On the Nativity of Jesus

By Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle (1575-1629)

Introduction

Cardinal Pierre de Bérulle was born in 1575 near Champagne. Educated by Jesuits, he attended the Sorbonne in Paris and was ordained in 1599. With the help of his cousin, Bl. Marie of the Incarnation, he introduced the Discalced Carmelites into France, following the reform of St. Teresa de Ávila. He became spiritual director of St. Vincent de Paul and friends with St. Francis de Sales. In 1611, he founded the Oratory of Jesus (see "Humani generis / Cessent suspiria"). Along with his religious work, he was also a statesman, assisting King Henry IV and King Louis XIII. He became a cardinal in 1627, but died in 1629 before receiving the red hat. The below text is from his collection Works of Piety, #38.

On the Nativity of Jesus

1. He Who has made times and Who is the king of the ages, has willed to render Himself subject to time, and to guide the course of His life by the law of time. And this is the first law, subjection, and servitude to which we find the only-begotten Son of God subject in the world. This is also the first which He commands us, for we are temporal; our being is temporal, and we are subject to time. We are born when the course of nature bears it, for we are slaves of time. From the 25th of March, when the Son of God is conceived, until the 25th of December, the course of nine months deputed by nature to the progress of the infant in the womb of its mother is entirely accomplished. And the only-begotten Son of God has willed to suffer this law of nature, without abridging it for a single moment, although He had begun forty days earlier to be organized and animated in the womb of the Virgin. For He employs His power and His marvels to redeem us, but not to redeem Himself from the law of our infirmities. The evangelist, thus, teaches us: Impleti sunt dies ut pareret [The days were fulfilled so that she would give birth] (Lk 2:6), that the days ordained by nature for the birth were fulfilled, and, through the plenitude of this course of nature, he elevates us, tacitly, to revere the plenitude of the time celebrated in Scripture, where time produces the Eternal, the creature its Creator, and the Virgin her God and her only-begotten Son all together.
2. This plenitude of time elevates us to another sort of plenitude given to nature. For the Virgin has received plenitude of grace to conceive Jesus; she has also received plenitude of grace to bear Jesus, for the author of grace cannot be conceived or born except through plenitude of grace, of power, and of marvel. It is nature which bears grace, as it is the creature which bears the Creator. For Jesus is the grace of the Father, essential and not accidental grace, essential and personal grace, uncreated and incarnate grace, grace and source of grace which fight on earth and triumph in heaven. This grace is born through nature, Jesus through Mary, through Mary, I say, and through the nature elevated, accomplished, and animated by a new state and effort of grace, worthy to produce the Son of God in the world.
3. We do not abase our spirits in the simple condition of human births, when we intend to say that the Virgin bears her only-begotten Son in the world. This Son is God and man, and joins in His being two very different conditions, and He also joins in these states and mystery the grandeurs and the abasements conformed to the different qualities of these two natures. And these grandeurs are given unto His Mother, for the grandeurs of the Son and of the Mother are joined together in this mystery of the Son and of the Mother. He is an infant, but He is God. She is mother of an infant, but she is Mother of a God, Mother of the Creator, Mother of the Savior of the world. She is Mother and Virgin, Jesus born of her and without effort of nature, through the sweet effort of His power, and through the divine power which He communicates to His Mother, who produces Him as a God in the world. If a God ought to be born, He ought to be born thus: without impurity, without effort, without damage to her who bears Him in the world, as He has been conceived in her without any accident contaminating the purity and the virginity of her who is His Mother, Mother and Virgin all together. Mother and Virgin in conceiving Him, Mother and Virgin in bearing Him. Since He wills that nature produce Him, He does not will to give a lesser condition to His Mother, producing a God, that that which He has Himself given to nature to bear inanimate things. He is the flower of Israel; nature produces flowers without the work of the tree which bears them. He is the light of the universe; the light departs from the sun through an emanation so living, so sweet, so eminent, that, in a moment, it penetrates from heaven to earth without effort, without work in the transparent bodies through which it arrives to us.
   But let us speak more highly of He Who passes nature, and Who is the God of nature itself. Jesus is the Son of the Father, and He proceeds from the paternal bosom without work, that bosom remaining eternally closed, notwithstanding that procession and mission of the Son of God to the world; and He wills also to proceed from the virginal womb of His holy Mother, that womb remaining closed as before, figured by the garden closed and the fountain sealed (cf. Sgs 4:12), and by the eastern gate through which God passes (cf. Ez 44:1-3).
4. As this birth is admirable, the causes, also, of this birth are divine and admirable, and the Virgin receives a divine power to produce her Son in the world. The power of the Most High surrounds her as in her conception, and the desire of the Father to give His Son to the world is communicated to her heart, and this maternal and virginal heart, joined to the will and to the power to give her Son to the world, is found powerful, but with a divine power, to produce a God upon earth. O power! O grandeur! O dignity of the Virgin, conceiving and producing a God in the world! If God ought to be conceived, He ought to be conceived thus; if God ought to be born, He ought to be born thus. How the grandeurs and the marvels of this birth surpass the basenesses of this birth; for, so the grandeurs of the divine nature surpass the basenesses of the human nature of this Child-God. But His grandeurs and marvels are interior and invisible, and His abasements are visible and sensible; for so the divine nature of this child is invisible, and His human nature is sensible. Let us contemplate both His grandeurs and His abasements, let us adore both His abasements and His grandeurs: for the one and the other is divine, for the one and the other is ours. Let us exercise our faith over the one, and our senses over the other; but let us exercise our senses through the guidance of the faith, and through the light of grace. But let us see the state and the progress of this birth, let us go to Bethlehem, let us go to the stable. Let us see Jesus, an infant, let us see Mary, His mother, and Joseph assisting and servant the Mother and the infant. Let us see the stable, and the cow, and the ass, and the grandeur of heaven and of earth abased in Bethlehem in the person of the Son, and in the person, also, of the Mother.
5. V. The Virgin departs from Nazareth, and goes to Bethlehem by an ordinance of the emperor; Jesus, from then commencing to obey the monarch of earth, commenced to obey, first, that of birth. For He dies on a cross through obedience; He wills, also, to be born in a Bethlehem through obedience; and a thing so divine as the birth of Jesus in the world seems to arrive through a human situation; but God hides and guides His providence in human things, and we have to admire that the highest and rarest providence which God exercises over His only-begotten Son is tempered, covered, and guided, and as if abased in human situations. What is more divine in the universe than the birth of Jesus in the universe? Which is it which ought to be more guided by a Providence all divine and high, though abased in human things? And it does not seem that God mixes Himself, and [that] this is guided by the strong will of a prince, who wills to know the forces of his empire, this is regulated by the governors of the provinces, who publish the ordinances at once or tardily as it pleases them, this is regulated by the executors of this ordinance, and a thousand other accidents which occur in similar things. Jesus is born in a stable, and not in a common house; Jesus is in a crèche, and not in a crib, which is the first sojourn of infants; Jesus is born in the midst of the cow and of the ass, and not in the midst of His parents, and His first company is the cow and the ass; and in this abasement is found the miraculous birth of Him Who has made heaven and earth. It is not for us to speak of this mystery, and we have more to admire and adore it by a profound silence, than to profane it and make it vile [by] our too feeble thoughts. Jesus is an infant and in the obligation to silence, He cannot speak to us; it would be for the Virgin and for the angel serving Jesus to speak to us.
   God, Who has thus abased His Son on earth in a stable, wants to elevate Him to heaven, and from heaven He sends His angels to adore Him, from heaven He sends His angels to announce Him, from heaven He sends a star to publish to the magi His birth. These are the three miracles which heaven contributes to Jesus born an infant on earth, while earth is in forgetfulness and ignorance of its savior: Et adorent eum omnes angeli ejus [And let all His angels adore Him] (Heb 1:6).

Source: Oeuvres Complêtes de de Bérulle, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1856), 983-987.

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