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.
"The supreme perfection of man in this life is to be so united to God that all his soul with all its faculties and powers are so gathered into the Lord God that he becomes one spirit with him, and remembers nothing except God, is aware of and recognises nothing but God, but with all his desires unified by the joy of love, he rests contentedly in the enjoyment of his Maker alone."
St Albert the Great
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"The Lord has always revealed to mortals the treasures of his wisdom and his spirit, but now that the face of evil bares itself more and more, so does the Lord bare his treasures more."
St John of the Cross, OCD - Doctor of the Church
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"This is the greatest wisdom -- to seek the kingdom of heaven through contempt of the world. "
Thomas á Kempis
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