For Your Contemplation
by Ivo of Chartres
In the first Advent our Lord came to justify the wicked; in the second He will come to condemn the wicked. In the first He came to call back those that were wrested from Him; in the second He will come to glorify those who are converted to Him. In the first advent Christ was betrayed for the wicked to a death which He did not deserve; in the second He will give up the wicked to a death which they do deserve. In the first advent He came to form our hearts again to the Image of God. But in the second, He will form again the body of our humility so as to be configured to the body of His glory.
For as by the first earthly man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, so it was fitting that by the Second Man from heaven, man should first be justified from sin, and after that, should by the same be restored to immortality. For in the same order in which he had perished, in that order he was to be restored. The first death was transgression of the commandments, from which the second springs, the corruption of the flesh by the departure of the soul. Thus, the first resurrection is justification; the second, the restoration of corrupt flesh to immortality.
Saint Ivo was the bishop of Chartres in the llth century. He was an important figure during the Investiture Controversy. He was opposed of the practice of simony (the selling of ecclesiastical offices) and of wrongful divorce (against the French King, Philip I).
From the University Lutheran Chapel Newsletter
Fall/Winter 2015
