In her post last month on The Imposing Silence of the Cross, Jenny described the task and promise of Christianity in this way: “[Christianity] radically separates sin from sinner and fiercely loves the latter, regarding each person as an ineffable mystery worthy of love.” Since first reading this beautiful affirmation of the goodness of humanity a month ago, I've been chewing in its roots in the creation story: “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”1 A question has been percolating in my mind: does this really apply to everyone, even the person I most know to be sinful—me?
It should go without saying that the dignity of each human person is intrinsic and unassailable. Our shared human nature is imbued with the Breath of God; each of us is a reflection of the perfect Love that spoke life into being. We are shaped in His image, and animated by His Spirit.
Moreover, the entirety of salvation history is a consistent claim that we are not only worthy of our fellow human beings’ love, but that we are worthy of the love of God. This is a seismic declaration: at the core, each man and woman is the product of an intentional choice by God, a result of God’s desire for union with him or her.
I have never had much trouble accepting or believing that others are worthy of my love, or even of such an outrageous, wondrous love as God’s. What does give me pause is the notion that I would be included as a recipient of this gift of Divine Love, because my life is largely an accumulation of evidence to the contrary. I am painfully aware of all the reasons I am woefully inadequate and unworthy of being the object of Divine Desire. I have a tendency to be prideful, arrogant, and narcissistic, and I am prone to self-indulgent actions. This is not who I am, but it is an inescapable part of me.
This doubt does not simply come from my obvious sinfulness, though that is a monstrous weight in and of itself. Even when I am at my best, I have an abiding sense of how utterly fleeting and feeble I am in the grand scheme of things. Hans urs von Balthasar captures this feeling well: “in my clearest moments, I would have liked to make of my existence something lasting, even though I knew that most of this existence would at last disintegrate into trash and decay.”2
I struggle to cope with the tension of knowing, in an intellectual sense, that I am made for communion with God, and at the same time being all too familiar with my own finitude. These truths do not seem to fit together; I fear death because, on some level, I do not believe it is possible that a thing like God could want a thing like me. How could a being that is perfect, whole, and eternal want to be with one who is so deeply flawed, broken, and fleeting?3 Could it be that Life itself loves that which dies? It seems impossible. In the words of my very favorite band, “you are far too beautiful to love me.”
And yet, as we make final preparations for Holy Week, we need not look far: the answer to our longing always begins and ends with Christ. When Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he isn’t just trying to console Martha and Mary, nor is he simply aiming at shocking the Pharisees. He isn’t even simply making a claim about his divinity. The resuscitation of Lazarus, like all miracles, reveals to us a piece of the truth about who God is: this is someone who loves that which dies.
This claim is, of course, made even more forcefully on the Cross. As I wrestle with my own apparently ill-fated desire for participation in the transcendent, the transcendent participates in my feebleness. If, in the familiar formula of the early Church writers, God became human so that humans might become like God, then what could it mean for the Word Made Flesh to dive headlong into our most shameful secret?
In this is the glory of the Cross: not simply that Jesus loves humanity enough to die on its behalf, but that His death on the Cross is both revelatory and efficacious. Christ’s death reveals the Divine Desire for that which dies, and at the same time makes it possible for that which dies to fulfill that Desire. His death transforms our death, which now becomes the final ingredient in our sanctification, as we are made perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.
Jenny is right: the cross is uncomfortable, and it neither seeks to explain away the mystery of human suffering, nor does it ascribe a goodness to suffering in itself. It is an incontrovertible statement on the part of God: I love that which you find unlovable. It is, in fact, this love that makes us capable of being loved, and of loving in return.
2 Balthasar, Life Out Of Death, trans. Martina Stöckl (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 2012) 21.↩
3 Yeah, yeah, Thomists, I know: God isn’t a being, but the act of being itself. Bear with me as I try to write coherent sentences.↩
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