The Word became flesh. He assumed everything that flesh is heir to – all our weakness, all our sorrow, all our sickness and shatteredness, all our godforsakenness, He took to Himself.
But not merely to identify or sympathize. He took it to Himself to overcome it. He goes to the cross as flesh, and rises Spirit. He assumed flesh in order to fill it with the power of the Spirit.
But – what is absolutely crucial – we still live life in flesh – still broken, sorrowful, weak, shattered. Jesus died and rose not so we can instantly slough off fleshliness, but so that our fleshliness can be transformed from within by the Spirit. So that weakness can be the form of power, brokenness the form of wholiness, forsakenness the form of intimacy.
Letters
Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…