ordinary man was not born of the Holy Virgin and then the Logos/Word descended into Him. United with flesh in her womb, the Logos/Word is said to have endured birth according to the flesh, so as to claim, as His own, the birth of His own flesh...For our sake and for our salvation, He united a human nature to Himself by hypostatically and was born from a woman; in this manner, He is said to have born according to the flesh...We do not hesitate to call the Holy Virgin the Mother of God. The holy Fathers do not say that the nature of the Logos/Word or His Divinity took the beginning of being from the Holy Virgin, but that His Holy Body, animated by a rational soul, was born of her...Thus, the Logos' being made flesh is nothing else than that He partook of flesh and blood in like manner with us, and made our body His Own, and was born Man from a woman, without having cast away His Divinity...This is what the expression of the exact Faith everywhere preaches; this is the mind we shall find in the Holy Fathers."
Saint Kyril goes on to say that "neither was the flesh turned into the nature of Divinity, nor, indeed, was the ineffable nature of the Logos/Word of God altered into the nature of the flesh; for He is immutable and absolutely unchangeable, always the same, according to the Holy Scripture. But when He was visible, and still remained an Infant in swaddling clothes, and in the bosom of the Virgin who bore Him, He filled the whole of creation as god and was Co-Ruler with the One Who begot Him. For the Divine is both without quantity and without magnitude, and does not admit of limitation." And in the same letter, he points out that Christ "was born in order that He might bless the very beginning of our existence, and in order that the curse against the whole race might be stopped. This curse was sending our bodies from the earth to death; and by abolishing it, He abolished the saying, "in pain thou shalt bring forth children" (Genesis 3:17).
Patriarch Germanos of Constantinople chants: "No more shall women bear children in sorrow: for joy has put forth its flower, and the Life of men has come to dwell in the world." Saint Joseph the Hymnographer writes: "Eve hath been delivered from pain, O All-Immaculate One; for thou gavest birth without pain unto Christ Our God Who hath manifestly healed the sufferings and pain of all." Before the coming of Christ, women would bear children in sorrow with the knowledge that their offspring would be subject to sin, death, and Hades. Although the physical discomfort of pregnancy and labor still exists to the present day, yet the hymnographers speak of deliverance from the grief of death and sin to the offspring of those mothers who would be regenerated in Christ through Baptism.
Saint Ephraim then speaks of what Mary gained by carrying in her womb the Christ Child, "The Son of the Most High came and dwelt in me, and I became His Mother, and as by a second birth I brought Him forth, so did He bring me forth by the second birth, because He put His Mother's garments on, she clothed her body with His glory."
In the classic passage of Saint John of Damascus, he writes: "Hence it is with justice and truth that we call the Holy Mary the Theotokos, God's birth giver. For this name embraces the whole mystery of the dispensation...moreover, we proclaim the Holy Virgin to be in strict truth the Theotokos. For inasmuch as He Who was born of her was True God, she who bore the True God Incarnate is the True Mother of God." Saint Kyril of Jerusalem also comments that "He did not pass through the Virgin as through a channel but was truly made flesh from her, and truly was nourished with her milk."
In his sermon on the Feast of the Nativity, Saint Leo the Great (+ 461 A.D.) writes: "The bodily nativity therefore of the Son of God took nothing from and added nothing to His Majesty because His unchangeable substance could be neither diminished nor increased. For that "the Logos/Word became flesh does not signify that the nature of God was changed into flesh, but that the Logos/Word took flesh into the unity of His Person (hypostasis): and therein undoubtedly the whole man was received with which within the Virgin's womb was made fruitful by the Holy Spirit; her virginity was foreordained never to be lost. Thus, the Son of God...Who was born without time of the Father's essence was Himself in time born of the Virgin's womb. We could not otherwise be released from the chains of everlasting death but by Him becoming humble in our nature. Thus, Our Lord Jesus Christ, being at birth True Man, though He never ceased to be True God, made in Himself the beginning of a new creation, and in the 'form' of His birth started the spiritual life of mankind afresh. (Source: The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church)
(To be continued)
______________________
"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" - Saint John Chrysostomos
+++
With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George