How Can This Be?

St. Jacob of Serugh narrates the experience of the Virgin Mary as the archangel Gabriel  gives an answer to her question, “How can this be, since I do not know a man? (Luke 1.34)”
“The Holy Spirit will come to you in a holy manner and the power of the Exalted One will abide upon you lovingly.
The Fashioner of babes will fashion for him a body in you and clothe himself (in it); the unbegotten Son shall be conceived in your virginity.
The Maker of the worlds interweaves a garment in your pure womb and prepares himself a cloak of flesh on the web of your womb.
The power of the Exalted One will abide upon you while not being belittled and from your purity He will take a body to become a man.
In the furnace of your womb He will cast an prepare an image for Adam;
and into it the God of all will lower himself to come to birth. On that coin which the evil one damaged He will imprint His being and through it He will ransom the whole world from servitude.
That unconstituted One dwells in the constitution of your womb and as a man He will go out to the world corporeally.
Behold, He resides in you while not departing from His Father and comes to you while He also is visiting all the ends of the earth.” St. Jacob of Serugh, First Homily on The Nativity, Lines 281-294 as in Thomas Kollamparampil. The metrical homilies of Mar Jacob of Sarug: Jacob of Sarug’s Homilies on The Nativity. Gorgias Press, 2010. p42-44.