And this truth that God suffers--a truth that appals the mind of
man--is the revelation of the very heart of the Universe and of its
mystery, the revelation that God revealed to us when He sent His Son in
order that he might redeem us by suffering and dying. It was the
revelation of the divine in suffering, for only that which suffers is
divine.
And men made a god of this Christ who suffered, and through him they
discovered the eternal essence of a living, human God--that is, of a God
who suffers--it is only the dead, the inhuman, that does not suffer--a
God who loves and thirsts for love, for pity, a God who is a person.
Whosoever knows not the Son will never know the Father, and the Father
is only known through the Son; whosoever knows not the Son of Man--he
who suffers bloody anguish and the pangs of a breaking heart, whose soul
is heavy within him even unto death, who suffers the pain that kills and
brings to life again--will never know the Father, and can know nothing
of the suffering God.
He who does not suffer, and who does not suffer because he does not
live, is that logical and frozen _ens realissimum_, the _primum movens_,
that impassive entity, which because of its impassivity is nothing but a
pure idea. The category does not suffer, but neither does it live or
exist as a person. And how is the world to derive its origin and life
from an impassive idea? Such a world would be but the idea of the world.
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