Advent Meditation~By St. Alphonsus de Liguori (December 12)

[Dawn Marie]

THE MYSTERIES OF THE FAITH

THE INCARNATION

Discourse by Saint Alphonsus de Liguori

December 12, 2014

 

Discourse 13

 

“The Eternal Word from being Happy made Himself Afflicted”

 

Et erunt oculi tui videntes Praeceptorem.

 

“And thy eyes shall see thy Teacher.”---- Isa. Xxx. 20.

 

St. John says, “All that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the

concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life.”  Behold the three sinful loves which held dominion over man after the sin of Adam, ----- the love of pleasures, the love of riches, the love of honors, which generate human pride. The Divine Word, to teach us, by His example, the mortification of the senses, by which the love of pleasures is subdued, from being happy became afflicted; to teach us detachment from the  goods of this earth, from rich He became poor; and, finally, to teach us humility, which overcomes the love of honors, from being exalted He became humble. We will speak on these three points during these three last days of the Novena, today let us speak of the first.

 

Our Redeemer came, then, to teach us the love of the mortification of the senses more by the example of his life than by the doctrines which He preached; and, therefore, from happy, as He is and had always been from all eternity, He became afflicted.

Let us see it, and let us ask light of Jesus and Mary.

 

1.

 

The Apostle, speaking of the divine beatitude, calls God the only One happy and powerful:  “The blessed and only Mighty.”  And with reason, because all the happiness which can be enjoyed by us His creatures is nothing more than the smallest participation of the infinite happiness of God. The blessed in Heaven find therein their happiness; that is, in entering into the immense ocean of the happiness of God:  “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”  This is the Paradise which God bestows on the soul at the moment when it enters into possession of His eternal Kingdom.

 

God, in creating man at the beginning, did not place him on earth to suffer, but put him into the paradise of pleasure. He put him in a place of delight, in order that he might pass thence to Heaven, where he should enjoy for all eternity the glory of the blessed. But by sin unhappy man made himself made himself unworthy of the earthly, and closed against himself the gates of the heavenly paradise, willfully condemning himself to death and to everlasting misery. But the Son of God, in order to rescue man from such a state of ruin, what did He do? From blessed and most happy as He was, He chose to become afflicted and tormented.

 

Our Redeemer, could, indeed, have rescued us from the hands of our enemies without suffering. He could have come on earth and continued in His happiness, leading here below a pleasant life, receiving the honor justly due Him as King and Lord of all. It was enough, as far as regard the redemption, that He should have offered to God one drop of blood, one single tear, to redeem the world and an infinity of worlds:  “the least degree of the suffering of Christ,” says the Angelic Doctor, “would have sufficed for redemption, on account of the infinite dignity of His Person.”  But no:  “Having joy set before Him, He endured the Cross.”  He renounced all honors and pleasures and made choice on earth of a life full of toils and ignominies. Yes, says St. John Chrysostom, any actions whatever of the Incarnate Word sufficed for redemption; but it did not suffice for the love which He bore to man.  “What was sufficient for redemption was not sufficient for love.”  And whereas He that loves desires to see Himself loved in return, Jesus Christ, in order to be loved by man, was pleased to suffer exceedingly, and to choose for Himself  a life of continual suffering, to put man under an obligation of loving Him. 

 

Our Lord revealed to St. Margaret of Cortona that in His whole life He never experienced the smallest degree of sensible consolation:  “Great as the sea is thy destruction.”  The life of Jesus Christ was bitter as the sea, which is thoroughly bitter and salt, and contains not one drop of water that is sweet. And therefore Isaiah  justly calls Jesus Christ a Man of sorrows, as though He had been capable on this earth of nothing but anguish and sorrows.

 

St. Thomas says that the Redeemer did not simply take on Himself sorrows, but that, “He endured sorrow in its highest degree;” whereby He would signify that He chose to be the most afflicted Man that had ever been upon earth, or should ever be hereafter.

 

Yes, because this Man was born on purpose to suffer, therefore He assumed a body particularly adapted for suffering. On entering the womb of Mary, as the Apostle tells us, He said to His Eternal Father, when He cometh into the world He saith, “Sacrifice and oblation Thou wouldst not; but a body Thou hast fitted to Me.”  My Father, Thou hast rejected the sacrifices of men, because they were not able to satisfy Thy Divine justice for the offences committed against Thee:  “Thou hast given Me a body, as I requested of Thee; a body delicate, sensitive and made purposefully for suffering; I gladly accept of this body, and I offer it to Thee; because by enduring in this body all the pains which will accompany Me through My life, and shall finally cause My death upon the Cross, I purpose to propitiate Thee towards the human race, and thus to gain for Myself the love of mankind.

 

And behold Him scarcely entered into the world, when He already begins His sacrifice by beginning to suffer; but in a manner far different from that in which men suffer. Other children, while remaining in the womb of their mothers, do not suffer in some slight degree, at least they are unconscious of what they feel, since they are deprived of understanding; but Jesus, while an infant, endures for nine months the darkness of that prison, endures the pain of not being able to move, and is perfectly alive to what He endures. It is for this reason that Jeremias said, “A woman shall compass a man.”  He foretold that a woman, which was Mary, should bear enclosed in Her womb, not a child indeed, but a man; a child truly as to age; but a perfect man as to the use of reason, since Jesus Christ was full of wisdom from the first instance in His life:  “In whom are his all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”  

Whence St Bernard said, “Jesus was a man while not yet as born, but in wisdom, not in age.”  And St. Augustine, “The unspeakably Wise was in His wisdom a speechless Infant.”