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Chapter 47LDO.3.47

VISIO DECIMA, cap. VI

The Fullness of Time and the Church's Foundation

God sent his Son in the fullness of time to redeem humanity, a mystery prefigured in Noah's ark as the Church, established on high, resting on the unshakable foundation of obedience.

"When the fullness of time came, God sent his Son,, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children."✦ The meaning of this sentence should be understood this way: God the Father, who has no beginning or end, in the fullness of time sent his Son — foreordained from eternity — to earth for the lost human being's redemption, prefigured by signs and very many miracles. This seems fittingly to point us to Noah's ark. For it signifies the Church, tossed in this present age by the surging of various temptations, which he has now joined to his Son for the restoration of his children through the grace of faith. And the Church, established on the mountaintops, can also figure the eternity of almighty God, who long before they existed foreknew all creatures to be just such as they now appear distinctly through his Word, each in its own kind. That heavenly city too, which is the dwelling place of God's children, presents a tower built of most exquisite workmanship, through whose most beautiful adornment Abraham's supremely faithful obedience is signified, and it represents to us the Son of God and the boundless tokens of his miracles. For the law given through Moses demanded unfailing obedience, without which — just as a house could in no way stand without the columns that support it, or a human being without a heart to govern it — it could not possibly endure. For obedience is a kind of fire, and the law is its radiance.

The Son Transforms All Things

From Abraham's obedience to Pentecost's fire, the Son of God takes flesh, fulfills and spiritualizes the law, offers himself as the true sacrifice, restores justice and peace, and sends the Holy Spirit to kindle the Church.

Just as Abraham, at the Lord's command, left his home and homeland and was the first to be changed through circumcision, so the Son of God — conceived and born of the most pure Virgin by the fire of the Holy Spirit, without any stain of blood — transformed the law given through Moses into a better state, making it spiritual through himself.✦✦✦ For those born from the blood of sinners — the blood of legal sacrifices could not set them free. It was fitting, then, that the mercy of their Creator should free them through the priceless value of his own blood, and that he alone should do it.✦✦ And just as a person has accustomed to offer God a sacrifice from the creature granted to him, so the Son of God clothed himself in flesh taken from a human being, in order to offer it to God the Father on our behalf.✦ So when the Son of God came into the world, he set before people a pure and clear teaching, and surveying all that had been foretold, he transformed them into a different form — so that idolatry was turned into the living God, and prophecy was turned into a spiritual way. For just as a human word is sent forth by the inspiration of the spirit, so too the Only-begotten of God was sent from the Father into the Virgin's chamber and was conceived by the Holy Spirit.✦✦ And so, born of the same Virgin, clothed in flesh, he made all things past and future manifest through himself, and he transformed whatever deeds of humanity had been told and heard into something better — erasing what was useless and preserving what was useful. He did just as he did in the army of good angels, whom he glorified all the more after the ruin of the lost.✦✦ For before his birth, everything lay as if in darkness; but after he took on flesh, he illuminated it like the sun. He himself fulfilled the law by completing it and transformed it into what was better, obeying the commandments of his Father — the very thing Adam had failed to do.✦✦ In this same Son of God, justice and peace are joined together. And in that justice by which the world was darkened through the serpent's venom when it was shrouded in sin — justice was compressed through his humanity. For he himself, as a warrior, resists injustice with justice and with peace: the justice that is enclosed by God's commandments, and the peace that is fortified by God's mercy as it shows mercy to humanity. And he gathered to himself his chosen ones in that same likeness in which the blessed angels stood firm with God.✦✦✦ When he ascended bodily into heaven, the Holy Spirit kindled them with tongues of fire so that they would be thoroughly illuminated in inner knowledge, and so that they would also join others to themselves in this way — enabling them to perform many miracles and signs, adorned with the Catholic faith and sanctified by good works.✦✦

The Fruit of Christ's Teaching and the Present Decline

Christ's teaching bore abundant fruit through the many orders of the faithful, yet the present age sinks from apostolic strength into weakness and disorder.

So the teaching of the Son of God bore great fruit, and rising from strength to strength, advanced in purity; and a great multitude, shining in the light of faith, submitted to him, so that many who through forgetfulness and faithlessness had been blinded in Adam's fall were now made radiant with true faith and holiest works. And it was necessary that the Son of God should come at the end of time, because the ancient serpent had violated the whole human being through deception and mockery and blasphemy. But this too was necessary: that the bodily presence of the only-begotten Son of God should accomplish his work, which he began to carry out through the highest leaders governing the Church, and through other prelates set over the same Church, and then with the priests and their subjects, and with hermits who follow a virginal way of life, and with the host of spiritual people who live according to the angelic standard, and who also, in the trumpet of praise, worship God according to angelic praise, and with penitents who cry out to God through the imitation of God, and with good married people who obey the precepts of their teachers, and with the continent who, renouncing themselves, leave the world behind. For so the Son of God worked from the royal throne, and just as he returned to his Father with the presence of his body, showing himself to him, so also, gathering the upright works of all these, he shows them to his Father. These orders, then, which were established through the teaching of the Son of God, burned with great zeal as they rose from strength to strength, just as the day burns more fiercely after the first hour through the heat of the sun right up to the ninth hour. These times of ours decline from the original strength of apostolic discipline, as if sinking into a womanly weakness, and everything degenerates for the worse — as much through the turmoil of the elements as through the corruption of morals.12

Read the original Latin

« Ubi venit plenitudo temporis misit Deus Filium suum factum ex muliere, factum sub lege, ut eos qui sub lege erant redimeret, ut adoptionem filiorum reciperemus . » Hujus sententiae intellectus hoc modo accipiendus est: Deus Pater, qui caret initio et fine, in plenitudine temporis ab aeterno praeordinati, Filium suum pro redemptione perditi hominis ad terras misit signis et miraculis quamplurimis praefiguratum. Quod bene per arcam Noe nobis insinuare videtur. Significat enim Ecclesiam in praesenti saeculo tentationum variarum impulsibus fluctuantem, quam Filio suo nunc in restaurationem filiorum ejus per fidei gratiam conjunxit. Quae etiam in vertice montium constituta Dei omnipotentis aeternitatem figurare potest, qui omnes creaturas antequam fierent tales longe ante praeviderat, quales in praesenti per verbum suum distincte per species suas apparent. Coelestis etiam illa civitas, quae Dei filiorum habitaculum est, opere turrim elegantissimo constructam profert, per cujus ornatum pulcherrimum Abrahae summe fidelis obedientia significatur, Dei Filium nobis, et infinita miraculorum ejus insignia repraesentat. Lex namque data per Moysen obedientiam indefessam postulavit, sine qua nullo modo, sicut nec domus absque columnis, quibus sustentetur, nec homo sine corde, quo regatur, valeret subsistere. Obedientia etenim quidam ignis est, et lex splendor ejus est.

Et sicut Abraham ad Domini praeceptum domum suam patriamque relinquens, primus per circumcisionem immutatus est; sic Dei Filius absque omni contagione sanguinis, ex integerrima Virgine sancti Spiritus igne conceptus et genitus legem per Moysen datam in meliorem statum per semetipsum spiritaliter convertit. Quos enim de peccatorum sanguine procreatos hostiarum legalium sanguis liberare nequivit, decebat Conditoris sui clementiam, ut sui sanguinis inaestimabili pretio solus ipse eos liberaret. Et velut homo de creatura sibi concessa Deo sacrificium offerre consuevit, sic Dei Filius carne de homine sumpta, quam Deo Patri pro ipso offerret indutus est. Filius itaque Dei in mundum veniens, puram et lucidam doctrinam hominibus proposuit, et omnia quae praedicta sunt perlustrans, ea in alium modum permutavit, ita ut idola in Deum vivum, et prophetia in spiritalem viam conversa sint, quoniam sicut verbum hominis in inspiratione spiritus ejus emittitur, ita et Unigenitus Dei de Patre in aulam Virginis missus, et de Spiritu sancto conceptus est. Atque sic carne assumpta ex eadem Virgine natus, omnia praeterita et futura per semetipsum manifestavit, et quaeque narrata et audita hominum gesta in meliora convertit, inutilia scilicet delendo, utiliaque conservando; quemadmodum in exercitu bonorum angelorum fecit, quos post ruinam perditorum plus clarificavit. Nam ante nativitatem ejus omnia velut in tenebris erant, quae post assumptam earnem sicut sol illuminavit, quia ipse lex fuit eam complendo, et in id quod melius erat convertendo, praeceptisque Patris sui obediendo, quod Adam facere neglexerat. In eodem quoque Filio Dei justitia et pax conjunctae sunt; atque in justitia, de qua mundus cum spuma serpentis in peccatis obscuratus est per humanitatem illius compressa, est, quoniam ipse praeliator cum justitia et pace injustitiae resistit, justitia scilicet quae divinis praeceptis circumdata est, pace autem quae gratia Dei homini parcente munita existit, atque electos suos in similitudine illa, qua beati angeli cum Deo perstiterunt ad se collegit. Qui cum in coelos corporaliter ascenderet, Spiritus sanctus igneis linguis ita accendit, ut in interiori scientia sic perlustrarentur, ut etiam alios hoc modo sibi conjungerent, quatenus ipsi quamplurima miracula et signa facerent, catholica fide decorati, et bonis operibus sanctificati.

Sic doctrina Filii Dei multum fructum afferens, et de virtute in virtutem ascendens in puritate processit; plurimusque populus in luce fidei fulgens ei se subdidit, ita ut multi qui per oblivionem et infidelitatem in casu Adae obnubilati erant, cum vera fide et sanctissimis operibus elucidati sint. Et necesse fuit ut Filius Dei in fine temporum veniret, quia antiquus serpens deceptione et irrisione ac blasphemia totum hominem violaverat. Sed et hoc necesse erat, ut praesentia humanitatis corporis ejusdem Unigeniti Dei opus suum operaretur, quod operari incoepit per summos rectores Ecclesiam regentes, et per alios eidem Ecclesiae praelatos, et deinde cum sacerdotibus eorumque subditis, atque cum eremitis virgineum ordinem habentibus, et cum acie spiritalium hominum, qui secundum angelicam aciem sunt, et qui etiam in tuba laudum secundum angelicam laudem Deum colunt, et cum poenitentibus, qui per imitatores Dei ad ipsum clamant, atque cum bonis conjugatis, magistrorum suorum praeceptis obedientibus, et cum continentibus, qui se ipsos repudiantes mundum relinquunt. Sic enim Filius Dei a regalibus sedibus operatus est, et ut cum praesentia corporis sui ad Patrem suum rediit se illi ostendens, ita et recta opera horum omnium colligens, ea Patri suo ostendit. Isti autem praedicti ordines qui per doctrinam Filii Dei constituti sunt, in magno studio de virtute in virtutem ascendendo arserunt, quemadmodum dies post primam horam per ardorem solis usque ad nonam ferventius ardet.

Quod tempora ista a pristina apostolicae disciplinae fortitudine quasi in muliebrem debilitatem deficiant, et universa tam in elementorum conturbatione quam in morum depravatione in deterius abeant.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Gal.4.4-Gal.4.5 — But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, Gal.4.5 — in order to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
  2. ↩Gen.12.1 — Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your land and from your kindred and from your father's house to the land that I will show you.
  3. ↩Gal.4.4-Gal.4.5 — But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, Gal.4.5 — in order to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
  4. ↩Luke.1.35 — And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also the one to be born will be called Son of God."
  5. ↩Heb.9.22 — And under the law almost everything is cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
  6. ↩1Pet.1.18-1Pet.1.19 — knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things—silver or gold—from your futile way of life handed down from your fathers, 1Pet.1.19 — but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot
  7. ↩Phil.2.6-Phil.2.8 — who, existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to exploit, Phil.2.7 — but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and appearing as a human being. Phil.2.8 — And he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
  8. ↩John.1.1-John.1.3 — In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John.1.2 — He was in the beginning with God. John.1.3 — All things came into being through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.
  9. ↩Luke.1.35 — And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also the one to be born will be called Son of God."
  10. ↩Col.1.19-Col.1.20 — For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, Col.1.20 — and through him to reconcile all things to himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross — through him, whether things on earth or things in the heavens.
  11. ↩Eph.1.10 — as a plan for the fullness of time, to bring all things together in Christ—things in heaven and things on earth.
  12. ↩Matt.5.17 — Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill.
  13. ↩Rom.5.12-Rom.5.21 — Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and through sin death, and so death spread to all people, because all sinned— Rom.5.13 — For sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Rom.5.14 — Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam's transgression, who is a type of the one who was to come. Rom.5.15 — But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the trespass of the one man, how much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many. Rom.5.16 — And the gift is not like what came through the one who sinned. For the judgment following one trespass led to condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses led to justification. Rom.5.17 — For if by the trespass of the one man death reigned through the one, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Rom.5.18 — So then, just as through one trespass there was condemnation for all people, so also through one act of righteousness there was justification leading to life for all people. Rom.5.19 — For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. Rom.5.20 — The law came in alongside so that the trespass might increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Rom.5.21 — so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
  14. ↩Isa.9.6 — For the increase of his government and for peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.
  15. ↩Rom.3.26 — This was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the one who justifies the person who has faith in Jesus." Better sentence order for hearing and clearer antecedent from v.25.
  16. ↩Eph.2.14 — For he himself is our peace, who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of hostility
  17. ↩Acts.2.3-Acts.2.4 — And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed, and it sat upon each one of them. Acts.2.4 — And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
  18. ↩Acts.1.8 — But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

Notes

  1. 1 ↩The phrase 'muliebrem debilitatem' uses gendered language for weakness that reflects the source's cultural context; the intended sense is a decline from former vigor into softness or frailty, not a comment on women.
  2. 2 ↩'Conturbatione elementorum' may refer to cosmic/disturbance signs or to the elemental fabric of creation being thrown into disorder; 'depravatione morum' is moral corruption. The pairing suggests both physical and moral decline.

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