Redemption

Let us offer ourselves, the possession most precious to God, and most fitting. Let us give back to the image what is made after the image. Let us recognize our dignity. Let us honor our archetype. Let us know the power of the mystery, and for what Christ died. Let us become like Christ, since Christ became like us. Let us become God’s for His sake, since He for ours became man. He assumed the worse that He might give us the better; He became poor that we through His poverty might be rich; He took upon Himself the form of a servant that we might receive back our liberty; He came down that we might be exalted; He was tempted that we might conquer; He was dishonored that He might glorify us; He died that He might save us; He ascended that He might draw to Himself us, who were lying low in the fall of sin. Let us give all, offer all, to Him who gave Himself a ransom and a reconciliation for us.

When we look upon sin through Satan’s spectacles, and the cloud of our own passions and carnal affections, we make nothing of it; but in the agonies of Christ, and the sorrows and sufferings of his cross, we see the odiousness of it, that it may become more hateful to us. No less remedy would serve the turn than the agonies, bloodshed, and accursed death of the Son of God, to procure the pardon and destruction of sin. By this sin-offering and ransom for souls we may see what sin is.… We make light of sin, but Christ found it not so light a matter to expiate it.

By offering unto death the body He Himself had taken, as an offering and sacrifice free from any stain, immediately He put away death from all His peers by the offering of an equivalent. For being over all, the Word of God naturally by offering His own temple and bodily instrument for the life of all satisfied the debt by His death. And thus He, the incorruptible Son of God, being conjoined with all by a like nature, naturally clothed all with incorruption, by the promise of the resurrection.