Tractatus Prior, Pars Prior, Cap. 3. De revocatione hominis et promissione adventus Christi.

Tractatus Prior, Pars Prior, Cap. 3. De revocatione hominis et promissione adventus Christi.

I bless you and give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty and merciful, whose nature is goodness, whose will is power, and whose work is mercy. For your immense and free goodness, by which you deemed humanity worthy of the announcement of the most honorable incarnation and the reverend angelic salutation, through which the angel Gabriel devoutly greeted the most blessed virgin Mary, announcing to her the divine mystery of the Son of God to be incarnated from her. I praise and honor you for the greatness of the faith of the Virgin Mary, for her firm consent and humble response, and for all her virtues, which she especially demonstrated when she obediently replied to the archangel who was announcing the good news: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word."^✦ I praise and glorify you, O eternal wisdom of the Father, for your astonishing inclination toward our lowly state in this wretched prison of mortality, and for your pure conception celebrated through the cooperation of the Holy Spirit from Mary, in whose virginal womb the ineffable power of the Most High came upon you, forming your sacred flesh from the untouched flesh of the virgin. For you are the true God, consubstantial with the eternal Father, having become one flesh with us without the contagion of sin, so that you might make us one spirit with you through the adoption of the children of God. I praise and glorify you for your spontaneous self-emptying, which reveals the fullness of your being, and for your loving acceptance of our suffering, humility, weakness, and mortality, so that you might fill us with your self-emptying, save us through your suffering, exalt us through your humility, strengthen us through your weakness, and lead us to the glory of immortality. I praise and exalt you for your long dwelling among us, during which you, a little child, lay in the narrow confines of a virgin's womb for nine months, awaiting the time of your birth, you who, according to your divinity, have no need for time or years, but have arranged all things in their proper time and order. O wondrous and greatly admirable dignity, that you, God of immense glory, did not disdain to become contemptible by taking on our lowly nature, and you who created all things without labor, chose to take on our pains in order to free us from our suffering. O sweetest Jesus, splendor of eternal glory, how much lower you made yourself in humanity, yet how much greater you have shown yourself to me in goodness! And as much as you became less for me, so much more dear you are to me.