O Wonderous Humility
Gerald Boersma, Ph.D.
Among the treasures of Augustine’s vast collection of sermons are 13 sermons for Christmas Day. Each is short and punchy, intended to draw his congregation into the contemplation of the greatest of Christian mysteries: the Incarnation. God Almighty is born as a baby in Bethlehem. The infinite is dwindled down to finitude. The One beyond time has His first birthday. The boundless is wrapped in swaddling clothes. What is to us inconceivable was, in fact, conceived. The divine humility to which the Incarnation testifies is what most arrests Augustine about the mystery of Christmas. He says,
"The one who holds the world in being was lying in a manger; he was simultaneously speechless infant and Word. The heavens cannot contain him, a woman carried him in her bosom. She was ruling our ruler, carrying the one in whom we are, suckling our bread. O manifest infirmity and wonderous humility in which was thus concealed total divinity!" (Sermon. 184.3).
For Augustine, the Incarnation reveals, above all, the “wonderous humility” of God—a teaching “taught by a teacher himself not yet able to speak.”
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The eternal Word of the Father “took human limbs” while never ceasing to dispose all things sweetly in the unity He enjoys with His Father. While remaining ever the immaterial bread of angels, Christ clothed Himself in our weak flesh. Augustine explains, “When he clothed himself with the weakness of the flesh, he was received, not locked up, in the virgin’s womb; thus the food of wisdom was not withdrawn from the angels, while at the same time we were enabled to taste and see how sweet is the Lord” ( Sermon. 187.1).
The Incarnation does not change God. The Incarnation changes us.
Out of love for humanity, God allows us to participate in Him in a new way—in our way , in a temporal and material mode of existence:
"He loved us so much that for our sake he came to be in time, though all times were made through him…. He loved us so much that he became man though he had made man; that he was created from a mother whom he had created, carried in arms he had fashioned, sucked breasts which he himself filled; that he lay squalling in a manger wordless in infancy, though he is the Word without whom human eloquence would be at a loss for words" (Sermon. 188.2).
Because the et ernal Word of the Father united Himself to a human nature, we can experience the delight in which angels have communed for all eternity: tasting and seeing the sweetness of the Lord. Assuming our temporal existence, Christ did not lose eternity; instead, He bestowed immortal life on mortal flesh.
It is not so much our finitude and materiality that separates us from God as it is our sin, particularly our pride, which renders us impervious to divine love. The medicine God chose to heal our infirmity, therefore, is His own humility, superlatively manifest in the Incarnation. What human sin destroys in pride, divine love restores in humility.
Augustine’s Chr istmas Day sermons delightfully explore this theological juxtaposition. If we became disobedient through pride in the spacious groves of the Garden of Eden, then Christ became obedient in humility in the cramped confines of Bethlehem’s cave.
Augustine continues, “You [Adam], though you were a man, wished to be God, and so got lost; he, though he was God, wished to be a man, and so find what had been lost. Human pride pressed down on you so heavily, that the only thing which could lift you up was divine humility” (Sermon. 188.3).
When asked in a letter about the virtues required to attain heaven, Augustine responded, “Humility, humility, humility” (ep. 118.22). Such an answer might surprise. Isn’t love the greatest of the virtues? Doesn’t love alone “abide”? Certainly. Because it is the very substance of heaven, love alone abides. Here below, however, in time, things do not abide. Nevertheless, explains Augustine, humility has the power to make passing things abide, to lift them to the eternity of heaven. Why is this? Because humility is heaven’s eternal love on covert operation here below. Humility is love not afraid to embrace the ugly, the misshapen, the sick. Humility embraces those things that wear the decay of their finitude in an undisguised manner. To the proud, humility appears weak and foolish. But it is precisely on that account that it manages—quietly and unannounced—to infuse the eternity of love into things that pass.
This secret, divinizing power of humility is revealed in the Incarnation—revealed to the humble who alone can see its power. God communicates
His love—an eternal reality of heaven—with us here below, in time, amongst that which does not abide. Unbeknownst to the proud and powerful, this humble love bestows eternity on that which passes. Augustine says:
"He lies in a manger, but he holds the whole world in his hands; he sucks his mother’s breasts, but feeds the angels; he is swaddled in rags, but clothes us in immortality; he is suckled, but also worshiped; he could find no room in the inn, but makes a temple for himself in the hearts of believers. It was in order, you see, that weakness might become strong, that strength become weak" (Sermon. 190.4).
The dilemma is that the humility of God can be accepted only by the humble. But how can we, the proud— those whom sin has made
humility? Christmas is the answer, maintains Augustine. By witnessing the spectacle of the Incarnation, by seeing divinity at our feet, God heals the swelling of our pride and nourishes our love. His humility overcomes our pride and raises us to His eternity: “So let the humble hold fast to the humility of God” (Sermon. 184.1).
The “wonderous humility” of God on display at Christmas works to deflate our pride, so that we might humbly receive the humble God. The divine truth,
Thidden from the powerful but proclaimed by angels on Christmas Eve, is that weakness conquers and humility attains heaven. The divine humility of the Incarnation infuses mortal beings with immortality. Christmas reveals “the unspeakably wise, wisely speechless as an infant; filling the world, lying in a manger; directing the course of the stars sucking his mother’s breast; so great in the form of God, so small in the form of a servant” (Sermon. 187.1).
he one who holds the world in being was lying in a manger; he was simultaneously speechless infant and Word. The heavens cannot contain him, a woman carried him in her bosom. She was ruling our ruler, carrying the one in whom we are, suckling our bread. O manifest infirmity and wonderous humility in which was thus concealed total divinity! (s. 184.3).
Gerald Boersma, Ph.D.
Gerald P. Boersma is professor of theology at Ave Maria University and Humboldt Fellow at the University of Tübingen. Boersma is a Catholic systematic theologian whose writings focus especially on the thought of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. He is author of Augustine’s Early Theology of Image: A Study in the Development of ProNicene Theology (Oxford, 2016) and numerous essays as journal articles and book chapters devoted to theology, philosophy, and
literary criticism. Prior to coming to Ave Maria University, he taught for five years at St. Bonaventure University. He has held fellowships at the Villanova University and the University of Tübingen.
Interested in learning more from Dr. Boersma? Explore his short course, “The Life and Teachings of St. Augustine” from The Pursuit of Wisdom, available in your app store or at thepursuitofwisdom.org.
The Wisdom Papers is a series of relevant reflections on contemporary conversations from the faculty of Ave Maria University.
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