Incarnation Quotes

“You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious.”
― Madeleine L'Engle

“He, the Life of all, our Lord and Saviour, did not arrange the manner of his own death lest He should seem to be afraid of some other kind. No. He accepted and bore upon the cross a death inflicted by others, and those other His special enemies, a death which to them was supremely terrible and by no means to be faced; and He did this in order that, by destroying even this death, He might Himself be believed to be the Life, and the power of death be recognised as finally annulled. A marvellous and mighty paradox has thus occurred, for the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonour and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death's defeat.”
― St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

“Man's maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother's breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witnesses, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.”
― Saint Augustine of Hippo

“The Self-revealing of the Word is in every dimension - above, in creation; below, in the Incarnation; in the depth, in Hades; in the breadth, throughout the world. All things have been filled with the knowledge of God.”
― St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

“Dead men cannot take effective action; their power of influence on others lasts only till the grave. Deeds and actions that energise others belong only to the living. Well, then, look at the facts in this case. The Saviour is working mightily among men, every day He is invisibly persuading numbers of people all over the world, both within and beyond the Greek-speaking world, to accept His faith and be obedient to His teaching. Can anyone, in face of this, still doubt that He has risen and lives, or rather that He is Himself the Life? Does a dead man prick the consciences of men...?”
― St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

“The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been just to appear and dazzle the beholders. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who needed Him, and to be manifested according as they could bear it, not vitiating the value of the Divine appearing by exceeding their capacity to receive it.”
― St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

“The body of the Word, then, being a real human body, in spite of its having been uniquely formed from a virgin, was of itself mortal and, like other bodies, liable to death. But the indwelling of the Word loosed it from this natural liability, so that corruption could not touch it. Thus is happened that two opposite marvels took place at once: the death of all was consummated in the Lord's body; yet, because the Word was in it, death and corruption were in the same act utterly abolished.”
― St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

“The nativity mystery “conceived from the Holy Spirit and born from the Virgin Mary”, means, that God became human, truly human out of his own grace. The miracle of the existence of Jesus , his “climbing down of God” is: Holy Spirit and Virgin Mary! Here is a human being, the Virgin Mary, and as he comes from God, Jesus comes also from this human being. Born of the Virgin Mary means a human origin for God. Jesus Christ is not only truly God, he is human like every one of us. He is human without limitation. He is not only similar to us, he is like us.”
― Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

“For the Lord touched all parts of creation, and freed and undeceived them all from every deceit.”
― St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

“Prayer is a moment of incarnation - God with us. God involved in the details of my life.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World

“... without the incarnation, Christianity isn't even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. "Be nice to one another" is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond brokenness, and break open the dark doors of death with the key of hope.

The incarnation is an essential part of Jesus-shaped spirituality.”
― Michael Spencer, Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality

“...the incarnation is the complete refutation of every human system and institution that claims to control, possess, and distribute God. Whatever any church or religious leader may claim in regard to their particular access to God or control over your experience of God, the incarnation is the last word: God loves the world. God came into the world in the form of the people he created, the human race (including you and me), who bear his image. God's creation of humanity in his image gives hints of who he is, since we all are marked by his fingerprints.

But as flawed humans, we give only a vague hint of God. Our broken reflection of God's image is easily drowned out by our broken humanity. then, two thousand years ago, God came in his fullness. He came to all of us in Jesus. The incarnation is not owned, trademarked, or controlled by any church. It belongs to every human being. The incarnation is not something that requires a distributor or middleman. It is a gracious gift to every person everywhere, religious or not. God gave himself to us in Jesus.”
― Michael Spencer, Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality

“If Christianity was only about finding a group of people to live life with who shared openly their search for God and allowed anyone regardless of behavior to seek too and who collectively lived by faith to make the world a little more like Heaven would you be interested ’ ‘Hell yes ’ was his reply. He continued ‘Are there churches like that”
― Hugh Halter & Matt Smay, The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community

“There is only one all-pervading God. It has no religion, no incarnation. It is free from all contaminations.”
― Amit Ray, Meditation: Insights and Inspirations

“Her (Mary's) Son first had to be the Child of the Father in order then to become man and be capable of taking up on his shoulders the burden of a guilty world.”
― Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child

“Mary thus learns that the Most High has ever borne a Son in his bosom, and that this Son has now chosen her bosom as dwelling-place.”
― Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child

“This Lord of natures today was transformed contrary to His nature;
it is not too difficult for us to also overthrow our evil will." Hymns of the Nativity, Hymn 1:97, pg. 74 in Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns (New York: Paulist Press, 1989).”
― St. Ephrem the Syrian

“In the history of a soul’s evolution there is a critical point of the human incarnation that decides for us whether we stay there, go down or progress upwards. There is a knot of worldly desires impeding us; cut the knot by mastering desires and go forward. This done, progress is assured.”
― Virchand Raghavji Gandhi

“Action is always superior to speech in the Gospels, which is why the Word became flesh and not newsprint.”
― Colin M. Morris, Mankind my church,

“We must primarily become seekers of God instead of founders of works, for work will not sustain us through the traumas of incarnation.”
― Viv Grigg

“Gandalf faced and suffered death; and came back or was sent back, as he says, with enhanced power. But though one may be in this reminded of the Gospels, it is not really the same thing at all. The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without guarantees.

Letter 181
To Michael Straight [drafts]”
― Humphrey Carpenter, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

“Mary is the archtype of the gushing spring, the rushing fountain, the source of inexhaustible life and fecundity. She is, of course, the primordial womb in which all of creation is being fashioned and knit together, the Mother of God, the one whose yes allowed the divine and human to be woven together in a new way.”
― Christine Valters Paintner, Birthing the Holy: Wisdom from Mary to Nurture Creativity and Renewal

“The breath of our soul dancing
into the dust of the Earth
and shaping it with our soul’s artistry
We are moving poetry”
― Tamara Rendell, Mystical Tides

“Let always flow into you, your memory of where you are from. Feel the awesome power that called you into being when your soul first awoke and cried out your true and only name. All other names are garments. All other lives are garments. We put them on, and sometimes they bind with stays and ties of hard cord. And other times they flow like silk around us, and we dance freely moving our souls in beautiful harmony with the flesh.”
― Tamara Rendell, Realm of the Witch Queen

“If he did not suffer, if he did not bleed, if he did not feel every bit of the pain of execution as he gulped for air, then he would not be the Christ we know. He was fulfilling his epochal role in history on that cross; he was not playacting, not a god pretending to die. He was the Word made flesh, who was, however strangely and incomprehensibly, full of grace and truth.”
― Jon Meacham, The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross

“What this means is that if ever one finds oneself in Hell, Jesus is there to release them when they are ready. Remember, nothing can separate us from God. Not sin. Not death. Not Hell itself. Nothing in all creation can separate us from God. That is incarnational atonement.”
― Bradley Sullivan, For the Hurt, the Blessed, and the Damned

“The story of scripture is a story of God creating humanity out of love. The story of scripture is a story of humanity being hurt by all of the challenges of life, as we well know. The story of scripture is then a story of God healing humanity through continually bringing us unity to God and each other. The story of scripture is not one of sin, anger, fear, and extremely limited grace and forgiveness. The story of scripture is one of healing, connection, belonging, and love for all.”
― Bradley Sullivan, For the Hurt, the Blessed, and the Damned

“We will begin, then, with the creation of the world and with God its Maker, for the first fact that you must grasp is this: the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning.”
― Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation