ON THE INCARNATION [In the flesh while ordering the Universe] by Saint Athanasios

 

by Saint Athanasios

You must understand, therefore, that when writers on this sacred theme (of the Incarnation) speak of Him as eating and drinking and being born, they mean that the body, as a body, was born and sustained with the food proper to its nature; while God the Word, Who was united with it, was at the same time ordering the universe and revealing Himself through His bodily acts as not man only but God.

Those acts are rightly said to be His acts, because the body which did them did indeed belong to Him and none other; moreover, it was right that they should be thus attributed to Him as Man, in order to show that His body was a real one and not merely an appearance. From such ordinary acts as being born and taking food, He was recognized as being actually present in the body; but by the extraordinary acts which He did through the body He proved Himself to be the Son of God. That is the meaning of His words to the unbelieving Jews: “If I do not the works of My Father, believe Me not; but if I do, even if ye believe not Me, believe My works, that ye may know that the Father is in Me and I in the Father.”

Invisible in Himself, He is known from the works of creation; so also, when His Godhead is veiled in human nature, His bodily acts still declare Him to be not man only, but the Power and Word of God.

♱To speak authoritatively to evil spirits, for instance, and to drive them out, is not human but divine; and who could see Him curing all the diseases to which mankind is prone, and still deem Him mere man and not also God?
♱He cleansed lepers,
♱He made the lame to walk,
♱He opened the ears of the deaf and the eyes of the blind, there was no sickness or weakness that He did not drive away.
♱Even the most casual observer can see that these were acts of God.
♱The healing of the man born blind, for instance, who but the Father and Artificer of man, the Controller of his whole being, could thus have restored the faculty denied at birth? He Who did thus must surely be Himself the Lord of birth. This is proved also at the outset of His becoming Man.
♱He formed His own body from the virgin; and that is no small proof of His Godhead, since He Who made that was the Maker of all else.
♱And would not anyone infer from the fact of that body being begotten of a virgin only, without human father, that He Who appeared in it was also the Maker and Lord of all beside?
♱Again, consider the miracle at Cana. Would not anyone who saw the substance of water transmuted into wine understand that He Who did it was
♱the Lord and Maker of the water that He changed? It was for the same reason that
♱He walked on the sea as on dry land—to prove to the onlookers that He had mastery over all.
♱And the feeding of the multitude, when He made little into much, so that from five loaves five thousand mouths were filled—did not that prove Him none other than the very Lord Whose Mind is over all?

CONSIDER: Athansios was born in 295. The local bishop, aware of Athanasios's gifts, took him as his aide.

It is said the Saint Athanasios wrote THE INCARNATION [OF THE WORD] when he was 24 years old.