MEDITATION ON The Expectation Of Our Saviors Nativity ~ Luis de la Puente

Of the Expectation of our Saviors Nativity

The XV Meditation.

Of the expectation of our blessed Lady’s delivery: and of the Preparation for the birth of our Savior Christ.

For that in Spain, eight days before the birth of our Savior Christ, we celebrate the feast of the expectation of our Blessed Lady’s delivery I insert here this meditation for that day, and the days ensuing till the Nativity: in which we are to consider the lively desires that three persons had of this sovereign delivery, and birth: that is to say: the child: the Virgin: and St. Joseph: in whom are represented the faithful, that firmly believe thus mystery, and in their imitation desire to prepare themselves worthily to celebrate it.

THE I POINT. 

First, I am to consider the most fervent desire that our Lord Jesus Christ had, being in the womb of his mother, to perfect, and bring to an end the business of our Redemption, and consequently to be born in the world, to frame all things according to the will of his Father. For even from his mothers belly that sentence was true, that afterwards he uttered: I am to be baptized with a baptism, o how am I straightened until it be dispatched? For howsoever his body was pressed, and straightened in that strait womb of his mother, his heart was much more pressed, and straitened with the force of this vehement desire: for which I ought to give him infinite thanks, and to be correspondent unto him, with such another hearty desire: truly to serve him. But notwithstanding this desire, he would not be born before the nine months, which is the time wherein commonly all other children are born. 

1. To conform himself unto all, and to suffer that prison entirely without omitting as much as a day: for in that which concerned suffering, he would use with himself no dispensation,exception, nor privilege; & therefore he would not be born at the seven months, nor at the eight, but at the nine months complete. 

2. For that he took all this time, as a time of retiredness for his entrance into the world, spending it in perpetual prayer, and contemplation. As he was retired forty days in the desert, before he manifested himself to the world by his preaching: advising us herin, how we ought to recollect ourselves, dedicating sometime to retired prayer, and to be vacant to God only, before we issue out in public, and begin any great enterprise: as likewise how we should recollect ourselves to celebrate with devotion his holy Nativity

Luis de la Puente