Card. Newman: It is as if He delighted in having to suffer

by Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman

The price [our Lord] paid was nothing short of the whole treasure of his blood, poured forth to the last drop from his veins and Sacred Heart.

He shed his whole life for us; he left himself empty of his all. He left his throne on high; he gave up his home on earth; he parted with his Mother, he gave his strength and his toil, he gave his body and soul, he offered up his passion, his crucifixion, and his death, that man should not be bought for nothing ...

On earth he came, and a death he died, a death of inconceivable suffering; and all this he did as a free offering to his Father, not as forcing his acceptance of it.

From beginning to the end it was in the highest sense a voluntary work; and this is what is so overpowering to the mind in the thought of it. It is as if he delighted in having to suffer; as if he wished to show all creatures, what would otherwise have seemed impossible, that the Creator could practice, in the midst of his heavenly blessedness, the virtues of a creature, self-abasement and humility. It is as if he wished, all-glorious as he was from all eternity, as a sort of addition (if we may so speak) to his perfections, to submit to a creature's condition in its most afflictive form. It is, if we may use human language, a prodigality of charity ... Or, rather, and that is what I wish to insist upon, it suggests to us, as by a specimen, the infinitude of God ... The outward exhibition of infinitude is mystery; and the mysteries of nature and of grace are nothing else than the mode in which his infinitude encounters us and is brought home to our minds.

ht CERC

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