Lord God,whose servants Basil and Gregory
proclaimed the mystery of your Word made flesh,
to build up your Church in wisdom and strength:
grant that we may rejoice in his presence among us,
and so be brought with them to know the power
of your unending love.
The reflections of Basil and Gregory on the mystery and wonder of the Incarnation of theology are a profound example of theology prayerfully undertaken in service of the Church's proclamation of the Word made flesh.
God in the flesh! It is no longer the God who acts only at particular instants, as in the prophets, but one who completely assumes our human nature and through his flesh, which is that of our race, lifts all humanity up to him ...
Look deeply into this mystery. God comes in the flesh in order to destroy the death concealed in the flesh ... when the saving grace of God appeared and the sun of justice rose, death was swallowed up in his victory, being unable to endure the dwelling of the true life among us (from a homily of St Bail the Great);
Light from light, the Word of the Father comes to his own image in the human race. For the sake of my flesh he takes flesh ... the self-existent comes into being; the uncreated is created. He shares in the poverty of my flesh that I may share in the riches of his Godhead ...
Let us honour this tiny Bethlehem which restores us to paradise. Let us reverence this crib because from it we, who were deprived of self-understanding, are fed by the divine understanding, the Word of God himself (from an oration of St Gregory of Nazianzus).
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