Upon the Annunciation and Passion Falling Upon One Day

Tamely, frail body, abstain today; today
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees Him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came and went away;
She sees Him nothing twice at once, who’s all;
She sees a Cedar plant itself and fall,
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive yet dead;
She sees at once the virgin mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha;
Sad and rejoiced she’s seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty and at scarce fifteen;
At once a Son is promised her, and gone;
Gabriel gives Christ to her, He her to John;
Not fully a mother, she’s in orbity,
At once receiver and the legacy;
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
The abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of the Angels’ Ave and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God’s court of faculties,
Deals in some times and seldom joining these!
As by the self-fixed Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where the other is and which we say
(Because it strays not far) doth never stray,
So God by His Church, nearest to Him, we know
And stand firm, if we by her motion go;
His Spirit, as His fiery pillar doth
Lead, and His Church, as cloud, to one end both.
This Church, by letting these days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one:
Or ‘twas in Him the same humility
That He would be a man and leave to be:
Or as creation He had made, as God,
With the last judgment but one period,
His imitating Spouse would join in one
Manhood’s extremes: He shall come, He is gone:
Or as though the least of His pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords;
This treasure then, in gross, my soul uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.

– John Donne, 1608

Does Christ’s Death Go Against Justice?

It would seem that God the Father committed an act of injustice when He has Christ, His Son who is completely innocent, suffer and die for condemned humanity. St. Bonaventure, however, tells us that it would be an injustice if Christ suffered against His will. Yet, this is not the case. Christ, Himself, tells us:

“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father." (John 10:17-18)

Christ willingly gives His life for our salvation, because “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)

Here is St. Bonaventure’s explanation from his Breviloquium:

“Finally, no innocent person is morally obliged to suffer against his will, since this would contradict the order of divine justice; also, no mortal being wishes for death and suffering by natural impulse, for it is his nature to flee death. Christ, then, could assume these penalties only in a qualified manner: He was not to suffer against His rational will, since He not only lived in the state of beatitude and of union with the omnipotent Godhead through which He could repel any evil, but He also possessed perfect innocence which, according to the order of natural justice, cannot be obligated to suffer. Yet He was to suffer against His instinctive will: that is, against the sensible impulse and desire of His flesh. He expressed in His prayer - a rational act - the will of the flesh through which He shrank from suffering, when He said: "Let this cup pass away from Me"; but He conformed His rational will to the will of His Father, thus placing reason above instinct, when He said: "Not My will but Thine he done." One will was not opposed to the other, for "in His divine will, He wished what was just; in His rational will, He consented to justice; and in His natural instinct, while averse to pain, yet He did not contest justice. Each will acted in its field, tending toward its proper object: divine will to justice, rational will to obedience, and sensible will to nature." And so there was in Christ no conflict or struggle, but peaceful order and orderly peace.” (4.8.5)