The following is the meditation for Day 3 (December 18) of the Advent Novena. For the full text of the novena, click here.
Day 3:
The Child Jesus had now begun his incarnate life. Let us consider the glorious soul and the holy body that he had assumed, adoring them deeply. Admiring first the soul of that Divine Child, let us ponder in it the fullness of His sanctifying grace, the plenitude of that beatific science through which, from the first moment of his life, He saw the Divine Essence more clearly than all the angels and could read the past and the future and all the secrets they hold. He could not know by learning anything that he had not already known by infusion from all time, yet he took on every infirmity of our nature that he could righteously adopt, even when doing so was not necessary to accomplish the great work for which He had come. Let us ask Him to fortify the weakness of our faculties through the strength of his own, giving them new vigor: that his memory may teach us to constantly remember his gifts, that his understanding may help us to think of Him, that his will may enable us to do nothing except what pleases and serves Him.
Having pondered the soul of the Christ Child, let us now contemplate his body, which was in itself a world of wonders, a masterpiece sculpted by the hand of God. It was not, like our own, a stumbling block to the soul, but rather a means to holiness. He desired that it be small and weak like that of every child, subject to all the discomforts of infancy, in order to make Himself fully like us and take part in our humiliations. The Holy Spirit made the Divine Infant’s body tender, capable of great feeling, that he might be able to undergo the supreme suffering through which he accomplished our redemption.
The beauty of the Christ Child’s body was greater than anything ever imagined; the holy blood that had begun running through his veins at the moment of the Incarnation is the same blood that washes all the stains of this guilty world. Let us ask Him to wash away our own stains in the sacrament of penance, that on the day of his Nativity He may find us purified, forgiven, and ready to receive Him lovingly for our spiritual benefit.
