Choose a topic from Part 3a:
1. St. Gregory (Moral. xviii) says: "As soonas the angel announced it, as soon as the Spirit came down, theWord was in the womb . . . was made flesh." The body assumedby the Word must be a body perfectly formed. Nor was it formedpreviously to the Annunciation and held in readiness to be assumed.It was formed and assumed in the same instant, the instant in whichMary assented to the divine Will, saying, "Be it done to meaccording to thy word." In that instant, "the Word wasmade flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14).
2. At the very instant that Christ was conceived, therational and spiritual human soul animated his body.{-Recall St. Thomas's theory that the ordinaryprocess of conception puts the conceived matter through twopre-human stages, vegetal and sentient. This, he here asserts, wasnot the case in the conception of our Lord.-}
3. Our Lord's body was not first conceived andafterwards assumed by the Word of God. It began to exist at theprecise moment in which it was assumed.
4. Our Lord's conception, in its active producingprinciple, was entirely miraculous and supernatural.
"For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God?"
Thomas á Kempis
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"God gives us some things, as the beginning of faith, even when we do not pray. Other things, such as perseverance, he has only provided for those who pray."
St Augustine
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"When the devil has failed in making a man fall, he puts forward all his energies to create distrust between the penitent and the confessor, and so by little and little he gains his end at last."
St Philip Neri
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