Holy Week
A few quotes at the beginning stages of Holy Week:
“Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party came prepared to be forgiven.”
~Charles Williams
“Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise Thee”
~George Herbert
Oculi nostri (Our Eyes Are Turned):
Our eyes are turned to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our eyes are turned to the Lord God, our Savior.
“God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.”
~St. Augustine
“...This is the attitude God brought with him to earth: “...learn from me, for I am meek, and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29). Before the Last Supper he knelt before his disciples and washed their feet; not to debase himself, but to reveal to them the divine mystery of humility (John 13:4).
There is no other possibility: God himself must be humble. In him, the eternal, omnipotent, all-glorious One, must lie a readiness to prostrate himself before the infinite scrap of existence that we are in his eyes. Something in him must make him willing to assume the existence of an unknown human being from the village of Nazareth.
Is such a thing possible? Desirable? Isn’t it unseemly folly? God himself replies, no. Already in the Old Testament he has said: It is my delight to dwell among the children of men. In all reverence, it must be mysteriously blissful for him to refind himself in the flesh-and-blood heart of the Nazarene. Here is a bliss the sense of which outstrips all measure, this assuming the responsibility for, experiencing the fate of, such an abandoned and questioned human life.”
~Romano Guardini
“Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party came prepared to be forgiven.”
~Charles Williams
“Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise Thee”
~George Herbert
Oculi nostri (Our Eyes Are Turned):
Our eyes are turned to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our eyes are turned to the Lord God, our Savior.
“God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering.”
~St. Augustine
“...This is the attitude God brought with him to earth: “...learn from me, for I am meek, and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29). Before the Last Supper he knelt before his disciples and washed their feet; not to debase himself, but to reveal to them the divine mystery of humility (John 13:4).
There is no other possibility: God himself must be humble. In him, the eternal, omnipotent, all-glorious One, must lie a readiness to prostrate himself before the infinite scrap of existence that we are in his eyes. Something in him must make him willing to assume the existence of an unknown human being from the village of Nazareth.
Is such a thing possible? Desirable? Isn’t it unseemly folly? God himself replies, no. Already in the Old Testament he has said: It is my delight to dwell among the children of men. In all reverence, it must be mysteriously blissful for him to refind himself in the flesh-and-blood heart of the Nazarene. Here is a bliss the sense of which outstrips all measure, this assuming the responsibility for, experiencing the fate of, such an abandoned and questioned human life.”
~Romano Guardini
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