The Wisdom of the Saints……………………….about the Incarnation (part 4)

“The Lord entered [Mary] to become a servant. The Word came into her to keep silence in her womb. The thunder came into her to make no sound whatever. The shepherd came into her and see, the Lamb is born, crying quietly.” St. Ephraim the Syrian (4^th century, Doctor of the Church)

“Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again, for your sake Christ has become man. If He had not been born in time, you would have been dead for all eternity.” St. Augustine of Hippo (4^th-5^th century, Doctor of the Church)

“The omnipotent God engaged in combat with His most bitter enemy, not in the strength of His own majesty, but in our human frailty.” Pope St. Leo the Great (4^th-5^th centuries, Doctor of the Church)

“Who could fail to be dumbstruck by such a miracle? Who could fail to be speechless? A young girl gives birth to her Creator and the Creator of all; a young girl carries Him Who rules her and everyone! What a marvelous sight! Not only human nature but even the nature of the angels is left astounded! St. Ambrose Autpert (8^th century)

“So indeed it was that the One Who surpassed all in majesty, chose to conquer through humility: superior to the angels, He chose to be made inferior to them in their service.” St. Bernard of Clairvaux (11^th-12^th centuries, Doctor of the Church)

“The divine Majesty became small, in order that it might join itself to our earthly nature; and that God and clay, majesty and weakness, the most extreme abasement and the highest grandeur, might be united in one person.” St. Bernard of Clairvaux

“When nine months had passed since His conception, the King of Peace, like a bridegroom from His bridal chamber, came forth from the virginal womb.” St. Bonaventure (13^th century, Doctor of the Church)

“This emptying of Himself, by which the Invisible made Himself Visible, and the Creator and Lord of all things chose to become one of us mortal creatures, was a stooping of His mercy, not a failing of His power.” St. Thomas Aquinas (13^th century, Doctor of the Church)

“He is a little one, that you might be a perfect man; He is bound in swaddling clothes, that you might be unbound from the fetters of death; He is on earth, that you might be in heaven.” St. Alphonsus Liguori (17^th-18^th centuries, Doctor of the Church)

“Why, then, did the Son of God come upon earth? Was it to give Himself to us? Yes, Isaiah assures us of it: A Child is born to us, and a Son is given to us. The love which this loving Saviour bears us, and the desire which He has to be loved by us, has induced Him to do this. Being His own, He has become ours.” St. Alphonsus Liguouri

“The abyss between God and His humiliated and suffering creatures was bridged when He Who is called ‘the author of all peace’ appeared on earth.” Servant of God Elisabeth Leseur (19^th-20^th centuries)

“God became man, so that men might become children of God.” St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (19th-20th centuries)

“I remember years ago Einstein wrote an article on adoring the cosmos as God. This struck me as rather naive. I answered it saying that man could never love anything he could not get his arms around, and the cosmos is too big, too bulky. That is why the immense God became a Child that we might encircle Him in our arms and that as the Wounded Warrior we might lay Him on our laps to turn the wounds into scars.” Ven Fulton Sheen (19^th-20^th centuries)

“One night there went out over the stillness of an evening breeze, out over the white chalk hills of Bethlehem, a cry, a gentle cry. The sea did not hear the cry, for the sea was filled with its own voice. The earth did not hear the cry, for the earth slept. The great men of the earth did not hear the cry, for they could not understand how a Child could be greater than a man. There were only two classes of men who heard the cry that night: Shepherds and Wise Men. Shepherds: Those who know they know nothing. Wise Men: Those who know they do not know everything. The Shepherds found their Shepherd, and the Wise Men discovered Wisdom. And the Shepherd and the Wisdom was a Babe in a crib.” Ven. Fulton Sheen