👉Subscribe & click 🔔 to receive the latest updates: / @jesusmyinspiration
🟦 Facebook: / jesus-my-inspiration-1...
🟥 Instagram: / jesusmyinspiration1
The marvel accomplished today in the humble cave at Bethlehem is the fulfillment of all the revelations granted to the prophets of Israel, and the outcome of a patient preparation of mankind through all the centuries since David, Abraham, Noah, and Adam.
Today in these last times, God sends us his only Son by whom he made all the ages, thus revealing to the world the great mystery of our salvation, which had been wrapped in silence and kept hidden in God in the inexpressible council of the Holy Trinity since before the creation of the world.
To see this day dawn, the sun, the expanse of heaven, the earth and all living things have been created.
That the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us is a mystery beyond the grasp of human understanding, and unfathomable even to the intellect of the Angels. He who is God by nature takes our humanity upon himself in the womb of the Virgin and makes it His own, clothing Himself in it as a garment, in order that we may partake of His divinity.
He is God and Man, one only Person, Jesus Christ, known in two natures which are united in Him without mixture, without division, and without separation.
Today God becomes man in the cave at Bethlehem in order that man may become God.
God's aim and purpose in bringing forth all things out of nothing and leading them into existence has been that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity should come down even to us, should take upon Himself our humanity, which is grown old and deformed by sin, in order to heal our wounds by His sufferings, to cleanse His image defiled in us, to renew us in Himself, to rescue us from the abyss of death into which we have fallen, to bring us up to the heights of heaven above all the celestial powers, and even so far as to enthrone us together with Him in God.
Jesus Christ, the Savior, Emmanuel, God with us, is born today as a tender babe upon whom the angels gaze with awe.
The true light that enlightens every man coming into the world has shown in the darkness of a poor stable and the time of death and corruption is nearing its end; Solomon no longer has caused to exclaim that there is nothing new under the sun, for this small child is the second Adam, who has brought a new creation, a new man into being.
Henceforth by following Christ by faith, by obeying his commandments, and by suffering with Him, in order to arise through Him, mankind is called to find immortality.
The word has become flesh; He has taken our sickness upon Himself and has had compassion on our weakness though having no share in our offense He has assumed body and soul and as a small child He has submitted to the conditions of our fallen world: growth, hunger, thirst, sleep, want of knowledge, without however committing sin. He alone is without sin and He has come to dwell in the flesh which is subject to sin and to death.
In order that the flesh may become Word. He has taken upon himself a body destined for the tomb and has covered it with glory and light by making it the share of His immortality. For as the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Him, so those who follow Him by faith will share in this fullness in their whole being; in their spirit, in their soul and in their body.
Today in keeping with the feast of the incarnation of the Word, the descent of God among men, we confess the accomplishment of the whole mystery of our redemption:
Christ is born and man thereby becomes heir to His glory.
Certainly a little child in a crib is all that meets our eye but taught by the holy Fathers we see the signs of the completion of the mystery of Christ in the humble cave at Bethlehem.
Christmas and Easter the feast of feasts are together one and the same solemnity.
The cave foretells the tomb, the swaddling bands prefigure the winding-sheet: here Christ appears in the world leaving the virginity of His mother without blemish. There He triumphs over death and comes forth from the tomb without breaking the seals: at Bethlehem an Angel is sent to the shepherds and at Jerusalem a radiant Angel announces the Resurrection to the Myrrh-bearing women.
Always and everywhere one and the same Christ becomes man like to ourselves even unto death, in order that the transgression committed by one man, Adam, might be removed from us by one man the Second Adam, For there is one God and one mediator between God and men the man Jesus Christ who gave Himself as a ransom for us all.
And today all beings in heaven and on earth bow down before Him as Savior and Lord, and rejoice with great joy at being reconciled to God by Him in His body, which is Holy Church, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.
#nativity #jesus #orthodox #christmas #christianaudiobook #christianaudio