By Allowing Himself to Be Made Son

“The thrilling part is that this triumph of Yahweh, whom all the nations now adore, took place in the utter humiliation of the Cross. In order to explain how this could be so, the hymn opens up that perspective on humanity as a whole which has been our topic. Verse six, alluding to a version of the Adam myth in the book of Job reminds us that man wishes to be God. Nor is this desire of his entirely misconceived. Yet man pursues it in the style of a Prometheus, hunting the prey which is equality with God, taking it by violence. But man is not God. By making himself like unto God he sets himself over against truth, and so the adventure ends in that nothingness where truth is not. The actual God-man does just the opposite. He is God’s Son, his whole being a gesture of gratitude and self-offering. In reality, the Cross is but the definitive radicalization of that gesture which the Son is. Not the grasping audacity of Prometheus but the Son’s obedience on the Cross is the place where man’s divinization is accomplished. Man can become God, not by making himself God, but by allowing himself to be made ‘Son.’”

[Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology, 64–65 (w/ a reminder about the Posting-Is-Not-Total-Agreement policy of this little blog)]

Forever More a Living Tree

“The Word himself was the first Gardener. In the beginning he planted a tree in the garden of Eden that grew the fruit of immortal life. But the serpent came into the garden and claimed the tree as his own, until the Word took our flesh and reclaimed it. Nailed to that tree he made himself the antidote of sin and death. They who nailed our Lord to the Cross did not know that it was his from the beginning, that the selfsame dead instrument of execution was and is forever more a living tree, the Tree of Life that produces the food and drink of the Kingdom of Heaven.”

[Vigen Guroian, Inheriting Paradise, 73]

A Tree So Noble

“Faithful cross, a tree so noble
    Never grew in grove or wood;
Never leaf or blossom flourished
    Fair as on thy branches glowed;
Sweet the wood and sweet the iron
    Bearing up so dear a load.

Ah! relax thy native rigor,
    Bend they branches, lofty tree!
Melt, O wood, in tender mercy!
    Christ, the King of Glory, see!
Veiled in human sin and sorrow,
    Slain, from sin the world to free.”

[Fortunatus, “Pange Lingua,” in Vigen Guroian, Inheriting Paradise, 66]