I had an insight into the real power of the Passion and Death of Christ. God died. We have emphasized the Humanity of Christ so much in the last two centuries, that we Catholics have forgotten, as our abuses in the Mass reveal, such as noise in the Church, and the lack of reverence, that Christ always was, is and will be. He is the Second Person in the Holy Trinity. He was present at the origin of the material universe. He died.
Now, at the Passion and Death of Christ, Christ did not reveal His Godhead. He did not reveal Himself as He truly was and is. He let Himself be denied by His Own People. He let Himself be abused, tortured, killed by His relatives in the flesh and in the Spirit.
God let Himself die at the hands of humans, so that we would be fully human and regain our divine life, lost in Eden.
If we let God be God in our lives, if we do not play God by ordering our lives merely by our own lights, we allow the Crucified One to live, to be Resurrected in our own lives. We allow God to be God in our lives. God is a Living God. And, we live in Him.
Here is the new insight. God allowed Death to have a moment of victory, just a moment, three days, so that we are not doomed to plan our own lives (sorry,Sartre). Christ died to free us from our own self-will. our own puny ideas of ourselves, of others, our own desire to play God. Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane saw the entire world's humanity's efforts to be God-and to play God is to sin, to be presumptuous, to fall into pride or despair.
Christ became Man so that we could become Sons and Daughters of God. We, who were made in the Image and Likeness of God, again regained the ability, the chance to regain that image and likeness.
Such happens in the Sacrament of Baptism. If and how we cooperate with the graces of Baptism is our response to God.
My insight is not new or original. But, we must all come to the personal appropriation of Truth. Some come to this earlier than I have. Those live in trust, in hope, in faith, in love. These are the saints. I am just beginning life over again.
