The Humility of God — a Reflection for Great & Holy Saturday

Icon by the hand of Mother Petra

By Mother Petra

I have feared God.  I do not mean holy fear, a recognition of the gulf separating the One who is other from me, His poor creature.  The fear to which I refer shows itself in craven cringing, in grasping, in a shame-filled self-rejection that turns me inward and closes my heart to saving communion with the Trinity.  I don’t think this fear is unique to me; I believe, if we are honest, it is a common experience among us who are sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses the result of the Fall like this: “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart.”  Adam’s sin resulted “in a loss of trust in God’s goodness” (CCC 397).  We are born bereft of trust in the tender love of God the Father.  We came to relate to Him as a threat rather than a protector, as One who would deprive us rather than the One who provides for us, as an adversary rather than a friend.   

Painful experiences with those in authority—parents, teachers, pastors—can deepen our false fears of God, reinforcing our belief that He is like an angry, difficult-to-please father; a demanding or exploitative boss; a manipulative, controlling leader.  We can be afraid to approach Him in our poverty, terrified of exposing our hurting and vulnerable places, lest we once again be wounded or rejected, used or abused.  Recognizing our reticence and broken trust, in the Incarnation the Father hid His glory and approached us in the lowly form of our own flesh to show us that He is with us in every way.  In Christ, He assumed a human Face so that we could see Him, revealing the Face of the Father (John 14:9); so that we could believe we are beloved sons in the Son.  

Yet God’s love was not satisfied with Incarnation:  He yearned to come even closer to us, His fearful children, to love us to the uttermost extremity.  So He let us abuse Him, allowed us to ravage His flesh and take His life.  God let us kill Him.  I recently painted the icon known as “Extreme Humility”:  The image of the dead Christ, submerged in the Tomb (traditionally, this icon hangs over the Proskomedia table where the Eucharist gifts are prepared).  As I spent hours with this icon, my heart understood that He so longs to come close to me, to dispel the fears that held me back from the vulnerability of union with Him, that He chose to be vulnerable with me first.  He let Himself be killed so that I could understand I have nothing to fear from Him.  He did not come in wrath or rage, but as the Lamb sacrificing Himself to find lost Adam, to give Himself to me.  As radical, even scandalous, as the truth is, He put Himself so entirely into our power—as He continues to do in the Eucharist, putting Himself into the unworthy hands of mortal men—that He needed to be buried!  He did all this that I may understand that I need not fear Him, but can approach Him with confidence in His goodness and love.  One of our prayers captures this shocking condescension: “You who are unapproachable by nature become approachable to me.”    

On this Holy Saturday, as we meditate in silence on the God who descended into Hades to loose our bonds, the God who was most active when He appeared to our blinded eyes to be most helpless, let us receive the radiant gift of His humble love which embraced such extremity for us.  Let us relinquish our fears and approach Him with renewed trust and generous vulnerability.  May we put down our shields and self-protections and allow Christ God to love us back to life.