Fr. Thomas speaks on God’s view of our humanity: “As the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus’ relationship with the Father comes through clearly in the ways he spoke of God as his Father, in his forgiving of sins, in the way he lived his entire life. It is no surprise that this understanding of himself as the Son of God should reach its climax in the Passion.
Standing before the Sanhedrin, Jesus was asked: Are you then the son of God? Jesus speaks of himself in a very special way as the Son of God. His hearers understood him in this same way, for they shouted: He has blasphemed God! (Matt 26:57-68)
We can approach Jesus’ understanding of himself as the Son of God by looking at Jesus in his humanity: his charity, compassion, mercy, love, and his personality as known to us through the Gospels and seeing the magnificent mystery of divinity in his humanity.
Another approach to Jesus’ understanding of himself is focusing on his divinity, on his consubstantiality with the Father.
Due to this focus, the Holy Spirit inspired theologians to state a principle: “what is assumed by Jesus has been saved”. In Jesus, God has assumed everything human, save sin, as St. Paul clarifies. Everything human: our alienation, our guilt, our mortality, our hurts, our wounds, the mystery of birth and death, joy and sorrow, darkness and light, – everything that we know as human, save sin – has been assumed by God and became opportunities for salvation.
God will have us at any cost. God does not belittle our humanity. God saves it. God graces our humanity in all its weaknesses and strengths, its abysses and dangers, with its transitoriness and mortality to be opportunities for salvation.
This is the mystery of the Risen Jesus, fully human and fully divine!”
Easter Season Blessings,
Your brothers of New Clairvaux
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