"It seemed to him for a moment cruelly unfair of God to have exposed himself in this way, a man, a wafer of bread, first in the Palestinian villages and now here in the hot port, there, everywhere, allowing man to have his will of Him. Christ had told the rich young man to sell all and follow Him, but that was an easy rational step compared with this that God had taken, to put Himself at the mercy of men who hardly knew the meaning of the word. How desperately God must love, he thought with shame."
"...God would never work a miracle to save Himself. I am the cross, he thought, He will never speak the word to save Himself from the cross, but if only wood were made so that it didn't feel, if only the nails were senseless as people believed..."
"Unwillingly he looked down at the body. The fumes of petrol lay all around in the heavy night and for a moment he saw the body as something very small and dark and a long way away -- like a broken piece of the rosary he looked for: a couple of black beads and the image of God coiled at the end of it. Oh God, he thought, I've killed you: you've served me all these years and I've killed you at the end of them. God lay there under the petrol drum and Scobie felt the tears in his mouth, salt in the cracks of his lips. You served me and I did this to you. You were faithful to me and I wouldn't trust you.
"'What is it, sah?' the corporal whispered, kneeling by the body.
"'I loved him,' Scobie said."
"Through two-thousand years, he thought, we have discussed Christ's agony in just this disinterested way."
"You say you love me, and yet you'll do this to me -- rob me of you for ever. I made you with love. I've wept your tears. I've saved you from more than you will ever know; I planted in you this longing for peace only so that one day I could satisfy your longing and watch your happiness. And now you push me away, you put me out of your reach. There are no capital letters to separate us when we talk together. I am not Thou but simply you, when you speak to me; I am humble as any other beggar. Can't you trust me as you'd trust a faithful dog? I have been faithful to you for two thousand years. ...
"So long as you live, the voice said, I have hope. There's no human hopelessness like the hopelessness of God. Can't you just go on, as you are doing now? the voice pleaded, lowering the terms every time it spoke like a dealer in a market."
Today (well, yesterday, now) is the Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross, and while I was sitting in Mass this morning that one line from Graham Greene's Heart of the Matter (from whence all these quotes come*) came to my mind, "How desperately God must love." I don't even know how much I want to (or can) expound on that... for me, it is the Truth of God and the History of Man's Salvation. God might have spent His vast eternity in Perfect Love, forever with His Son and the Spirit. There would be no Fall, no sin, no hell, no sorrow or suffering, no Incarnation and no Crucifixion... yet somehow, beyond our comprehension, God's love is so great that it not only fills a Trinity that can never be filled, but spills over the top and fills Man. How desperately God must love.
God does not need Man for anything; he makes Man to love him, that he might be happy with him. So He makes Man to be like God, able to love like God can. The creation of Man is God's first humility, not that he lowers Himself, but that He raises creatures up to such a height to be with Him. And then Man falls from that height, and God does not destroy him as would be his right. Instead, here is God's second humility, greater than the first -- He loves a fallen race. He "wastes" his Great Love on creatures that aren't deserving. He stoops to Man, speaks with him in human tongues, guides him, and promises that He will not abandon him to death. But Man has denied God, has denied love, has turned away. Man, formed by the living clay of God, has turned himself into naught but dry dust and dead ashes.
And God, whose first humility was to make Man and whose second humility was to love him still after he had fallen, is yet more humble, and He -- Divine Maker of all that his, Supreme Love, Sufficient in and for Himself for all eternity, Unblemished, Unapproachable, Mighty and All -- He becomes Man himself. He sheds glory for ashes, because He loves madly and without reason. And from the Incarnation, that great Third Humility of God, He takes on the shame of sorrow, toil, hunger, sweat, and tears. He does it because he loves Man, but Man takes one look at God-become-flesh, Glory-become-dust, Life-become-death -- and Man kills Him, not even as they would a highborn man, but as they would a stranger from a distant land (when he made and knows each of their souls) or a thief (who came only to steal death and sin from out of the greedy grasp of Man).
And God, who is All Mighty, the source of All Life, in whom all men live, and move, and have their being -- God, who has created, by love, Man to be happy and glorious and like unto Himself, who loved even when Man did not deserve it, who followed Man into the flesh and into the obscurity and sorrow of the world -- God died at the hands of Man to save him. He died as a mortal thing, as Man or cow or worm dies. How desperately God must love.
And when He had risen, he did not shake out from his robes the dust of the earth and flee to the inaccessible heavens, but left Himself behind in something less than even Man, in bread and wine. He humbled Himself to become like us, and then He humbled Himself even further. Men rarely have the humility to admit they are not gods, while God Himself is willing to fall below the dignity of Man if only He might save our souls in that. How desperately God must love.
"So long as you live, the voice said, I have hope. There's no human hopelessness like the hopelessness of God. Can't you just go on, as you are doing now? the voice pleaded, lowering the terms every time it spoke like a dealer in a market."
I will make you. You fall? Then I will love you anyway. You refuse it? Then I will come to you in the flesh. You kill me? Then I will stay here, locked in this tiny room, looking to your eyes like a little scrap of bread and a bit of wine, always waiting, ready and eager to be taken into your hands and your mouth, that I might give you my great love. Do what you will with me, I will remain here, waiting for you. I can go no lower, or you will ignore me completely. I will remain here, waiting for you, and in Heaven as well. Please come to me. "I am as humble as any other beggar."
How desperately God must love!
May we never take the Exalted Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ for granted. No one but God could be so Humble and love so desperately that death on a cross would even be an option.
(*Incidentally, when I looked up "whence" to make sure I wasn't being redundant in saying "from whence," the quote offered as an example was from Graham Greene. Life is weird sometimes.)
