The Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of, if not the most mystifying series of events in the history of the cosmos.
Why indeed would God,
a) Become human at all?
b) Live among a repressed and seriously at-risk population (hint: 79 AD)?
c) Experience one of the harshest, most brutal forms of punishment and execution ever devised by our bloodthirsty species?
d) And after all this rise from the dead to ascend back into the heavenly dimension?
People complain all. the. time. that it seems horrible that God would cause Jesus to die horribly for the purpose of cancelling out people's sins. In that opinion are several misconceptions that prove the inherent falsehood of the sentiment:
a) People forget that in the teaching of the Church Jesus IS God Incarnate...in effect He sentenced Himself.
b) The purpose is not cancelling sin but delivering from sin, or rather, sin's effects.
Humans have throughout their history been caught in a vicious cycle. Sin, wandering off God's path and thereby severing our connection to the source of life, introduces corruption into humanity, which eventually leads to death. Corruption, and death, predispose people toward sin, either to stave off death or because no matter what choice we make it eventually has a negative result. Which came first, a topic beloved by theologians, at this point in the game is moot. Both are here, here to stay, and for us humans at this point pretty much impossible to eradicate.
This is where God becoming Human comes into play. God has several purposes for doing this:
a) He actually loves us. Hard to believe, but He does.
b) He wants to be with us (theologians speculate that even if the Fall did not occur, God would eventually have incarnated because He would simply have wanted that closer a relationship with us).
c) He wants to put Humanity back on the right track with a great cosmic reset.
d) He wants to buy us back from the hold that Sin and Corruption and Death have upon us.
To effect this, God became Incarnate, bringing together Immortal Divinity impossible to kill with Mortal Humanity beset with weakness and ultimately dying. When Jesus died, and died in such a way no one sane would believe that He survived the ordeal, He could not, no, would not stay dead. The action, the energy of the Holy Trinity brought Jesus' Humanity through death into a yet more glorious life in a manner to which Humanity was intended. In our baptism, in our partaking of the communion of His body and blood, we unite ourselves with His suffering and sacrifice, and ultimately with His resurrection. Much as Humanity inexplicably intertwined with Divinity in the Person of God the Word in Jesus Christ, so we inexplicably intertwine our lives with His, in hope of partaking in His resurrection and the life of the age to come.
May the joy of the Resurrection be yours, now and always.
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