Our Relationship with God: 5. The Love of Christ
3 October 2016
The Son glorifies the Father and the Father glorifies the Son and rightly ‘straightway,’[1] in a natural way. The Holy Spirit, similarly, proceeds from the Father, rests in the Son and glorifies Him, heralding the content of the life of the Son and guiding the disciples of Christ ‘into all truth’,[2] which is to say into all the fullness of divine love.
Christ is He Who manifested the substance of His Divine Person in reference to His Heavenly Father, keeping obedient to His commandment and in a perfect way ‘dwelling in Him in love’.[3] In reference to man, He showed also perfect love: ‘Having loved his own that were in the world he loved them until the end.’[4] In order that the world might know that His love is authentic and perfect towards God and towards man, He proceeded to the Passion and the Cross of Golgotha. He descended into the Tomb and still deeper, to the nethermost parts of the earth, in order to fill all the created world with His divine presence and to give us the possibility to meet Him in our lives in whatsoever situation we find ourselves. Though innocent and sinless, He made Himself a curse for us,[5] so that through his Death and Resurrection He might reconcile us with the Heavenly Father and through His Ascension above the heavens He might honour us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The wondrous Lord Jesus gave us the commandment to follow His ‘example’,[6] if we want to become His eternal inheritance. He humbled Himself and became the servant of our salvation, giving His life as a ‘ransom’[7] to redeem all men from the death of sin.
[1] John 13:32.
[2] John 16:3.
[3] See John 15:10.
[4] John 13:1.
[5] Cf. Gal. 3:13.
[6] John 13:15.
[7] Matt. 20:28 and Mark 10:45.
