Giving Life And Dying

Caro enim factus est, ut nos spiritales faceret; benigne inclinatus est, ut levaret; exiit, ut introduceret; visibilis apparuit, ut invisibilia monstraret; flagella pertulit, ut sanaret; opprobria et irrisiones sustinuit, ut ab opprobrio aeterno liberaret; mortuus est, ut vivificaret. Agamus ergo gratias vivificanti et mortuo, et ideo amplius vivificanti, quia mortuo. Unde bene salutem nostram, et passionem illius Isaias contemplatus ait: Ut faciat opus suum, alienum opus ejus; ut operetur opus suum, peregrinum est opus ejus ab eo. Opus etenim Dei est animas quas creavit colligere, et ad aeternae lucis gaudia revocare. Flagellari autem atque sputis illini, crucifigi, mori, atque sepeliri, non hoc in sua substantia opus Dei est, sed opus hominis peccatoris, qui haec omnia meruit per peccatum. Sed peccata nostra ipse pertulit in corpore suo super lignum. Et qui in natura sua manet semper incomprehensibilis, in natura nostra comprehendi dignatus est ac flagellari, quia nisi ea quae erant infirmitatis nostrae susciperet, nunquam nos ad suae fortitudinis potentiam sublevaret. Ut ergo faciat opus suum, alienum opus ejus; et ut operetur opus suum, peregrinum est opus ejus ab eo, quia incarnatus Deus, ut nos ad suam justitiam colligeret, dignatus est pro nobis tanquam peccator homo vapulare. Et alienum opus fecit ut faceret proprium, quia per hoc quod infirmans mala nostra sustinuit, nos qui creatura illius sumus, ad fortitudinis suae gloriam perduxit, in qua vivit et regnat cum Deo Patre in unitate Spiritus sancti Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen. Sanctus Gregorius Magnus, In Ezechielem Prophetam, Liber Secundus, Homilia IV Source: Migne PL 76.984a-c

He was made flesh that He might make us spiritual, He kindly came down that He might lift up, He went out that He might bring in, He appeared visibly that He might reveal things unseen, He suffered the whip that He might heal, and He sustained abuse and ridicule that He might deliver from eternal shame, and He died that He might give life. Therefore let us give thanks to the one who gives life and who died, and therefore more to the one gives life because He died. Whence Isaiah well contemplated our salvation and His passion when he said, 'So that He make a work, a strange work, and so that might accomplish a work which is alien to Him.' 1 For it is the work of God to gather the souls He created and to recall them to the joy of the eternal light. To be covered with spittle and crucified and to die and to be buried are not works consonant with the substance of God, but it is work for man the sinner, who has deserved all these things because of sin. 'But He bore our sins in His body on the cross,' 2 and He who in His nature remans incomprehensible was understood in our nature to be worthy of being whipped, because unless He took up the things of our weakness we would never have been lifted up to the power of His might. Therefore so that He might make His work, a strange work and so that might accomplish a work which is alien to him, God was incarnated, so that He might gather us to His righteousness, and worthy it was that for us he was whipped as a sinful man. And He made this foreign work so that He might perform His own, because through this, that in weakness he endured our evils, He led us who our His creations to the glory of His might, in which he lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, through every age forever. Saint Gregory the Great, On the Prophet Ezekiel, Book 2, from Homily 4 1 Isaiah 28.21 2 1 Pet 2.24