I was discussing the Gospel with someone last night. I said that Christ was emptied on the Cross. and in that kenosis, a word I did not use, gave Himself up to His Father in a sheer act of Will.
"Father, into Your Hands I commend My Spirit."
Now, the word kenosis, we know from Scripture, from Philippians 2 is from the Greek ekenosen, meaning emptied. "Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as man."
This emptying of Christ, the Second Person in the Blessed Trinity was not a pretence, but a reality.
He was emptied. He felt nothing beyond pain. He thought nothing in the darkness of death. He anticipated nothing in His senses or intellect, in the perfect assent to the loss of God for the moment of Redemption. His last cry was a perfect act of the will, His Will.
Christ calls us to be like Him in this kenosis. If we want to be like Christ, and if we want to be loved by Christ, and if we want to love Christ, we must be emptied.
And this kenosis of Christ began at His Conception. His entire life on earth was an emptying. He did this for love.
Why, asked my friend, do we have to die to ourselves?
Because only in humility, in the realization of our own sin and nothingness, can we find Christ, Who humbled Himself to love us for all eternity.
Nada, writes St. John of the Cross.
When one stops trying to be somebody, and merely wants to be loved by God, and to love Him in return, then we experience kenosis.
Joy follows, just as the Resurrection followed the Crucifixion and Death of Our Lord.
