Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Health Vailankanni

God is Spirit (Jn 4:24), and being Spirit and incorporeal, he begot spiritually by an inscrutable and incomprehensible generation. The Son himself says of the Father: “The Lord said to me, 'You are my Son, today I have begotten you'" (Ps 2:7). This 'today' is not recent but eternal; this 'today' is timeless, before all ages. “From the womb before the morning star I begot you” (Ps 109 [110]:3). So believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. He is the Only-begotten Son according to the words of the Gospel: “For God so loved the world that he gave his Only-begotten Son, so that they who believe in him may not perish, but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16) (...) Saint John witnessed to this saying: “We saw his glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten from the father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14). Trembling before him the demons said: “Leave us alone! What have you to do with us, Jesus, Son of the living God.” So he is the Son of God by nature and not by adoption, being begotten of the Father (...) For the Father, who is true God, begot a Son who is true God like himself (...) The Father did not beget the Son in the way that the human mind begets speech. For the mind has a substantial reality within us, but our speech once uttered is scattered on the air and expires. We know that Christ was begotten not as an uttered word but as “the living and abiding Word” (1Pt 1:23), not a word spoken by the lips and scattered but begotten by the Father eternally, indefinably and substantially. “For in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1), the Word who knew the Father's will and made all things by the Father's decree, the Word who descended and ascended (cf. Is 55:10-11) (...) This Word is endowed with authority and universal rule, for “the Father has entrusted all things to the Son” (cf. Jn 13:3).

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"Your all-powerful Word leapt down from heaven's royal throne" (Wsd 18:15)

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