And the Angel Gabriel was sent from God, into a city of Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the House of David; and the Virgin's name was Mary, And the Angel being come in said unto her: 'Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: Blessed art thou among women.' - Luke 1:26,27,28
God is about to descend from heaven and to clothe Himself with our poor and fragile human nature in the womb of a virgin; this is the mystery that the Archangel Gabriel announces to Mary (Luke 1). It is an incomprehensible and ineffable mystery, expected for four thousand years and prepared from all eternity. Let us contemplate this preparation even in the bosom of God Himself.
Before the birth of ages God saw all that was to be. The work conceived by Him unfolded itself before His eyes with all its wonders, with all its mighty revolutions. He saw sin enter into His work, and He decreed that sin should be punished. But the Word intervened and proposed to His Father to receive in His own adorable person the strokes of divine justice. Sin will be expiated by a Victim equal to the Majesty it offends; it will be pardoned. To effect the reconciliation of mercy and justice, the Word, a member of the divine family, must become a member of the family of sinners and permeate with His infinite merits the guilty nature He would save. To this effect an unspotted and sanctified humanity, which God will wound and put to death on account of our iniquities, will be formed in the virginal womb of a daughter of Adam by the mysterious and chaste operation of the Holy Ghost. Such is the admirable and merciful design of the Holy Trinity. Let us adore it in the depths of our hearts.
The hour of its accomplishment has struck. Mary has pronounced the fiat (let it be done) of a new creation more glorious than that of the world; and 'the Word was made flesh.' The Word, the true Son of God, eternally begotten of Him, equal to His Father in all things, the resplendent mirror and living image of His original principle, the personal splendour of the divine substance - this is the Word made flesh. Flesh, did I say? Yes. He has passed by the angels and has not noticed their pure and holy natures, and He has espoused our soul with its weak and corruptible companion. He takes the world at its worst, in order to associate all creatures to His divinity; He descends to the lowest depths, for it is not the immortal and impassible flesh of innocence and justice He assumes, but the miserable flesh of sinners. If His sanctity shrinks from contracting the stain of sin. His merciful condescension assumes its entire responsibility. Thus, in the eyes of His Father, He becomes sin itself: 'Him, who knew no sin. He hath made sin for us, that we might be made the justice of God in Him'. (2 Corinthians 5:21) How well it is expressed by the great Apostle of the Gentiles: 'He has annihilated Himself.' (Philippians 2)
In this annihilation all is pure goodness; we have done nothing to deserve it. The rare desires of holy souls were washed away in torrents of iniquity. After waiting long, the world, in decay and in rottenness, appeared more deserving of destruction than at its beginning; but the errors and crimes of man had not exhausted the indefatigable love of Him who annihilated Himself.
In presence of this great mystery the sentiments of our soul should be those of profound astonishment, of loving and grateful admiration. The principle of our greatness is to be found in this abasement of the Divinity. Having adored the Son of God annihilated, let us consider what we are by the Incarnation: Brothers of God! Nothing is more certain than this great honour; for the Word! incarnate, whom Mary calls Jesus, is clothed in our veritable human nature and carries in His sacred veins blood drawn from the same source whence ours has descended. Whilst we give to Him, by the flesh, our earthly father, He gives to us, by the hypostatic union. His Heavenly Father. Children of wrath, we are made in Him children of benediction; condemned to a double death, we receive from Him resurrection and life; proscribed by the malediction pronounced in the beginning of the world, we are called by Him to the inheritance of glory and beatitude promised also at the moment of our creation. Our debased soul is raised to honour; our flesh, humbled by suffering, aspires to immortality. With Jesus, and through Him, and in Him our thoughts, desires, and actions are purified, transformed, and raised to heaven. The aspiration of our nature, a prey, from the day of its origin, to the mysterious longing for the infinite, is at length satiated; now we are indeed divine beings. Oh! what honour, and, in consequence, what respect we owe ourselves! 'O man!' says Saint Leo, 'recognize your dignity; and having become a participant in the divine nature by the incarnate Word, never lower yourself by returning to the meanness of your former life.'
- text taken from Jesus in the Rosary, by Father Jacques-Marie Louis Monsabre, O.P.