Chap. 1, v. 3 and 4. "...concerning His Son, who was made to Him of the seed of David, according to the flesh, predestinated the Son of God for His own virtue, according to the spirit of sanctification, and by His resurrection from the dead."
The most holy Author says,
«"Predestinated the Son of God for His own virtue." Which? One? Many? Of what nature? I will tell them to you.
First. Of the divine nature.
The Son of the Father is God like the Father, and having taken on human flesh has neither destroyed nor placed a pause in the union between the Father from whom the Son is begotten and in whose Son the Father delights. Not only. The Son of God does not cease to be God for having taken on the nature of man. Begotten by God the Father through the natural spreading of the perfect Love, who because of His nature has the need to love, and who for His dignity has the need to love a Perfection equal to His [own] infinite one - every other love of God, excluding the one for the Most Blessed Virgin, our love, is the goodness of God - only He, with the love as Son and as Son of God, satisfies God with a love worthy of Him.
I anticipate your objection by saying to you: By loving Mary, God still loves Himself because He formed Her full of Grace, through a thought of Grace, so that She could give birth to Grace for the world. It can be said of Mary: [that She is] the womb of God because She gave birth to the Son of God, the Grace of which She was full, and She gave a Man to the Earth worthy of the paternal Love.
As a circling fishing vessel in which the waters flow down without ever going into a river, so too Mary, the purest water from an enclosed fountain, emerged from the incandescent fervour of eternal Thought and flowed along the rivers of peace, bringing peace and purity with Her; and in God, She re-entered in order to receive Him and to generate the Son of God; She then returned among the savage arenas in order to give the Light, the Truth, and the Life to the lonely-hearted and again, after having completed Her mission, like water that is evaporated by the sun, She was taken up into the mystical womb who gave birth to Her for you so that She could give birth to Salvation for you. And there She is: the inviolate Fount of purity, the only worthy mirror of Perfection that forgets everything which is sinful by looking at the Immaculate.
The Word does not cease to be God because He made himself Man. It is not a captured humanity, a debasement of Divinity, His eternal Nature. But it is an elevated Humanity, even without losing His nature, in the perfection of the unity with the Divinity, a fact affirmed by the prodigies performed by Christ. The Father always with the Son. The Son always God like the Father. Because the Divinity cannot split or mutate its nature through an apparent division and annihilation in nature inferior to that of the divine nature.
Jesus Christ is therefore the Son of God through the divine Nature of the Word generated by the Father, who incarnated Himself through the power of the Holy Spirit for the salvation of humanity.
But - in the second manner - however, He has also predestinated Himself the Son of God through the human nature, virtuous in a perfect way.
Jesus Christ, the Son begotten of the Father of the seed of David, had a free will. Like God and like man. His actions show this freedom of His will, rendered according to how He wished, when He wished, on whom He wished. And neither elements nor creatures could have opposed themselves to His will which was the perfect free will of God.
They were not able to. Only once were they able to. However, then it was because the Son of God did not prevaricate. He did not abuse this powerful free will of His in order to escape from death on the cross. If He were to have done so, He would have committed a robbery, a misuse, a prevarication of His infinite powers as the Son of God. And in doing so, He would have become like the rebellious Lucifer, even more than Lucifer.
Christ, however, was never a rebel. In nothing; not even the natural human repugnance of torture made Him so. Because above His free will was the Will of the Father. And the most perfect divine Son, in His Nature equal to that of the Father's, did not take advantage of it, but with reverential love always said to He who had begotten Him, "May Your will be done," and meekly and obediently placed His wrists onto the ropes in order to be dragged to the sacrifice.
Therefore, He had free will, but He used it in order to be perfect as Man, just as He was perfect as God.
It is said, "He could not sin." This word would be correct if Christ were to have only been God. God cannot sin, He being perfection. However, His second nature is subject to temptations. And temptations are the means to sin if they are not rejected. And harsh temptations were thrown against the Man. All the hatred against Him. All the rancour, the fear, the envy of Hell and of men were against Him. Against the Strong One whom they felt was the Victor even if He had the meekness of a Lamb.
However, Jesus did not want to sin. Give to the Strong One the correct acknowledgement of His strength. He did not sin because He did not want to sin. And also for this perfection of this justice of His, against all the snares and the events, He declared Himself to be the Son of God.
Is it not also said to you all, "You are gods and sons of the most High."? He also was because in His humanity equal to yours, He was God and Son of the most High out of justice in His every action.
Wisdom says to you, oh men, that the predestination of the divine progeny in Jesus born of Mary of the lineage of David, besides being from the word of the Father, from miracles, and from the word of the Master and of His resurrection, is given by this dominion of His on the passions of man and on the temptations given to the Man. Holy through His divine nature, He wanted to be holy even according to the human nature, the true First-Born of the eternal family of the children of God, co-heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Finally, He declared Himself the Son of God through His spontaneous resurrection. He: God, to Himself: the Man- God, killed by men for the salvation of the same, consumed the sacrifice, gave the assured proof of having been dead, infused Himself again with life, and by Himself without expectation and judgement also glorified His victorious Body over all the miserable consequences of the first original sin.»
Whilst the divine Voice speaks, I think, «They will say that these things have already been said before.» And the divine Voice says,
«It is true. And the learned, who though being even excessively convinced of being learned, search amongst the endless gems that God has given to you with which to ornate themselves, will note down these words one more time, compare them and dissect them, as doctors who probe in the secrets of nature and in the life and death of men.
But not you. You do not remember and you do not catalogue. For you, it is always new. And beautiful. You are the simple child full of faith and love. And I speak through you. Only through you.
What better, peaceful company for your setting out towards the Kingdom of Life and crossing over the doorstep, of my lessons drawn from the epistles of he who preached about Christ even after his death, with the triple flowing of three fountains there where now a miraculous spring has opened up out of Mary's mercy, the Key to the opening of every divine mercy?»