From the lections at Mattins in the traditional form for Christmas Day:
Lections 4,5 and 6:
From the Sermons of Pope St. Leo the Great 440-461
1st for Christmas
Dearly beloved brethren, Unto us is born this day a Saviour, (Luke ii. 11). Let us rejoice. It would be unlawful to be sad to day, for today is Life's Birthday; the Birthday of that Life, Which, for us dying creatures, taketh away the sting of death, and bringeth the bright promise of the eternal gladness hereafter. It would be unlawful for any man to refuse to partake in our rejoicing. All men have an equal share in the great cause of our joy, for, since our Lord, Who is the destroyer of sin and of death, findeth that all are bound under the condemnation, He is come to make all free. Rejoice, O thou that art holy, thou drawest nearer to thy crown! Rejoice, O thou that art sinful, thy Saviour offereth thee pardon! Rejoice also, O thou Gentile, God calleth thee to life! For the Son of God, when the fulness of the time was come, which had been fixed by the unsearchable counsel of God, took upon Him the nature of man, that He might reconcile that nature to Him Who made it, and so the devil, the inventor of death, is met and beaten in that very flesh which hath been the field of his victory.
When our Lord entered the field of battle against the devil, He did so with a great and wonderful fairness. Being Himself the Almighty, He laid aside His uncreated Majesty to fight with our cruel enemy in our weak flesh. He brought against him the very shape, the very nature of our mortality, yet without sin. (Heb. iv. 15).His birth however was not a birth like other births for no other is born pure, nay, not the little child whose life endureth but a day on the earth. To His birth alone the throes of human passion had not contributed, in His alone no consequence of sin had had part. For His Mother was chosen a Virgin of the kingly lineage of David, and when she was to grow heavy with the sacred Child, her soul had already conceived Him before her body. She knew the counsel of God announced to her by the Angel, lest the unwonted events should alarm her. The future Mother of God knew what was to be wrought in her by the Holy Ghost, and that her modesty was absolutely safe.
Therefore, dearly beloved brethren, let us give thanks to God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Ghost: Who, for His great love wherewith He loved us, hath had mercy on us and, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, ( Eph. ii. 4, 5), that in Him we might be a new creature, and a new workmanship. Let us then put off the old man with his deeds (Col. iii. 9); and, having obtained a share in the Sonship of Christ, let us renounce the deeds of the flesh. Learn, O Christian, how great thou art, who hast been made partaker of the Divine nature, (2 Pet. i. 4), and fall not again by corrupt conversation into the beggarly elements above which thou art lifted. Remember Whose Body it is Whereof thou art made a member, and Who is its Head, (1 Cor. vi. 15). Remember that it is He That hath delivered thee from the power of darkness and hath translated thee into God's light, and God's kingdom, (Col. i. 13.)
Lection 7:
Homily by Pope St. Gregory the Great 590-604.
8th on the Gospels
By God's mercy we are to say three Masses today, so that there is not much time left for preaching; but at the same time the occasion of the Lord's Birthday itself obliges me to speak a few words. I will first ask why, when the Lord was to be born, the world was enrolled? Was it not to herald the appearing of Him by Whom the elect are enrolled in the book of life? Whereas the Prophet saith of the m reprobate: Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not be written with the righteous. (Ps. lxviii. 29). Then, the Lord is born in Bethlehem. Now the name Bethlehem signifieth the House of Bread, and thus it is the birth-place of Him Who hath said: I am the Living Bread, Which came down from heaven. (John vi. 51). We see then that this name of Bethlehem was prophetically given to the place where Christ was born, because it was there that He was to appear in the flesh by Whom the souls of the faithful are fed unto life eternal. He was born, not in His Mother's house, but away from home. And this is a mystery, showing that this our mortality into which He was born was not the home of Him Who is begotten of the Father before the worlds.
Reproduced from Divinium Officium
What is so striking is not just the eloquence of St Leo and the rather endearing matter of factness of St Gregory but also the breadth and profundity of what they are saying - ideas which were to flourish in the later centuries of the life of the Church but which are formed, rooted and formulated in the post-Apostolic age. This is the true development of doctrine as discussed by St John Henry Newman in action.
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