Monday, December 15 : Saint Hilary

The Son who is like him is the Father’s own; he who is compared with Him is born from Him; he who does the works that belong to Him is not external to Him (cf. Jn 5,19)…The Son performs the Father’s works, and on those grounds he demands that we should believe he is God’s Son. This is no claim of mere arrogance; for he bases it upon his works, and bids us examine them. And he bears witness that these works are not his own, but his Father’s. He would not have our thoughts distracted by the splendour of the deeds from the evidence for his birth. And because people could not penetrate the mystery of the body he had taken, the humanity born of Mary, and recognise the Son of God, he appeals to these deeds for confirmation of his right to the name: “If I perform my Father’s works, even if you do not believe me, believe the works” (cf. Jn 10, 37-38)… If he seems unworthy, in his bodily lowliness, to bear the Divine name, yet he demands that we should at least believe his works. Why should the mystery of his human birth hinder our recognition of his birth as God?… “Even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I in the Father”… This is the nature which is his by birth, this the mystery of the saving faith: that we must not divide the unity, nor separate the nature from the birth, but must confess that the living God was in truth born from the living God… “Just as the living Father sent me so I live by the Father” (cf. Jn 6,57)… “Just as the Father has life in himself, so also he gave to his Son the possession of life in himself” (Jn 5,26).
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team