Jean Khoury
When Jesus gives Himself to us on the Cross, and also a few hours earlier during the Last Supper, He is doing something completely incredible. This gift, the gift of Himself to us, is something very difficult to fathom, to understand. It is a sign of love, the greatest love, as He says: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13) He gives everything: His body, His blood, His soul, His spirit, His divinity, and the Holy Spirit who dwells in Him. There is nothing left. In a way, it is like emptying Himself entirely of Himself (Philippians 2:7).
To give Himself is also an act of union. To love is to give oneself. Here, the love is total, absolute. He keeps nothing for Himself. To give oneself is an act of union: He unites Himself to us. Totally.
In Western theology, regarding the sacrament of marriage, we say that the spouses, by giving themselves to one another, are the ones who confer the sacrament, not the priest. The priest is only a witness. They become one flesh, one soul, one spirit, even though they remain two persons. And this is a mystery: the mystery of the union of Christ with each one of us on the Cross, during the Last Supper, and also during Baptism.
Baptism is a nuptial act; this has been understood from the beginning of the Church. The Eucharist too is a nuptial act. Pope John Paul II mentioned this many times. Jesus gives His body and His entire being to each one of us. This is nuptial. It is an act of love, the supreme act of love.
Jesus on the Cross is uniting Himself with each one of us. To love is to unite oneself with the object or person one loves. It is an ecstasy, a going out of oneself in order to dwell in the beloved. This is also an extreme vulnerability on God’s part. To love is to accept becoming vulnerable, because one depends upon the other’s response and the quality of that response. God is love; God is vulnerable.
Vulnerability contains within it a form of weakness: making oneself totally accessible to another person. He said, “I thirst” on the Cross. He said, “I thirst” to the Samaritan woman. He took flesh in order to be able to give this flesh. His flesh is our dwelling place. Love meets love. Love is united to Love.
Who is God, to do all this? Who are we in His eyes?
When I ask people, “What do you think is the goal of our life here on earth? What is the goal of our Christian life? What are we waiting for?” I have a secret desire that their eyes might be opened to what is happening during those six hours on the Cross, and what was already offered to us a few hours earlier during the Last Supper.
Jesus is giving Himself to us, that is, loving us, uniting Himself to us, to each one of us, in a unique, eternal, and definitive way.
Seeing this invisible and total act of love on the Cross is fundamental because it explains our life, the goal of our life, and what God has in mind all the time, so to speak. It is important that our eyes be opened to see God’s nature manifested on the Cross: He is love, and love is to give oneself.
We must not stop at the suffering of the body and the soul, immense though they are, but continue deeper into Him and see what, with the help of the Holy Spirit, He is doing. He is moving, as it were, beyond the Cross with His entire being and uniting Himself with each one of us: past, present, and future human beings.
We believe that, because He is God, He sees us and loves us at each and every moment of His life. At every second of Jesus’ life, we are present to Him; He sees us and He loves us. All the more, then, during these six hours on the Cross, He finally realises union.
It is not only about removing our sins; it is about uniting Himself to us. Removing sins is not yet the same as uniting Himself to each one of us.
Baptism is the reception of this gift of Himself. And our life on earth is about allowing this immense seed of Baptism to become a total reality in our lives. In a way, our life is about receiving, in its actual fullness, the gift of Baptism, which is precisely the gift of the Cross.
Of course, we must speak of the Cross, death, and Resurrection together. But what is occurring on the Cross is salvation: it is taking us from where we are and bringing us to where He is.
“I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also” (John 14:3).
Through the gift of Himself, Jesus places Himself in our hands. He says, “I belong to you.” But He also asks, “Do you want to belong to Me?”
He says: Here I am, giving Myself to you, placing Myself entirely in your hands. But do you want to be Mine?
What I did on the Cross was to come to you in your darkness, in your separation from Me — spiritual death — and decide to dwell in you. This I did out of My immense, infinite love.
“Abide in Me, and I in you” (John 15:4).
This is My choice. This is who I am: I who AM Love.
My thirst is so infinite, so divine, that I came to dwell in you, to find in you My delight.
But do you want to dwell in Me?
My loving you means that I left Myself, as it were, and came to dwell in the object of My love: you. Love is ecstatic; it dwells in the beloved. I find Myself in you. This is My eternal thirst.
And you?
Read also:
– The Revelation of God’s Love
– You Shall be my Segullah, Towards a Nuptial Theology of the Covenant
– With All Your Meʾōd, the First Commandment and the Theology of Passionate Love
– The Goal of Our Life is Union With Christ
– Christ The Groom, What Does it Mean?
– The Human Being as God’s Dwelling Place: A Theology of Sacred Indwelling
– The Bowels of God & His Passionate Love for Us
– Does God Need Us? Reconciling Divine Aseity with the God of Incarnation and Love