#imitatio dei

[apenitentialprayer]

"The vast majority of people will encounter Jesus through the face of a man or woman who does not resemble Him physically, but who looks like Him in that they have a love like His."

[joyfullllives]

I find comfort in Persephone.

I find comfort in not having the pressure to forgive someone who has shown no remorse.

Who thinks I deserve the terrible thing they did to me.

I can live my life in peace and happiness even with anger towards another.

I find comfort in imitatio Dei.

[apenitentialprayer]

Jesus said that any disciple of his must be willing to take up his cross and follow the master. If God is self-forgetting love even to the point of death, then we must be such love. If God is willing to break open his own heart, then we must be willing to break open our hearts for others. The cross, in short, must become the very structure of the Christian life. We must never forget what God has done on our behalf, and we must never fail to make that love the structure and foundation of our lives.

Bishop Robert Barron (An Introduction to Prayer, page 102)

[apenitentialprayer]

"Being compassionate to the weakest member of our family —the physically weakest, the psychologically weakest, the morally weakest— is a means of grace." From a homily today.

[apenitentialprayer]

Resurrection, by Chris Powers

On Good Friday, the world declared its judgment on those foolish enough to follow the example of the Nazarene. The Crucifixion was as clear as it was final: if we love as Jesus loves, we will be mocked; we will be scorned; we will be humiliated; we will be killed. For many of us, this may be figurative. For some, it will be literal. In either case, the message remains: to love as Jesus loves marks you as naive, as someone to be exploited, as someone beneath the contempt of the powers of this world. But on Easter, God vindicates such a people, because the one who experienced these assaults on His Person literally was also raised from the dead, literally. And He was not just restored to His former living state, but He came again in glory, made new so that He may make new all those united to Himself. In Christ, God pronounces judgment on the world's judgment, and He finds it lacking; it does not understand that every act of love, of solidarity, every privilege forgone for the sake of another, every overlooked kindness, is not wasted, but finds its source and fulfillment in the Crucified and Risen One. The practical upshot of the Christian story is this: because of the God who loves us, we cannot be harmed in a way that ultimately matters, in a way that has the last word. How different would our world look, if we acted as if we truly believed that? What if, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, we belonged completely to God, and hence also lived completely for others?

meditation for the Resurrection, for Pax Christi's Metro New York Stations of the Cross, 2026

[apenitentialprayer]

Okay, so in the Summa, Saint Thomas Aquinas argues that any one Member of the Trinity could have become Incarnate, and that it was simply that it was most fitting that it was the Son. Thomas gives three explanations for his reasoning:

All things were created in and through the Son, and that gives Him "a certain common agreement with all creatures," and it is the craftsman's sense of duty upon seeing his damaged work that he "restores it when it has fallen into ruin."

That a share of the Divine life is an inheritance given to the human race through the Incarnation; and since an inheritance is given from a parent to a child, it would make sense that the human race be united to God through the Son, the only begotten Child.

Original Sin entered the human race through the eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Given the first sin was an illegitimate seizure of wisdom, it was right that the Wisdom of God Himself become Incarnate in order to be seized by men.

And these are interesting. But I'm reading Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons for Advent, and in his Six Circumstances for the Coming of the Lord, he suggests another reason: In attempting to become like God, Adam and Eve and the fallen angels attempted to take the birthright of the eternal Son, the true image of the Father. This act of trying to usurp the glory of God's only begotten Son causes the Son to freely give His glory to the attempted usurpers. Bernard places the following monologue in the pre-Incarnate Christ's mouth:

My Father . . . made two noble orders sharing His reason, capable of participating in His beatitude: angels and men. But behold, on My account He has ruined a multitude of His angels and the entire race of men. Therefore, that they may know that I love my Father, He shall receive back through Me what in a certain way He seems to have lost through Me. 'It is on my account this storm has arisen; take me and cast me into the sea' [Jonah 1:12]. All are envious of Me; behold, I come, and will exhibit Myself to them in such a guise as that whoever shall wish may become like Me; whatsoever I shall do they may imitate, so that their envy shall be made good and profitable to them.

So the Son, whose position as Him who is most like the Father is envied, transforms that envy into something good; He shares His nature as the beloved of the Father, and He does so in such a way that our deepest desire to be loved plays a part in that salvation. We, who wanted to be like God, now truly have a way of imitating Him. And that's neat.

[apenitentialprayer]

When we love God with our whole heart and mind, we necessarily love all those whom God has loved into existence.

Bishop Robert Barron (This is My Body: A Call to Eucharistic Revival, page 35)

[apenitentialprayer]

Matt. 5:8 says that the pure in heart will see God. This assertion correlates sacred knowledge with one’s moral disposition. Knowledge of Jesus has a similar correlation. For Jesus was, among other things, a moral teacher, and the truth of his teaching is in the living. Those who seek to conduct their lives in the light of the canonical accounts of his life and speech will understand him differently than those who find guidance elsewhere. To read a parable that commands feeding the hungry and visiting prisoners is one thing; to respond by visiting prisoners and feeding the hungry is quite another. It is perhaps a bit like being a Shakespearean actor, who experiences a play in ways remote from those of us who never walk the stage. The Sermon on the Mount does not look the same from outside as it does from within.

— Dale Allison, Jr. (The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, pages 47-48)