The Advent season begins this Sunday, and to live it well and prepare for Christmas, we present some thoughts from St. Francis de Sales on the Incarnation from his sermons.
Week 1
Sunday: ” Scribes and Pharisees declared that they were awaiting the promised Messiah, the Desired of the Nations and Him whom Jacob called ” the Desire of the Eternal Hills”. Some ancient Fathers explain these words by saying that they describe the desire of the angels for the Incarnation; others hold that we should understand by them the desire that God had from all eternity to unite our human nature with the divine, a desire that He communicated to both angels and men, though in different ways.”(Dec 13, 1620)
Monday
“Patriarchs and Prophets longed ardently for Him and by this longing raised to heaven they petitioned for the Incarnation of the Son of God.” (Dec. 13, 1620)
Tuesday
“Solomon in the Canticle of Canticles expresses this longing in the words of the spouse “ Let Him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth. What does this kiss signify but hypostatic union of the human nature with the divine?”(Dec. 13, 1620)
Wednesday
“In the Incarnation He has made us see that which otherwise the human mind could hardly have imagined or understood, that is, that God was man and man God: the immortal, mortal, the one incapable of suffering, suffering.” (Dec 24, 1620)
Thursday
Manna is a figure of the Incarnation of the Word.It also prefigured the Eucharist. In the Incarnation we see the incarnate God in His own Person, and in the Eucharist we see Him under a more hidden and obscure form.”(Dec 24, 1620)
Friday
The Incarnation was the work of the most Holy Trinity. (Dec 24, 1620)
Saturday
The Incarnation is the miracle of miracles (Jan 1621)