Jesus invites us into his self-kenotic love, the nature of which he has revealed most fully on the Cross. Deeper than a set of doctrinal formulations or moral maxims, Catholic Christianity begins with and always involves this encounter and offer with/from the Triune God, in the person of Jesus Christ.
The very love that God is and that has emptied itself in history for our salvation is the love that we are offered an opportunity to partake in, in the form of our own self-emptying, in full obedience to the Father, through power of the Holy Spirit. Such participation we can achieve not on our own, but only with the help of God’s grace.
All of us truly become theological persons insofar as we allow ourselves to die to our individualistic selves and open ourselves in love to the Father and his will, seeing and treating others around us in the manner that Jesus’ did, who fully identified with humanity in its entirety. We must thus see everyone as our brother or sister in Christ, regardless of his/her race, ethnicity, sex and even religion.
The important question is: can we really trust in such love as the center and be-all and end-all of our whole lives? In many ways, its nature and demands are terrifying. For one, we must reject wealth, power, fame, influence, and material security as our gods. And more importantly, we must look to and accept Jesus’ life as that which reveals to us what such love entails in our still-fallen world.
Are we prepared, for example, for total vulnerability; complete poverty of spirit; and a raw hunger and thirst for justice’s sake? The choice is ours.
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