I
You know that it was just after the sin of our first parents in the very cradle of the already rebellious human race that God began to reveal the mystery of the Incarnation. Adam and Eve, prostrate before the Creator, in the shame and despair of their fall, dare not raise their eyes to heaven. And behold, even before pronouncing the sentence of their banishment from the terrestrial paradise, God speaks to them the first words of forgiveness and hope.
Instead of being cursed and driven out for ever from the presence of their God, as were the rebel angels, they were to have a Redeemer; He it was Who should break the power won over them by the devil. And as their fall began by the prevarication of the woman, it was to be by the son of a woman that this redemption should be wrought: "Inimicitias ponam inter te et mulierem, et semen tuum et semen illius: ipsa conteret caput tuum" (Gen 3:15).
This is what is called the "Protogospel," the first word of salvation. It is the first promise of redemption, the dawn of divine mercy to the sinful earth, the first ray of that light which was one day to vivify the world, the first manifestation of the mystery hidden in God from all eternity.
After this promise, all the religion of the human race, and, later, all the religion of the chosen people is concentrated around this "seed of the woman," this "semen mulieris" which is to deliver mankind.
Throughout the years as they pass by, and as the centuries advance, God makes His promise more precise; He repeats it with more solemnity. He assures the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that it is from their race that the blessed seed shall come forth: "Et benedicentur in semine tuo omnes gentes terrae" (Gen 22:18; cf. Gal 3:16); to the dying Jacob, He shows that it is in the tribe of Juda that shall arise the One Who is to come, the desire of all peoples: "Donec veniat qui nittendus est, et ipse erit exspectatio gentium" (Ibid. 49:10).
And now behold how the nations, forgetful of the primeval revelations, sink insensibly into error. God then chooses for Himself a people that shall be the guardian of His promises. To this people, throughout the centuries, God will recall His promises, renew them, render them clearer and more abundant: this will be the era of the prophets.
If you listen to the sacred oracles of the prophets of Israel, you will remark that the traits whereby God depicts the Person of the future Messias and specifies the character of His mission, are at times so opposed that it seems as if they could not be encountered in the same person. Sometimes the prophets attribute to the Redeemer prerogatives such as could only befit a God, sometimes, they predict for this Messias a sum of humiliations, contradictions, infirmities and sufferings with which the last of men could scarcely deserve to be overwhelmed.
You will constantly be coming across this striking contrast.
For example, there is David, the king dear to God's Hears; the Lord swore to confirm his race for ever: the Messias was to be of the royal family of David. God reveals Him to David as "his son and his Lord" (Ps 59:1; cf. Mt 22:41-45): his son by reason of the humanity that He was one day to take from a Virgin of his family, his Lord, by reason of His divinity. David contemplates Him "in the brightness of the saints," begotten eternally before the rising of the day star; a supreme High Priest "according to the order of Melchisedech" (Ps 59:3-4), anointed to reign over us because of His " truth and meekness and justice" (Ps. 44:5); in a word, the Son of God Himself to Whom all nations are to be given as an inheritance: "Dominus dixit ad me: Filius meus es tu, ego hodie genui te: postula a me et dabo tibi gentes haereditatem tuam" (Ps. 2:7-8). St. Paul says to the Hebrews that these are prerogatives wherein a God alone can glory (Heb 1:13).
But David contemplates too the pierced Hands and Feet, the garments divided among the soldiers who cast lots upon His coat (Ps 22:17-19); He beholds Him given gall and vinegar to drink (Ps 68:22). Then again see the Divine attributes: He will not be touched by the corruption of the tomb, but, victorious over death, He will sit down at the right hand of God (Ps 15:10).
This contrast is not less striking in Isaias, the great Seer; so precise and full of detail is he that he might be called the fifth Evangelist. One would say that he was relating accomplished facts rather than foretelling future events.
The prophet, transported up to heaven, says of the Messias: "Who shall declare His generation": "Generationem ejus quis enarrabit" (Is 53:8)? He gives Him names such as no man has ever borne: "His name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, God the mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace" (Is 9:6). Born of a Virgin, "His name shall be called Emmanuel" (7:14), God with us. Isaias describes Him "come forth as brightness," and "lighted as a lamp" (62:1); he sees Him opening the eyes of the blind and unstopping the ears of the deaf, loosing the tongue of the dumb and making the lame to walk (35:5-6); he shows Him as "a Leader and a Master to the Gentiles" (55:4); he sees the idols utterly destroyed before Him (2:14-18); and he hears God promise by oath that before this Saviour "every knee shall be bowed" and every tongue shall confess His power (Is 45:23).
And yet this Redeemer, Whose glory the prophet thus exalts, is to be overwhelmed with such sufferings, and such humiliations are to crush Him that He will be looked upon as "the most abject of men... as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted;... led as a sheep to the slaughter... reputed with the wicked... because the Lord was pleased to bruise Him in infinity" (Is 53, 3 seq.).
In most of the prophets you can see this opposition of traits with which they describe the greatness and the abasements, the power and the weakness, the sufferings and the glory of the Messias. You will see with what condescending wisdom God prepared the minds of His people to receive the revelation of the ineffable mystery of a God-Man, at once the supreme Lord Whom all nations adore, and the Victim for the sins of the world.
The economy of the Divine mercy is, as you know, wholly based upon faith; faith is the foundation and the root of all justification. Without this faith, even the bodily presence of Christ Jesus would be unable to produce the fulness of its effect in souls.
Now faith is communicated to us by the Holy Spirit's inward action which accompanies the statement of the divine truths made by prophets and preachers: Fides ex auditu (Rom 10:7).
In so often recalling the ancient promises, in revealing, little by little through the mouths of the prophets, the traits of the Redeemer Who was to come, God willed to produce in the hearts of the just of the Old Covenant the requisite conditions whereby the coming of the Messias should be salutary for them. Besides the more the just of the Old Covenant were filled with faith and confidence in the promises announced by their prophets, the more they would burn with the desire to see them realized, and the more they would be ready to receive the abundance of graces that the Saviour was to bring to the world. It was thus that the Virgin Mary, Zachary and Elisabeth, Simeon, Anna, and the other faithful souls who lived at the time of Christ's coming, at once recognised Him and were inundated with His favours.
You see how God was pleased to prepare mankind for the coming of His Son upon earth. St. Peter could truly say to the Jews that they were "the children of the prophets" (Acts 3:25). St. Paul could write to the Hebrews that before God spoke to them in person, He "at sundry times, and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets": "Multifariam multisque modis" (Heb 1:1).
The faithful Jews were, moreover, constantly in expectation of the Messias. Their faith discerned in the person of this Redeemer one sent by God, a King, a God Who was to put an end to their miseries, and deliver them from the burden of their sins. They have but one longing: "Send, O Lord, Him Who is to come." They have but one desire: to behold with their eyes the countenance of the Saviour of Israel. The promised Messias was the object towards which converged all the hopes, all the worship, all the religion of the Old Covenant. All the Old Testament is a prolonged Advent the prayers of which are summed up in this prayer of Isaias: "Emitte Agnum, Domine, Dominatorem terrae" (Is 16:1). "Send forth, O Lord, the Lamb, the Ruler of the earth." "Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just": "Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant justum"; "Let the earth be opened, and bud forth a Saviour": "A periatur terra et germinet Salvatorem" (Is 45:8).
