December 18

od saw that the human race was perishing and that it was under the reign of death because of its corruptibility. He saw the firm hold that corruptibility had on us as the penalty for our transgression and that it would be monstrous for the law to come to nothing before ever having been fulfilled. He also saw the unseemliness of what was happening, of his own creatures ceasing to exist. He saw the excessive wickedness of the human race and how little by little it was mounting up against us and becoming intolerable. He saw that all human beings were subject to death.

Therefore, he had mercy on our race and in his pity for our weakness he descended to our corruptible condition. He could not allow death to have the mastery, for fear that creation should perish and his Father's work for the human race come to nothing. And so he took a body for himself, a body no different from ours. For he did not wish simply to become embodied and to make himself visible. If he had wished merely to become visible he could have manifested himself by means of some nobler instrument. But no; he took a human body, and took it moreover from a spotless, immaculate virgin, without the intervention of man. He who is powerful and who created the whole universe fashioned for himself in the Virgin a body to be his temple, making it his own as the instrument through which he could be known and in which he could dwell.

From John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., Tradition Day by Day: Readings from Church Writers. Augustinian Press. Villanova, PA, 1994.

HTML text prepared by David P. Steelman