Wednesday, December 31 : Symeon the New Theologian

If you claim to recognize [God] “by faith” and judge that “by faith” you are the son of God, then it follows that the incarnation of God also be “by faith”: no longer say that He “in reality” became man nor that he was brought into the world in a sensible way! But if he truly did become the son of man, then he actually made you the son of God; if it is not in appearance that he has become body, then we also do not become spirit in idea; as true as the Word was made flesh, it transforms us in an ineffable way and truly makes us children of God. Remaining immutable in his divinity, the Word became man by assuming flesh: preserving man immutable in his flesh and his soul, he made me entirely God; he took on my condemned flesh and clothed me with the entire divinity, because, baptized, I clothed Christ, not in a sensible way, certainly, but spiritually; and how will he not be God by grace and adoption, in feeling, knowledge and contemplation, who has been clothed by the Son of God? If it is unconsciously that the Word God became man, then that I too become God unconsciously, it is permitted, it is natural to suppose; but if it is knowingly, effectively and consciously that God took on the total human condition, I have become God entirely, through communion with God, sensibly and knowingly, not by essence but by participation. Just as, without change, God was born a man in a body and showed himself to all, so ineffably, spiritually, he begets me and makes me, while still man, become God.

Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team