Vigils Reading

GOD AND FLESH

From the homilies of St Gregory Palamas

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HIS IS THE FESTIVAL of the virgin birth! Our address must be exalted

therefore in accordance with the greatness of the feast…for nothing done by God

from the beginning of time was more beneficial to all or more divine than

Christ’s nativity…

The pre-eternal and uncircumscribed and almighty Word is now born

according to the flesh, without home, without shelter, without dwelling, and

placed as a babe in the manger, seen by men’s eyes, touched by their hands, and

wrapped in layers of swaddling bands. He is not a spiritual creature coming into

being after previously not existing; nor flesh which is brought to birth but will

soon perish; nor flesh and mind united to form a rational creature, but God and

flesh mingled unconfusedly…

David, who is a forefather of God on account of Him who has now been

born of his line, hymns God somewhere “Thy hands have made me and

fashioned me”

… God formed human nature out of the earth with His own hand

and breathed His own life into man, whereas everything else He brought into

being by His word alone. He then allowed man to be governed by his own

thoughts and follow his own initiative, because he was a rational creature with

a sovereign will. Left alone, deceived by the evil one’s counsel and unable to

withstand his assault, man did not keep to what was in accordance with his

nature, but slid towards what was unnatural to it. So now God not only forms

human nature anew by His own hand in a mysterious way, but also keeps it near

Him. Not only does He assume this nature and raise it up from the fall, but He

inexpressibly clothes Himself in it and unites Himself inseparably with it and

was born as both God and man: from a woman, in the first instance, that He

might take upon Himself the same nature which He formed in our forefathers;

and from a woman who was a virgin, in the second, so that He might make man

new.

If He had been born from seed, He would not have been a new man and,

being part of the old stock, and inheriting that fall, He would not have been able

to receive the fullness of the incorruptible Godhead in Himself and become an

inexhaustible source of hallowing. And so, not only would He not have been able

to cleanse, with abundance of power, our forefathers’ defilement caused by sin,

but neither would He have been sufficient to sanctify those who came later. Just

as water stored in a tank would not be sufficient to provide a large city with

enough to drink continuously, but would require its own spring… in the same

way, neither a man nor a holy angel who, by sharing in grace…would suffice to

sanctify everyone at all times… Creation needed a well man, containing its own

spring, that those who drew near it and drank their full might remain

undefeated by the attacks of weaknesses and deprivations inherent in the

created world. So…the Lord Himself came and saved us, being made a man like

us for our sake, and continuing unchanged as God.

Building now the new Jerusalem, raising up a temple for Himself with

living stones, and gathering us into a holy and worldwide Church, He sets in its

foundation, which is Christ, the ever-flowing fount of grace. For the Lord’s

eternal fullness of life, the all-wise and omnipotent divine nature, is made one

with human nature…that the Lord might instil into it wisdom and power and

freedom and unfailing life.

 

6 St Gregory Palamas. The Homilies. Trans. Christopher Veniamin. Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2009.

477, 481-482.15