Adoration of the Magi

In Saint Etienne du Mont Church, Paris, France. It contains the shrine of St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris.  The church also contains the tombs of the great French writers, Blaise Pascal and Jean Racine.

 

By Pope Benedict XVI, Public Catechesis, January 4 2012, continued:

The first act of this wondrous exchange is brought about in Christ’s humanity itself. The Word took on our humanity and in exchange human nature was raised to the divine dignity.

The second act of the exchange consists in our real and intimate participation in the divine nature of the Word.

St. Paul says: “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal 4:4-5).

Christmas, therefore, is the feast on which God made himself so close to man as to share in his own act of being born, to reveal to him his deepest dignity: that of being a son of God.

Thus the dream of humanity beginning in Paradise —we would like to be like God—is brought about in an unexpected manner, not because of the greatness of man who cannot make himself God, but because of the humility of God who comes down and thus enters us in his humility and raises us to the true greatness of his being…

…to be continued…

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Reprinted from Inside the Vatican magazine, December 2019