I may have written about this before, but it returns to mind during Holy Week. Today’s Office of Readings brought it back (see the patristic reading for the day). The poverty of provisionality and finiteness that we experience as humans here in the world, a poverty embraced by Jesus so as to redeem all of what we are, body and soul, and bring it into eternity and divinity.
Ever think of how much time and effort we spend doing provisional things each and every day? Whether it is sweeping the floor, or painting the basement, or cooking meals, or doing the wash, or even reinforcing our human relationships so as to hopefully prevent their deterioration, all these things are provisional and poverty-striken realities of our fallen world that our Lord Jesus assumed and redeemed. He did them all. He sanctified them all. He died so that they may have eternal value.
Ever think of how much of ourselves we give to efforts that only have a finite, short-term effect or impact? And do we ever think of the divine dignity Jesus gave to this poverty?
Yes, we are provisional and finite people. We really do not know the depths to which we had fallen from our original dignity by the sin of Adam. We are poor people. We are only instruments in the hands of God. All we have accomplished is in fact “rubbish” (St. Paul) or mere “straw” (St. Thomas Aquinas). We cannot comprehend the richness and beauty and vastness and infinity of our God.
Yet, Jesus during this Holy Week took our provisional and finite lives and brought them into the divine realm of adopted sons and daughters. He gave our lives dignity. He poured out his grace into our very being, and gave meaning to all we do.
Holy Week celebrates the redemption of humanity, the elevation of humanity, from the unimaginable depths to which we had fallen, to the incalculable heights of God’s love.
