Vigils Reading

A reading from

ST ANASTASIUS OF ANTIOCH

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Christ, who had shown by his words and actions that he was truly God and

Lord of the universe, said to his disciples as he was about to go up to Jerusalem:

We are going up to Jerusalem now, and the Son of Man will be handed over to

the Gentiles and the chief priests and scribes to be scourged and mocked and

crucified.

These words bore out the predictions of the prophets, who had foretold

the death he was to die in Jerusalem. From the beginning Holy Scripture had

foretold Christ’s death, the sufferings that would precede it, and what would

happen to his body afterward. Scripture also affirmed that these things were

going to happen to one who was immortal and incapable of suffering because he

was God.

Only by reflecting upon the meaning of the incarnation can we see how it

is possible to say with perfect truth both that Christ suffered and that he was

incapable of suffering, and why the Word of God, in himself incapable of

suffering, came to suffer. In fact we could have been saved in no other way, as

Christ alone knew and those to whom he revealed this truth. For he knows all

the secrets of the Father, even as the Spirit penetrates the depths of all

mysteries.

It was necessary for Christ to suffer: his Passion was absolutely

unavoidable. He said so himself when he called his companions dull and slow to

believe because they failed to recognize that he had to suffer and so enter into

his glory. Leaving behind him the glory that had been his with the Father before

the world was made, he had gone forth to save his people. This salvation,

however, could be achieved only by the suffering of the author of our life, as Paul

taught when he said that the author of our life himself was made perfect

through suffering.

Because of us he was deprived of his glory for a little while, the glory that

was his as the Father’s only begotten Son, but through the Cross this glory is

seen to have been restored to him in a certain way in the body that he had

assumed. Explaining what water the Saviour referred to when he said: He that

has faith in me shall have rivers of living water flowing from within him, John

says in his Gospel that he was speaking of the Holy Spirit which those who

believed in him were to receive, for the Spirit had not yet been given because

Jesus had not yet been glorified. The glorification he meant was his death upon

the Cross for which the Lord prayed to the Father before undergoing his

Passion, asking his Father to give him the glory that he had in his presence

before the world began.