“Your mind must be the same as Christ’s. Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God as something to be clung to. Instead he emptied himself, and became like a slave, and was born in the likeness of humanity…obediently accepting even death.” —Philippians 2:5–7
The hymn from Philippians artistically, honestly, but boldly describes that “secret hour” when God in Christ reversed the parabola, when the waxing became waning. It says it actually started with the great self-emptying or kenosis that we call the Incarnation in Bethlehem and ends with the Crucifixion in Jerusalem. It brilliantly connects the two mysteries as one movement, down, down, down into the enfleshment of creation, and then into humanity’s depths and sadness, and final identification with those at the very bottom (“took the form of a slave”) on the cross. Jesus represents God’s total solidarity with, and even love of, the human situation, as if to say “nothing human is abhorrent to me.” God, if Jesus is right, has chosen to descend—in almost total counterpoint with our humanity that is always trying to climb, achieve, perform, and prove itself. He invites us to reverse the process too.
—from the book Wondrous Encounters: Scriptures for Lent
by Richard Rohr, OFM
