What happened when Jesus took flesh at the Annunciation?
The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity assumed a human nature from the Blessed Virgin Mary, and became the most perfect member of our race.
The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity assumed a human nature from the Blessed Virgin Mary, and became the most perfect member of our race.
Editor’s Notes
In this part, Fr Coleridge tells us…
How Christ’s Body and Soul were immediately formed at the Incarnation
That Christ was established as the fountain of grace.
Why his hidden life in Mary’s womb already reveals his glory.
He shows us that from the first moment Christ lives, knows, and loves perfectly for the Father and for us.
For more context on this section, see Part I.
The WM Review produced an audio meditation based on parts of this chapter as a part of the Preparing for Total Consecration series:
Our Lord’s Life in the Womb
The Nine Months
Chapter VII
Burns and Oates, London, 1885
Headings and some line breaks added.
Body and Soul of Jesus
The history begins with the fiat of Mary. At that moment, as has been already said, our theology teaches us that, by the action of the Holy Ghost, a part of her most pure blood was formed into the perfect Body which was to be that of our Lord, and that at the same time, God created the Human Soul which was to dwell in that Body. Mary received, at the same time, a marvellous increase of grace and knowledge, corresponding, as it were, to her elevation at that moment to be the Mother of God.
The Body was made small, as that of other infants; it was made, as the saints tell us, not only most beautiful, but also most delicate, and capable of the utmost suffering, while the glory, impassibility, and other gifts which were connatural to a body which was to be the body of a Divine Person, were suspended, in order that the decrees of God might be carried out in it. The Soul which was created for it had all the natural excellencies which became it, and it was enriched also by immense gifts of grace.
We are forced to put all these things in some succession, but the act of God in them all was simultaneous and in a moment. So also was the essential and substantial act of the Incarnation itself, by which the Soul and the Body which were created and united, became the Soul and the Body of the Eternal Son made Man.
Here is enough for angels and saints to feed on in endless contemplation. But the knowledge of these marvels implies praise, wonder, adoration, thanksgiving, oblation, and other affections, and it is natural to suppose that these were paid duly at the time, as the knowledge concerning them was communicated to them, both by Mary and by Joseph.
It is unreasonable, with the Scriptural account of the Visitation before us, to exclude from this reverent worship either St. John, or his parents, St. Elisabeth and St. Zachary. Beyond these, it must be left to devout conjecture alone to extend the range of the human worshippers of the Infant God. But at the time of which we speak, Mary alone possessed the secret.
Excellencies of the Sacred Humanity
The next great field of contemplation under this head, is that which contains the consideration of the excellencies of the Sacred Humanity. It became at once the highest of all God’s creatures, present, past, and future, for all that God Himself can create and elevate must be lower than that Humanity which is His own.
The union with the Divine Word implied the communication of all the Divine perfections, and the right to the adoration and homage of angels, men, and all creatures. It implied the sanctification of that Soul by the substantial sanctity of God, and its being made, not only essentially holy in itself, but the source and origin of the sanctification of others.
To say that it was absolutely and necessarily impeccable, and free from the faintest shadow of the sin which other infants contract in their conception, is superfluous. It was the Soul of the Incarnate God. It was full of all grace, and the source and fountain of grace for others. It was adorned with every possible virtue in the highest perfection, so that it could not, in the strictest sense of the words, advance and increase in grace or in virtue.
It was full of all knowledge and all wisdom, knowledge of God, of itself, of all things. It knew the past, the present, the future perfectly. Angels and men, and all other creatures, lay open before it, to the very inmost thoughts and movements of their affections and intelligences, the good, and the evil, and the imperfect, in all, as clearly as all will lie open before Him when He sits at the Last Day to judge the world. And all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge thus communicated to His Soul, our Lord directed from the first in the most perfect manner to the love and service of His Father.
Gifts of the Holy Ghost
The seven gifts, as we call them, of the Holy Ghost were in their consummate perfection in the Soul of our Lord at the first.
The gift of wisdom was in Him a most lofty contemplation and a most loving enjoyment of all the mysteries and secrets of God, a gaze full of intense love and joy on His infinite perfections, attributes, designs, judgments, and ways.
The gift of intelligence or understanding showed Him among other things, all that had been arranged and decreed and foretold concerning Himself; the plan of His Life and the measure of His work from His Birth to the end, with all the circumstances of His wonderful actions and ineffable sufferings.
The gift of counsel, in the same way, showed Him exactly what to do in every occasion, what was the best in every conjuncture, how every moment of His Life was to be most perfectly spent and employed, for the glory of the Father.
The gift of fortitude secured the most ready and punctual and complete execution of whatever the gift of counsel showed Him to be done.
So it was with the other gifts. His gift of knowledge opened to His Soul the full and penetrating insight into all created things, what was their real value according to the designs of their Creator, their end, their use, their relative worth or worthlessness.
His piety filled Him with the tenderest and most just affections of reverence and love towards His Father, His Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, and all those with whom He was immediately concerned, and also to all men, all angels, and all creatures which have been created by God, all in their due rank and proportion; all loved and honoured with the true and most faithful and most appreciative affection and dutifulness of His Heart.
And lastly, the gift of fear was in Him in perfection in that way in which it could be in Him, that is, a perfect awe and respect for the greatness of God and all that is His and comes from Him, a deep sense of loving dependence on Him as His creature, the work of His hands, in Whom all things live and are and subsist.
Complacency of God – Joy of the Three Divine Persons
It is needless to say that this beautiful Soul in itself, and apart from the Life which it was to lead, and which it began at once to lead, in the full exercise of all its faculties in the womb of Mary, was the object of the most tender joy and complacency and delight to God.
The Eternal Father rejoiced to see His Son clothed with that Human Nature in which He was to do so much for the glory of His Father and for the benefit of mankind, out of love for His Father and for our salvation. It was a part of this joy and complacency that He had made Mary His Mother so full of grace and every perfection, and raised her to a dignity so high in Heaven and on earth. And He rejoiced also in all the treasures of grace which the Sacred Humanity had received for us, and for the use which His Son was to make of them in distributing them so largely and bountifully among men, thus producing a glory and a beatitude which are to last for endless ages in the next world.
It was a joy to the Eternal Son that He was now at last become Man and able to carry out the designs of His eternal love for the Father and for us, that He could now unite to the Human Nature which He had chosen all His Divine perfections and powers, and He rejoiced especially in the humiliation which this union implied for Himself, because it was the will of His Father.
It was a joy to the Holy Spirit to see His work accomplished, and that Human Nature perfected by the union with the Divine Person of the Word, into which He was to pour all His gifts and graces in order that they might be communicated to us.
Our Lord’s Life in the Womb
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