"God is dead! And we have killed him!" ~ Friedrich Nietzche Today the whole Church commemorates that day when God, in the Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, died. The Son of God, the Eternal Word, Jesus Christ, through Whom everything was made, suffered and died for us.
The Maker and Redeemer of all is pinned, immovable, exposed and violated by the World's darkness, by our sins. The All-Powerful God allows Himself to be subjugated to wood from a tree made through Him, Wood from a Tree made for Him, for the love of us.
He is spared any comfort save for the presence of His Mother, St John and St Mary Magdalen. Rejected by His people, rejected by the World, humiliated by the proud, scorned and then scourged by sinful and ungrateful man, God is fixed to these beams, God is nailed to this Wood and allows Himself to be nailed to this immovable Sign, a Sign fixed for all Eternity in Heaven and on Earth.
We thought that love was something to be mastered, to be taken by force, and so when Love Itself came into the World, Love Itself was taken by force, overpowered, trapped and fixed, since Man could not comprehend Love. On the Cross, His Body is pinned to Wood as evidence not just of our sins but our failure to love in a way which is worthy of the name. Love allows Itself, Love allows Himself to be mastered, to be overpowered, to be totally weak and dependent. He, Jesus Christ, the Lord and Master of All, allows Himself to be mastered and overpowered by His own Creation. In this way God showed forth His Love. It is because of Good Friday that we know that God is Love.
'This is the Wood of the Cross, upon which hung the Saviour of the World.'
Indeed! (though perhaps your rhetoric has overstated it a bit: today is not the only day on which we can say this: tomorrow it is also true...)
ReplyDeleteIn fact I think one can say that God became man in order that He might be able to suffer with and for us - something that without the Incarncation simply was not possible.