Friday, February 09, 2007

In Touching Christ's Humanity, We May Perceive His Divinity

"Divine strength, which the human being cannot touch, came down; it covered itself with a palpable body, so that the poor might touch it, and in touching Christ’s humanity, they might perceive his divinity. Through the fingers of flesh, the deaf-mute felt that his ears and his tongue were being touched. Through the palpable fingers, he perceived the divinity that cannot be touched when his tongue’s bond was broken and when the closed doors of his ears were opened. For the body’s architect and artisan came to him, and with a gentle word, without pain, he created openings in deaf ears. Then the mouth as well, that had been closed and until then incapable of giving light to the word, put into the world praise of him who thus caused its sterility to bear fruit.

In the same way, the Lord made mud with his saliva and spread it over the eyes of the man born blind so as to make us understand that, like the deaf-mute, he was lacking something. An inborn imperfection in our human batter was removed thanks to the leaven that comes from his perfect body… To fill in what was missing in these human bodies, he gave something of himself, just as he gives himself to be eaten [in the Eucharist]. By this means he causes the faults to disappear and raises the dead, so that we might recognize that the faults of our humanity are filled, thanks to his body in which “the fullness of deity resides”, and that true life is given to mortals by means of this body, in which true life resides. "

-Saint Ephrem

No comments: