Francis reminds us again to look upon Christ on the cross and know that despite what things look like from a human point of view, God is love, and everything we do and everything that happens to us takes place within God’s love—even to death upon a cross. Remaining in that love, no matter what befalls us, is to remain in God. The questions are not, “Why is this happening? How can God allow this? Why doesn’t, didn’t God prevent this?” but rather, “Can this separate me from the love of God? Is God’s love still here despite this?” God is love, and though love does not always do our will, it does not mean that God’s love is not there, even though that is what we may feel is happening.
As a man Jesus underwent this deep human experience of abandonment because the Father didn’t always do what he wanted. As with us, love was not his own will. Love is the interaction between two wills; for a human being it is the interaction between my will and the One whose will is the cause of my existence and my very ability to will. Creator and creature: There is an infinite difference between them. That realization is the beginning of the love of God. And realization being of the mind, it is the beginning of truth. That something, someone, outside myself is the cause of my very existence, makes my existence an act of gratitude for each moment held within that creative will.
God’s creative will is an eternally sustaining will, namely, that my existence will not end, summons me to humble acquiescence and dialogue—or to proud, illusory self-sufficiency, which is a kind of hell because it severs the bond of love and results in a turning in upon oneself. God’s love, in contrast to self-absorption, overflows, and though the eternal creator chooses to become one with love’s creation entering the created world as creative word becoming obedient to the Word’s own speaking of what it means to be a creature, obedient, as Saint Paul says, even “to the point of death— / even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8). Christ was broken and died on the cross: Life did not spare the eternal Son, just as life will not spare us, but God’s Incarnate Word confirmed for us that love endures, no matter what humans or fate or life does or refuses to do. And in the end obedient love rises from the grave.
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