overshadowed her, the Body of Our Lord was formed from her pure blood, God created the human Soul to dwell in it, and by the act of the Incarnation that Soul and Body became the Soul and Body of the Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity; Mary became the Mother of God and Gabriel worshipped before the Tabernacle of the Word made flesh. Mary was the next to adore; Joseph, Elizabeth, John, Zachary followed, and there may have been other privileged ones to whom Our Lord Himself revealed His secret; but the world at large went on as usual--it "knew Him not." The same thing happens every day in our midst. When the priest with his God hidden on his breast passes on his way to give the Bread of Life to some sufferer, only a few privileged ones know the secret and offer their silent adoration. _Venite adoremus._ POINT II. DIVINE ADORATION. It was a _new life_ that Our Lord entered upon at the moment of the Incarnation. He had had His Divine Life from all eternity, but God had never before been man. He now for the first time could express Himself through a human body. God could adore with human lips, could love with a human heart, could suffer through human senses, could plan with a human intelligence, could reason with a human mind. The consequence of the union of the two natures was that the human nature was perfect, more than perfect--it was Divine, and God received at the moment of the Incarnation, the first perfect human act of adoration, the first perfect human act of love, of humility and of all the other virtues. The God-Man could adore perfectly, because being God He knew God and knew what adoration was fitting for God; it was God adoring God and yet it was a human act, the act of a man like ourselves. At that moment God received what He wanted from one of the human race. The first breath drawn by His Son Incarnate made it worth His while to have created man in spite of the Fall. He received not only reparation but all He expected from the human race when He first created it. He was satisfied, and would have been satisfied even if that first moment had also been His last on earth. The Incarnation would have done its work, the justice of God could have required no more--a human will was perfectly submissive to His Will, a human heart beat in unison with His, a human creature offered itself as a victim for the race: "Behold, I come to do Thy Will, O My God," I have desired it. (Ps. XXXIX. 8, 9). God received at the moment of the Incarnation a higher act of worship than He had ever received from all the nine choirs of Angels, and that act was a _human_ act. Did the Angels who fell understand this and was this the cause of their rebellion? It is true that this first moment of the Incarnation would have more than satisfied God, but it was not enough for the God-made-Man. He would go on, on even to the death of the cross, not to satisfy His Father's justice, but His own love, and to show to those