Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Advent and Christmas

The coming of the divine infant

  Sermon for Christmas Eve, December 24, 1613

Christians have been more enlightened and have had the honour of knowing of the Incarnation, that man is God and God is man, although even they are incapable of completely penetrating its mystery.  For this is a mystery hidden in the obscurity of night's darkness. Of course the mystery is not really dark at all, for God is only light. [Jn. 1:5,9; 1 Jn. 1:5J. Just as our unaided eyes cannot look directly into the sun's brilliant light without our having to close them immediately, being momentarily blinded, so, in a similar way, our understanding is blinded and darkened by the brilliant light and splendour of the mystery of the Incarnation.

(Read further in Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Advent and Christmas, Sermon for Christmas Eve, December 24, 1613)

Mystical aspects of the mystery of Christmas

  Vigil of the Nativity of Our Lord, 1614

Concerning the Saviour as the "Expectation of Nation,” Our Lord's two natures: human and divine; the mystery of fruitful virginity, the four kinds of people according to their attitude toward the newborn Divine Infant, the Holy Family as a religious congregation and how they practiced chastity, obedience and extreme poverty, and the various offices of Jesus, Mary and Joseph within this community.

(Read further in Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Advent and Christmas, Vigil of the Nativity of our Lord, 1614)

The union of the divine and human natures in Our Lord

  Sermon for Christmas Eve, December 24, 1620

Concerning the Incarnation as the work of all three Persons of the most Holy Trinity, the union of the divine and human natures in Our Lord, the three "substances" in Our Lord—Divinity, body and soul—symbolized by the three tastes of manna: honey, oil and bread; how man was made God and God was made man in the Incarnation, man as a union of body and soul, images of the union of the humanity and Divinity of Our Lord: iron inflamed with fire, the fleece of Gideon, a sponge in a vast sea; the reason for the Incarnation: to teach us to live according to reason, as Our Lord practiced material and spiritual sobriety by depriving Himself of all agreeable things, doing God's will in all things—and how God does the will of those who do His; Our Lord's choice of a life of pains and labours although He could have redeemed us by a single loving sigh: desire for spiritual consolation vs. humility and resignation to God's will, and the hidden profundities of the Mystery of the Incarnation.

(Read further in Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Advent and Christmas, Sermon for Christmas Eve, December 24, 1620)

The Incarnation

  Christmas Midnight Mass, December 25, 1622

Concerning the great Christian feasts and their observance in the early Church, the Incarnation as God's end in creating the world, the two births of the Word: eternal and temporal, the two natures of the Word made flesh, and the Eternal Father's goodness to us in making His Son a member of our human race.

(Read further in Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Advent and Christmas, Christmas Midnight Mass, December 25, 1622)

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