Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg

Meditations on the Most Holy Incarnation, Birth, and Youth of Jesus Christ

It is with great pleasure and excitement that I announce a new translation that I am undertaking for the weekly devotional: meditations on the birth, life, and death of Jesus by Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg (1633–1694).

Greiffenberg, the most important German-speaking female author of the 17th century, if not of all time, was an incredibly gifted Lutheran lay woman, who directed her talents to penning deeply moving mediations and sonnets aimed at honoring God and inspiring devotion in others. Despite her great skill and immense corpus of writings, only a small portion of her work has been brought into English. It will be very edifying for the Church to translate all her meditations into English, since her work is an inspiring witness to the beauty of the Lutheran faith and its heartfelt devotion to its center, Jesus Christ.

Below you’ll find the opening dedication and address from a book of her mediations on the incarnation, birth, and youth of Jesus. I’m confident from reading this short excerpt, you will already get a sense of the importance of her writings.

As with everything else in the weekly devotional, I will regularly send out free sections as they are completed. But if you are able and desire to support this translation project of recovering this important female voice of the Lutheran faith, and want to enjoy reading it—and many other treasures from the Lutheran Church—weekly, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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The Most Holy Incarnation, Birth, and Youth of Jesus Christ: Twelve Pious Meditations

By His Most Intimate Lover and Most Zealous Worshipper

Catharina Regina of Greiffenberg, Baroness of Seisenegg

Written and Prepared to Increase the Honor of God and to Inspire True Devotion

To the one, true, living, and infinite, eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the almighty Creator of heaven and earth, my most beloved heavenly Father.

Most Humble Dedication

O eternal source of all things, O essence of all essence, O spring of divinity and all that is good, O eternal beginning without beginning, and infinite end without end! In the beginning, You have created us to this end: to eternally take pleasure in Your uncreated and unending joy. When we allowed Your Word to depart from our hearts through disobedience, we made ourselves incapable of this goal of creation. But You turned Your Word and heart toward us anew, even shared it with us, or rather gave it to us completely, and have given Yourself in the same, when Your only-begotten Son was born a man, that we might become children of God. A thousand times a thousand tongues of seraphim cannot express this wondrous grace and gracious wonder. Not satisfied with this, You have also given me Your Holy Spirit, who has written this in my heart with His tongue of fire and makes me write of it: so that I, among many thousands (of Jews and Turks) who do not know this nor wish to know this, know it, and among an innumerable multitude of those who know it but do not heed it, may show the utmost reverence and worship, and also find in it my sole desire and joy. Because You have given me Your heart in and through Your subsistent Word, how can I do anything other than give You, in turn, my heart in and through these words, which speak of and extol the same? To whom else can I ascribe the description of His birth, than to the One who had it proclaimed several thousand years ago and who granted Him the eternal birth? To whom should I more rightly dedicate this writing than to the One who dedicates Himself to me in the image or writing of His heart? To the Father of the eternally subsistent Word rightly belong all words which speak of and honor that eternal Word. To the Father who wills to only be honored in the Son, rightly belongs all honor which is written of the Son. I can therefore extend this adoration of Your Son's birth to no one better than to You, the almighty Father, from whose unoriginate grace, He and all salvation infinitely proceed. Receive it in grace, O inscrutable Arch-grace! Let it be pleasing to You, in and through the One in whom You are well-pleased. If there is something good therein, then it is of Your Spirit, who has inspired it in me. If there is something unfitting, then it is my error, which You graciously desire to forgive. O heavenly Eye that sees all, You see my intent, which is aimed at Your honor. Guide it by Your most wise, marvelous guidance and grant it to attain its desired aim. Let the swaddling clothes of Jesus be the guiding thread which winds Your honor out from the earth that it be worshipped by all the world. If I have done this, then I have achieved enough, and my time and industry which has spun and woven on this thread and these swaddling clothes my whole life long has been well spent. If it does not happen here, then it will happen there, and all the angels will join with me in the Deo Gloria, just as I have sung the Gloria in Excelsis with them here. In the meantime, let this be acceptable, in Your most acceptable One, let it be beloved, in Your most beloved One. Spurn not as a maid Your poor shepherdess, for whose sake You once esteemed the shepherds to behold this wonder. Most graciously receive my childlike babbling about Your child, who is Wisdom itself, until I shall worship and praise You with angelic tongue, O heavenly Father, together with Your Son who is both God and man, and the Holy Spirit. Until then, permit me, O almighty Creator of heaven and earth, to call and confess myself before the entire world to be the lowliest and most obedient handmaid of Your divine majesty, Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg.

Prefatory Address to the Noble Reader

Do not marvel, O noble-minded reader, when you hear my babbling like a child and adolescent concerning the childhood and adolescence of the essential Word of our eternal Father. Consider how the angels themselves cannot speak of it worthily enough. What should I, unworthy as I am, do? Since Wisdom itself did not shy away from becoming a child, do not be embarrassed to hear me say something childish. Do not expect lofty words. I speak of a child who humbled Himself beneath all creatures, not of lofty wisdom. I profess to be lowly, small, and childish with Him. You will not find what you are seeking if you seek something other than love and simplicity here. The love which drew my Redeemer from heaven draws me to His crib and opens my lips to proclaim His praise. I seek His praise and not my own. I seek nothing other than the happiness that the world might magnify and praise Him with my words. I seek not my honor, but God's honor, that the Deo Gloria may thereby be spread into the world. Therefore, I have also not wanted to follow the wise and prudent advice of several good, learned friends that I should have neatly appended Latin testimonies from the fathers at the end of this work, which I certainly could have done. But to show that I flee from all vain glory and honor, I have refrained from doing so. One who is learned and well-read will already see that I have not cited them falsely or improperly, but with justification and fidelity. Besides, others would not have undertaken the effort to search and find this. Such would thus have been a futile vanity, the kind that I have long since renounced. Moreover, do not marvel, dear reader, that I have availed myself of the testimonies and sayings of the fathers and the ancient Church only in the first meditation concerning the eternal divinity of Christ, and have afterwards for the most part refrained from doing so, as though I merely wished to display much and achieve little, or only commence highly and afterwards let everything decline. No! It is not so intended but rather transpired with forethought and careful consideration. Because the point concerning the divinity of Christ is the chief foundation and cornerstone of the entire work, it had to be well established and proven. For when this is believed, then everything else is true and credible in itself, so that it no longer requires much proof. If I am sometimes upon something too long, or if I too often repeat the inexpressible wonder of the incarnation, let it be considered that no one can say too much about that with which all the angels can never be sated. If I have availed myself too much of, for example, prosopopoeia, or used it in a manner other than what is customary, namely, not in immovable things, but also in the living and active person, let it be known that the holy fathers have done it before me. Because it was allowed for them, it is also not forbidden for me. I will not excuse my mistakes in what remains, hoping the kind reader shall do so for me, as well as for the printer. Whoever is desirous of the virgin honey of the love and devotion of Jesus will not measure the wax cells so precisely to see whether they are perfectly diametric and hexagonal, but will accept them with their sweet honey, even if they do not come from an architectonic cell. Whoever seeks after high-spirited, ingenious, erudite, and profound things must not look for them here, but rather in the highly-prudent Aristotle, in the sage Plato, in the well-spoken Cicero and Demosthenes, and among those who have filled their positions in our own time. From a poor shepherdess, one must expect nothing but a simple lullaby, with which she makes love and devotion sing. If it is kindly received, and I am redeemed from my enemy, I shall direct my life further to the meditation of my Redeemer's life and soon give the inclined reader again something to read. If not, then this shall be my last. Perhaps it shall be more charming when its author lies in the grave, wherein she shall be laid as the steadfast friend of all those who love God and virtue.

Catharina Regina, Frau von Greiffenberg, Der Allerheiligsten Menschwerdung, Geburt und Jugend Jesu Christi: Zwölf Betrachtungen (1678)

The text held by the angel reads, “Nothing but Jesus,” in Greiffenberg, Des Allerheiligst- und Allerheilsamsten Leidens und Sterbens Jesu Christi: Zwölf andachtige Betrachtungen (1683)