The Infinite Love of God in the Redemption is presented, in this series of articles on God's infinite Love, as the second great abyss of divine love — after that of Creation, before those of the Eucharist and the Sacred Heart. The word "abyss" means a bottomless gulf: here, a love so great that no one can fathom it. It designates the mystery by which God, after original sin, himself became man to satisfy divine justice in our place — offering the Father, by his obedience unto death, a superabundant reparation — and thus to ransom us from the infinite debt man had contracted toward that justice. Not that God was constrained to this way in order to be able to forgive — he could have saved otherwise, by simple decree — but because it is, in St Thomas's words, the "most fitting": the way in which justice is fully satisfied and love fully manifested[1].
This doctrine lies at the very heart of the apostolic preaching[2][3]. It received its classical formulation from the Greek and Latin Fathers — St Athanasius, St Irenaeus —, with its Christological foundation in St Leo the Great[4]; then St Anselm of Canterbury explained it step by step, in question-and-answer form, in the Cur Deus Homo (1098), and St Thomas Aquinas gave its scholastic version (Summa Theologiae III, q. 46–49). By "scholastic version" is meant the clear and orderly explanation, question by question, as in a textbook. The Council of Trent fixed its official definition (decree on justification, session VI, 1547)[5]; and St Alphonsus Liguori drew from it the most eloquent meditation for prayer. The Church's contemporary teaching — Catechism of the Catholic Church §599–§618, the encyclical Dives in Misericordia of St John Paul II (1980)[6] — has taken it up and deepened it without altering the heart of the dogma.
The stake is not only doctrinal. The Redemption is, after Creation, the second name of the Christian God — that is, the second way of saying who he is: a God who is not content to have created man out of love but who, when man was lost, himself came to seek him at the price of his blood. It is the most unheard-of proof of love the world has ever received — and the one to which we have, paradoxically, grown the most accustomed. The article that follows seeks to rekindle the founding scandal of this news, to show why the God-Man is, in St Thomas's words, the "most fitting" way of salvation — not the only one God could have chosen — and to present the patristic, scholastic, magisterial and mystical sources that illuminate its depths.
The unheard-of quality of a love no one expected
The habit that extinguishes the mystery
The doctrine of the Redemption suffers from a singular ailment: it is too well known to still be heard. The Christian grows up with the crucifix on the wall, has heard the formula "died for our sins" since childhood, sees the sign of the cross traced over him from baptism. By dint of obviousness, the mystery becomes cliché. We repeat: "By his death, Jesus saved us" without any longer knowing from what we are saved, nor how this death saves, nor why a death was needed rather than a decree of pardon.
This numbness is not neutral. It empties faith of its affective charge: a believer who no longer perceives the unheard-of quality of the Cross can hardly live in the gratitude it calls for, and gratitude is the very root of the spiritual life. St Alphonsus Liguori, who made meditation on Christ's sufferings his major pastoral battle[7], saw in it the remedy for this numbness: in the eighth meditation of his novena to the Holy Spirit, he calls himself "ungrateful" if he loves little a God who gave for him "his life and his blood"[8].
The stranger's gaze that awakens
Sometimes, it takes the gaze of one estranged from the faith to rediscover the strangeness in full. Take an image — not a reported fact, but a thought experiment: a child who had never seen a crucifix would ask in amazement how one can "leave that there". And he would, in his own way, be right: the cross is an instrument of torture. To wear it around one's neck, to hang it above cradles, to erect it on mountaintops is, seen from the outside, as unusual as sporting an electric chair as jewellery or a guillotine as an object of devotion.
This strangeness is the gateway to the mystery. Far from being a scandal to be concealed, it is the first truth the apostolic preaching dared to affirm before the Greek world and the Jewish world. St Paul gave it its theme in the first letter to the Corinthians:
"But we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." — St Paul, 1 Corinthians 1:23–24[9]
Taking up the doctrine of the Redemption therefore supposes accepting this founding scandal anew, not blunting it into a polite religion. That is what the whole Catholic spiritual tradition does, from St Paul to the Curé of Ars: it tirelessly brings the believer back before the Cross, not to crush him, but so that he may finally see what was done for him.
Indispensable preliminary: who is the just God of the Bible?
One cannot grasp the magnitude of the Redemption without first taking seriously what it saves us from. And what it saves us from belongs to the order of divine justice — a truth today often shelved in favour of a mercy made cheap by evasion. The detour is therefore obligatory: before speaking of the gift, speak of the debt. As Scripture says, God "is the Rock: his work is perfect; all his ways are justice. A God of truth and without iniquity, he is just and upright"[10].
Justice: rendering to each his due
St Thomas Aquinas, taking up the Roman formula of Ulpian, gives the classical definition:
"Justice is the constant and perpetual will to render to each his right." — St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 58, art. 1, respondeo[11]
The Catechism takes up this definition, applying it to God and neighbour:
"Justice is the moral virtue which consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbour." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1807[12]
Justice therefore implies two inseparable movements: rewarding good and punishing evil. Scripture is explicit on this point — acquitting the guilty is not mercy, it is corruption:
"He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord." — Book of Proverbs, 17:15[13]
This apparent harshness conceals a deeper truth: a judge who acquitted without reason would despise the victim and lie about the reality of evil. Imagine a man tortured and then murdered your whole family; he awaits trial in prison. On the day of the hearing, the judge declares: "Well, I am a rather merciful fellow — off you go." Outrage would be universal. And it would be just. Without justice, mercy is but one more injustice — it crushes the victim a second time, and betrays the victim for the benefit of the executioner.
Holy wrath, truly good news
Scripture makes no mystery of God's indignation in the face of evil. Very frequently, in the Old as in the New Testament, it speaks of the "wrath of God"[14]. Contemporary preaching, out of embarrassment, has often hushed up this theme; but this modesty misses the mark. If God were not indignant at evil, he would not be good. A God indifferent to the Holocaust, to paedophilia or to tyranny would not be a God of love, but a God of marble. It is precisely because he loves that God hates all that destroys what he loves. To love the Jews is to hate Auschwitz; to love children is to hate paedophilia; to love God is to hate sin. Holy hatred of evil is a direct consequence of love, not its contrary.
The Eternal Father explained it to St Catherine of Siena in her Dialogue:
"Light is acquired through the true knowledge the soul has of herself, and from this knowledge comes holy hatred of darkness." — The Eternal Father to St Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, ch. CXLV[15]
The Bible is traversed by this conviction. "God is a righteous judge, God is angry at all times"[16]. And St Paul, anticipating the objection — "Is God unjust when he gives free rein to his wrath?" — answers in the same breath: "By no means!"[17][18]. Divine wrath is not the passion of a tyrant: it is the reaction of Holiness wounded by sin. And it is fortunate that it exists: it is upon it that all victims of injustice who obtained no reparation here below can lean.
A truth still current (John Paul II)
This doctrine is anything but archaic. St John Paul II recalled it in Salvifici Doloris in 1984:
"Hence there also derives one of the fundamental truths of religious faith, based likewise on Revelation: that God is a just judge, who rewards good and punishes evil." — St John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, n. 4[19]
And still more in Dives in Misericordia: on the Cross, divine justice reveals itself "in the measure" of God, "because it is born of love and is accomplished in love"[20]. It is by holding these two poles together that the Redemption becomes intelligible: without justice, it is no longer necessary; without mercy, it is no longer possible.
For a detailed treatment of the non-opposition between the two divine attributes, see the article God of Justice and of Mercy, which deals specifically with this point.
The human condition under the weight of the debt
Once the nature of divine justice is established, the question becomes: what do we deserve, in justice, before God? The answer of the Bible and of tradition is without evasion, and it is this answer that gives the full measure of the Redemption to come.
"There is no one just, not even one"
St Paul, in the great exposition of Romans 1–3, draws a universal conclusion:
"There is no one just, not even one. (...) All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." — St Paul, Romans 3:10, 23[21]
And he draws its frontal consequence: "By works of the Law no one will become just before God"[22]. No human merit, no scrupulous observance, no intense asceticism can settle the debt contracted. Holiness is not an exploit to be accomplished: it is a gift to be received, because no human offering suffices.
St John recalled it with rough sharpness against every pretension to innocence:
"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." — St John, 1 John 1:8[23]
The wages of sin: eternal death
The biblical term for this debt is thanatos — death. But it is not only a matter of physical death, which strikes the just as well as the unjust. It is a matter of spiritual death, that is, of definitive separation from God.
"The wages of sin is death." — St Paul, Romans 6:23[24]
Jesus himself, in the Sermon on the Mount, does not lighten the bill — he rather makes it heavier. Where the ancient Law condemned murder, he already condemns anger, insult, verbal attack:
"You have heard that it was said to the ancients: You shall not commit murder. (...) But I say to you: everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. And whoever says 'Fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire." — St Matthew, 5:21–22[25]
If we are honest with ourselves — and we should be, since St John commands it — we will acknowledge that we have already sinned as Jesus describes here, and that we therefore deserve to be deprived of God for our sins. St Thomas draws the consequence without concession: "mortal sin deserves the eternal punishment of hell"[26]. Original sin — the deliberate and conscious refusal of the divine friendship offered at the origins — is, in St Thomas's reading (I-II, q. 87), of the rank of sins that deserve eternal punishment; and the whole of humanity, in Adam, contracted this punishment[27]. God, in his strict justice, could have left it at that.
God could have abandoned us without ceasing to be just
This point is crucial for measuring what follows. God's Mercy is not a due; his justice in no way obliges him to forgive. St Paul writes it explicitly:
"What shall we say then? Is there injustice in God? By no means! (...) So then, he has mercy on whom he wills, and he hardens whom he wills." — St Paul, Romans 9:14, 18[28]
This "hardening" is not divine arbitrariness: according to St Thomas, God hardens by withdrawing his grace in the face of man's obstinate refusal, without ever himself impelling him to evil[29].
If God, after the fall, had simply left humanity to go to the end of what it had chosen for itself, he would have remained perfectly just — less merciful, but in no way unjust. The Redemption, from then on, is not a mandatory corrective: it is a surplus of gratuitous love, a gift dictated by nothing, which bursts forth all the more forcefully for having been unforeseeable.
| Plan considered | What God could have done | What he did |
|---|---|---|
| Strict justice alone | Leave man to the consequences of his sin | — |
| Arbitrary pardon | Decree pardon without reparation | — |
| Justice and Mercy reconciled | — | Become man, pay the debt himself, set pardon free |
It is this third way — "the most fitting", in St Thomas's words[30] — which constitutes the Redemption.
God's incomprehensible love for his creature
How can we explain that God, being in no way constrained, chose this extreme way? The tradition's answer holds in one formula: a disproportionate, infinite, almost incomprehensible love. This love cannot be explained — it is observed, and one must stop long enough before this datum for it truly to enter the heart.
"God loves man as if man were his God"
In a small work attributed to St Thomas Aquinas, whose authenticity remains debated, a daring formula describes the measure of this love:
"God loves man as if man were his God, and as if he could not be happy without man." — Opuscule 62, On Beatitude, ch. 7, attributed to St Thomas Aquinas[31]
The expression is striking. Of course, God, being infinitely happy in himself, has no need of man. But the love he bears man is such that everything happens as if this were not the case. Like a father who, possessing every good in the world, is nevertheless ready to lose everything for his only son — not because he lacks something without him, but because his heart finds no rest until he has given everything to the one he loves.
God's delight in the sons of men
Scripture also attests this paradoxical delight of God in his creature. Wisdom personified — figure of the eternal Word — says in Proverbs:
"My delight is to be with the children of men." — Book of Proverbs, 8:31[32]
The Hebrew word sha'ashu'im ("delights, play") suggests more than a distant benevolence: an active joy, a complicity, a taste for dwelling among men. It is this same taste that culminates in the Incarnation, where the Word, "having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end" (John 13:1)[33].
It is upon this incomprehensible love that all that follows hangs: God loves man to such a point that he will not bear to see him lost, even when he could leave him to his fate.
The aporia: how to reconcile Justice and Mercy?
Here is born a formidable difficulty, which occupied the whole of medieval theology. God wants to forgive — out of love. God cannot simply forgive — out of justice. How are these two demands reconciled in the same God?
The apparent deadlock
Mercy, considered alone, seems to be exactly the opposite of justice. Justice renders to each his due; mercy, precisely, does not render it. The guilty deserves punishment; mercy dispenses him from punishment. How can these two movements coexist in God without contradiction?
Scripture, far from masking this tension, gave it its theme in a verse of the Psalms that has become famous:
"Steadfast love and faithfulness meet, righteousness and peace kiss." — Psalm, 85:11 Hebrew (84 Vulgate)[34]
The image is strong: the psalm literally says that "justice and peace kiss"; the spiritual tradition also reads Justice and Mercy in it — the first frightens, the second reassures — not only coexisting, but reconciled in the Cross. But how?
The debate at the court of Heaven according to the Bernardine tradition
The tradition stemming from St Bernard illustrated this aporia with a celestial drama that has become classical — the debate of the "Four Daughters of God". After original sin, Justice and Mercy both present themselves before God's throne:
"I am lost, says Justice, if Adam is not punished. — I am lost, replies Mercy, if he does not obtain pardon." — Tradition of the debate of the Four Daughters of God, going back to St Bernard of Clairvaux, De aquaeductu[35]
The whole problem lies there: an apparent opposition between two divine attributes, both necessary, neither of which can be sacrificed without dishonouring God. The problem is insoluble in appearance. And it is precisely at this deadlock that St Alphonsus, taking up and amplifying Bernard, brings the answer bursting forth.
St Alphonsus's great meditation
The following passage is one of the most beautiful meditations of Catholic spirituality on the mystery of the Redemption. Taking up the Bernardine drama, St Alphonsus makes the Trinity speak as in a liturgical drama, after original sin:
"No, says the Lord, I do not want to lose man: let a Redeemer present himself to satisfy my justice in his place, thus ransoming him from the hands of his enemies and from the eternal death he has deserved. St Bernard, contemplating this mystery, sees a debate arise between divine Justice and Mercy. 'I am lost, says Justice, if Adam is not punished. — I am lost, replies Mercy, if he does not obtain pardon.' The Lord settles the dispute by deciding that an innocent man shall die to save guilty man.
On earth, no one who was innocent. Since among men, says the Eternal Father to the Angels, none can satisfy my Justice, who among you will go to ransom Adam and his posterity? The Cherubim, the Seraphim, the whole heavenly host, keep silence; alone, the Eternal Word breaks it to say: 'Here I am, send me' (Is 6:8). Father, says the only Son, your majesty, which was offended by man, is an infinite majesty; it cannot receive worthy reparation from a mere creature, were it an angel; and even if you were content with an angel's reparation, consider that until now, despite the multitude of our benefits, despite all our promises and all our threats, man has refused us his love.
Why? Because he has not yet known the immensity of our love for him. Do we want to oblige him infallibly to love us? Let us seize the present occasion, the most beautiful of all: I, your Son, will go to earth to ransom him, I will take a body of flesh like his; by my death I will pay the debt he contracted, your Justice will be fully satisfied, and man, well persuaded of our love for him...
— But consider, O my Son, answers the Father, that in taking upon yourself the obligation to pay for man, you will have to lead a life of continual sufferings. — No matter, says the Son, send me.
— Consider that on your return to Palestine, a very hard and despised life will be your portion; you will work as a simple labourer in the workshop of a poor craftsman. — No matter, here I am; send me.
— Consider lastly that, when you come out of obscurity to preach doctrine and manifest to the world who you are, you will doubtless have disciples, but few in number; the great majority of men will despise you, treat you as an impostor, a magician, a madman, a Samaritan; they will end by persecuting you to the point of making you die, covered with opprobrium, on an infamous wood, by dint of torments.
— No matter, here I am; send me." — St Alphonsus Liguori, Christmas, Novenas and Meditations[36]
The force of this dialogue lies in gathering in a few pages the whole theology of the Redemption: justice satisfied by the innocent one who pays for the guilty, love as the ultimate motive, the freedom of the Word offering himself, Christ's full awareness before the coming Passion. And the Son's reply, repeated like a refrain — "No matter, here I am; send me" — is, in all Catholic spiritual literature, one of the most heart-rending expressions of God's incomprehensible love for man.
Cur Deus Homo: why a God made man
The drama of St Bernard and St Alphonsus presupposes a speculative thesis masterfully laid down by St Anselm of Canterbury in his famous treatise Cur Deus Homo ("Why a God-Man?"), completed in 1098. Anselm's question is the most burning of the Christian doctrine of salvation: why did God choose this mode — the Incarnation, the Passion, the Cross — rather than another?
It had to be a man
Anselm's first argument: it is man who sinned. It is therefore for man to pay. God's justice does not consist in arbitrarily punishing an innocent one in place of a guilty one — it consists in humanity, which contracted the debt, effectively discharging it.
"It is fitting that, as death entered the human race through the disobedience of a man, so life should be restored through the obedience of a man." — St Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo, I, ch. 3[37]
St Paul had formulated this logic before Anselm:
"As by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience the many will be made righteous." — St Paul, Romans 5:19[38]
It had to be God
Second argument: no purely human man has the capacity to pay this debt. Why? Because the offense of sin against God has an infinite gravity — not by the matter of the act, but by the infinity of the One offended. And only a being of infinite worth can offer reparation of infinite worth for an infinite offense.
"A [mere] man cannot give this satisfaction (...), for he already owed all that he could give, and he owed it not to sin. Only God can give such satisfaction." — St Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, II, ch. 6[39]
Hence the conclusion that gives the book its title: there must be a God-Man. A being fully man, to be able to represent the human race; and fully God, so that his offering has the infinite worth required.
The Word alone could be Redeemer
St Thomas Aquinas takes up exactly this reasoning in the Tertia Pars of the Summa:
"Christ, in suffering out of charity and obedience, offered to God something greater than was required in compensation for the whole offense of the human race." — St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 48, art. 2[40]
And he specifies in the same question: Christ's satisfaction is not only sufficient, but superabundant, for the sins of all humanity. In plain words: Christ did not pay just what was needed, he gave far more — his offering is worth infinitely more than all our debts together. That is why St Paul affirms that where sin abounded, "grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5:20)[41].
St Paul sums up everything in a single sentence:
"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." — St Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:21[42]
The echo of the Fathers: Athanasius, Irenaeus, Leo the Great
Anselm's doctrine is no medieval novelty: it systematises a constant patristic conviction. St Athanasius of Alexandria, as early as the 4th century, wrote in his De Incarnatione Verbi:
"The Word became man that we might become God; and he manifested himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the invisible Father; and he endured the insolence of men that we might inherit incorruptibility." — St Athanasius of Alexandria, De Incarnatione Verbi, 54, 3[43]
St Irenaeus of Lyon, two centuries earlier, had formulated the same intuition in his Adversus Haereses:
"The Son of God, in his superabundant charity, became what we are, that he might make us to be what he himself is." — St Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus Haereses, V, preface[44]
And St Leo the Great, in his famous Sermon 21 on the Nativity:
"Remaining what he was and assuming what he was not, he united the true form of a slave to the form by which he is equal to God the Father, and joined the two natures by such an alliance that the lower should not be absorbed by its exaltation, nor the higher impaired." — St Leo the Great, Sermon 21 (Nativity I), ch. 2[45]
The Catechism of the Catholic Church gathered this whole tradition in a synthetic formula of four reasons:
"The Word became flesh to save us by reconciling us with God (...) ; so that we might thus know God's love (...) ; to be our model of holiness (...) ; to make us partakers of the divine nature." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §457–§460[46]
Vicarious substitution
Anselm and Thomas establish the necessity of a God-Man; the Fathers and the Catechism state its reasons. But how, concretely, did Christ pay the debt? Tradition's answer holds in one word: substitution. Christ substituted himself for us — not by legal fiction, but by really assuming the weight of sin.
"Identified with sin"
St Paul uses an expression of unheard-of theological violence:
"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin." — St Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:21[47]
The Greek word hamartían epoíēsen — literally, "he made him sin" — does not mean that Christ committed the least sin: he is precisely "he who knew no sin". It means that God laid upon Christ, upon his holy humanity, the whole mass of humanity's sin, as one lays a burden upon a bearer. And it is this weight — not only physical suffering, but the spiritual and expiatory weight — that Christ carried on the Cross.
St Paul, elsewhere, dares an even rougher formulation: "Christ became a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13)[48]. And St Peter: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24)[49].
Isaiah's Suffering Servant
The fourth Servant song, in the book of Isaiah, is the great Old Testament text of vicarious substitution. Tradition sees in it a prophecy of the prophet Isaiah himself, in the 8th century before Jesus Christ[50] — even though part of contemporary exegesis prefers to attribute it to a "second Isaiah" of the 6th century, at the price of the presupposition that a precise prophecy would be impossible. It announces with striking precision the mystery that would be accomplished on Calvary:
"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement that gives us peace was upon him: by his wounds we are healed." — Book of Isaiah, 53:4–5[51]
"The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (...) He was crushed by suffering, it pleased the Lord. (...) The righteous one, my servant, shall justify the multitudes, he shall bear their iniquities." — Book of Isaiah, 53:6, 10, 11[52]
Christian tradition has seen in this text a direct messianic prophecy, fulfilled in Jesus. The "suffering servant" who "bears our iniquities" and "justifies the multitudes" — that is, word for word, what the New Testament says of the crucified Christ.
The forgotten word: propitiation
At the heart of Pauline soteriology lies a Greek word rarely meditated today: hilastērion — propitiation. It is the Septuagint's technical term for the mercy seat, that golden lid of the Ark of the Covenant upon which the high priest poured, once a year, the blood of the victims to obtain pardon for the people's sins (Leviticus 16). St Paul applies this term directly to Christ:
"The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. (...) All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. For God's plan was that Christ should be the instrument of propitiation, in his blood, through faith." — St Paul, Romans 3:22–25[53]
And St John takes up the same formula in his first epistle:
"He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." — St John, 1 John 2:2[54]
Propitiation is precisely the act that renders God propitious toward us — that is, which transforms the "wrathful" aspect of justice into effective pardon, without removing anything of its rigour. How did Christ, instrument of propitiation, render God propitious toward man? By his sacrifice on the Cross. St Alphonsus Liguori sums up:
"All God's wrath stirred up by our sins came to fall back upon the person of the Saviour." — St Alphonsus Liguori, Considerations on the Passion[55]
St Faustina, to whom Jesus revealed Divine Mercy in the 1930s, expressed the same intuition in her Diary:
"God loves us in His Son. The painful Passion of the Son of God is what constantly tempers God's anger." — St Faustina Kowalska, Diary, §481[56]
This language sounds harsh to the modern ear; but it is precisely that of the Bible, the Fathers and the saints. The Cross is not a symbol: it is the act by which Christ assumes the punishment sin deserved, to transform it from within into a source of pardon.
The cup of wrath
Scripture often speaks of a "cup" that the nations must drink — the cup of God's holy indignation against evil. "Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it"[57]; "You have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury, you have drunk to the dregs the cup of staggering"[58]; "He also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger"[59]. And at Gethsemane, Jesus prays thus:
"My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me! Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." — St Matthew, 26:39[60]
And earlier he had asked the sons of Zebedee: "Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?"[61] Several theologians interpret this cup as the cup of divine wrath against sin, which Christ would have drunk in our place, to the very last drop. This reading is neither allegorical nor incidental: it inscribes Gethsemane in the great biblical economy of substitution. Christ did not only undergo men's torture; he bore, within his holy humanity, the whole weight of the judgment due to sin.
Christ's radical voluntariness
This point is decisive and must be stressed forcefully: the Father is not a sadist who sacrificed his Son against his will. The Eternal Word offered himself voluntarily. That is what St Paul says in the hymn to the Philippians:
"Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. (...) He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross." — St Paul, Philippians 2:6–8[62]
It is in a free kenosis — a self-emptying, a self-abasement assumed out of love — that the Word submits to the Father. And it is this freely consented character that gives the Passion its infinite worth: "No one takes it [my life] from me, but I lay it down of myself"[63]. The Cross is the freest act of love in all human history. That is why St Paul can write that the baptised were "bought with a price"[64] — "not with perishable things such as silver or gold, (...) but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, the blood of Christ" (1 Peter 1:18–19)[65].
The teaching of the Catechism and the Council of Trent
The Catechism of the Catholic Church synthesised this doctrine in §615, condensing the decisive passages of the New Testament and Trent's definition:
"'As by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience the many will be made righteous' (Rom 5:19). By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant who 'makes himself an offering for sin', when 'he bore the sin of many', and who 'shall make many to be accounted righteous', for 'he shall bear their iniquities' (Is 53:10-12). Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, §615[66]
The Council of Trent, in its decree on Justification (session VI, 1547), had laid the dogmatic foundation:
"He [Jesus Christ], when we were still enemies, by the exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, merited justification for us by his most holy Passion on the wood of the cross, and made satisfaction for us to God the Father." — Council of Trent, Session VI, ch. 7 — Decretum de iustificatione[67]
The doctrine is clear: the Cross is not merely an "example" of love, nor a "symbol", nor an "occasion" of pardon — it is the real act by which Christ discharges the debt by assuming the punishment. And humanity, justified "freely" (Rom 3:24), receives in return what it could not acquire: divine righteousness offered as gift.
"O happy fault": infinite love unveiled
All that precedes might suggest that the Redemption is above all a juridical question. It is that scheme — but it is infinitely more. It is, in the very heart of the Catholic tradition, the most dazzling revelation of God's love. And it is through this dimension of love that it unfolds in prayer, liturgy and mysticism.
The song of the Exsultet
In the Easter night, the Church sings, by the light of the Candle trembling in the dark nave:
"O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer!" — Roman Liturgy, chant of the Exsultet (Easter Vigil)[68]
This daring formula — felix culpa — seems paradoxical: how could the fault be happy? The meaning is obviously not that sin would be good in itself. It is that the fault, in obtaining such a Redeemer, ended by revealing a love that without it would have remained hidden. Creation alone spoke God's power and wisdom; the Redemption reveals his unfathomable love.
St Bernard fixed this idea in a lapidary formula:
"The creation of the world made God's power shine forth, the government of the world, his wisdom; but the incarnation of the Word made his mercy burst forth before every eye." — St Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted by St Alphonsus Liguori[69]
The love that dares to give its Son
The gesture of the Redemption can be reduced to a single line, the best known of the New Testament:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." — St John, 3:16[70]
This "gave" must be taken in the strong sense. The Father gave his Son — not metaphorically, but really, unto death, unto abandonment, unto dereliction. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mk 15:34)[71] is no pious refrain: it is the extreme of the gift.
Whoever has held a newborn child in his arms knows the unheard-of quality of the thing. No father on this earth would sacrifice his only son, even for his best friends, even for pardoned enemies. Yet God sacrificed his eternal Son — "while we were still sinners" (Rom 5:8), therefore even for his enemies:
"But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God." — St Paul, Romans 5:8–9[72]
The earthworm — St Alphonsus's analogy
To make the implausibility of the thing tangible, St Alphonsus, in his Meditations, proposes an analogy that seems almost scandalous — and which for that reason opens our eyes:
"Certainly, if faith did not give us assurance of it, who could ever believe that a God, for the love of a worm of the earth such as man, made himself a worm of the earth like man? As you pass along a road, you happen by chance to set your foot upon an earthworm and kill it. You feel compassion for this worm; someone (...) notices it and says to you: 'If you want it to live again, you must first become like it, then open your veins and make it a bath of all your blood; you shall plunge it therein, and there it will recover life.' What would you answer? Without doubt you would exclaim: 'What interest have I in the resurrection or the death of this vile insect, that I should restore its life at the expense of my own?' You would speak thus with still more reason if it were a matter, not of a harmless little worm, but of an ungrateful asp which, loaded with your benefits, had tried to give you death. (...) Well! this God loved you with so profound a love that, to snatch you from eternal death and save you, he first made himself a worm of the earth like you, voluntarily shed all his blood, suffered the death that was due to you." — St Alphonsus Liguori, Christmas, Novenas and Meditations[73]
The analogy is harsh; it is exact. The disproportion between God and man is greater than that between man and the earthworm — and yet God did, for us, the equivalent and more than the equivalent of the senseless gesture we would never make for an insect. Worse still: we were an "ungrateful asp", and he delivered himself to us all the same. There is the measure of the love called Redemption.
Taste the goodness of your Redeemer
St Anselm, who had laid down the speculative necessity of the Redemption, also wrote its praying meditation: it is the soul itself exhorting itself to taste this mystery, in an interior dialogue with its Saviour.
In his Meditation on Human Redemption, he exhorts the soul to "taste" the goodness of its Redeemer and to be inflamed with love for its Saviour: to rejoice in receiving him, to exult in being wholly absorbed in him[74].
The movement is total: it is not man who produces his salvation, it is the Saviour who gives himself to be tasted, leaving it to the soul to receive him — and to be wholly absorbed in him.
Father Jean d'Elbée gathered this movement in another memorable formula:
"Sin, contempt of an infinite love, could only be repaired by an infinite love. The Word of God becomes incarnate so that love may triumph in him and through him. Jesus bought at Calvary, at the price of all his blood, a double right: the right, for him, to love us despite, or even because of, our sins, our unworthiness; and the right, for us, to love him from the depths of our immense misery and to contemplate his divine attributes, including his justice, in his infinite mercy." — Father Jean of the Heart of Jesus d'Elbée, I Believe in Love[75]
Beyond visible sufferings: the hidden ocean of love
Christian iconography, since the Middle Ages, has stressed Christ's physical sufferings — the scourging, the crown of thorns, the nails, the lance. This dimension is real and must not be set aside; alone it speaks a gripping love. But the mystical tradition goes further: it affirms that Christ's interior suffering infinitely surpassed visible suffering — and that even the two together are but a spark before the ocean of love that caused them.
The interior Passion according to the Curé of Ars
St John Mary Vianney (1786–1859), the tireless confessor of Ars, meditated unceasingly on Christ's sufferings. He told his parishioners:
"We shall never be able to form an idea, we shall never be able to say what Our Lord suffered for us. To understand it, we would have to know all the harm sin does to him. We shall only know that at death." — St John Mary Vianney, Thoughts[76]
The observation is just: the physical Passion can be measured (hours of torture, precise wounds, death by crucifixion); Christ's interior Passion — laden with the spiritual weight of all sins from Adam to the end of the world — escapes all measure. This interior Passion, little depicted by art but central to the mystics, is what made many saints say that even the Cross does not show all Christ's true suffering — and therefore all his love.
"Suffered more than was needed"
The Curé of Ars also gives another essential key. Being God, Christ was of such infinite worth that the least act of his humanity would have sufficed to ransom the world — a tear, a sigh. If he suffered so much, it was not by juridical necessity: it was by superabundance of love.
"Our Lord suffered more than was needed to ransom us. But what would have satisfied his Father's justice would not have satisfied his love." — St John Mary Vianney, Thoughts[77]
The saying is luminous and must be left to resonate: what would have satisfied justice would not have satisfied love. Christ willed to go to the last drop of blood, to the last cry, to the last humiliation, not so that the debt be paid — one instant would have sufficed —, but so that no doubt could ever again be possible about the depth of his love for us. He would be ready to die a thousand times over, the Curé of Ars would say, if it could change anything.
The spark and the ocean
Here an image imposes itself: between what Christ suffered outwardly and the love burning within his heart, there is no common measure. What the Curé of Ars said of the interior Passion holds for the whole mystery: the visible is but the edge of the abyss.
The image captures the essential. The Cross, in all its visible horror, is a spark; the love that caused it is an ocean. That is why contemplation of the Passion is never exhausted: in it one never sees but the edge of an abyss.
Love precedes and exceeds suffering (St Augustine)
St Augustine, already in the 4th century, had laid down this priority of love over suffering. In his catechetical treatise for beginners:
"If he came to earth to suffer and die for us, it was solely to make us know how much he loves us." — St Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, ch. 4, n. 8[78]
The inversion is precious for spirituality. Christ did not die because he had to die, as by mechanical necessity: he died because he loved, and he chose death as the most eloquent language to say it to hearts as slow as ours. The Cross is thus a divine pedagogy of love: God spoke the language men understand, that of total gift.
An apologetic argument: the Cross as a necessity of love
The Catholic doctrine of the Redemption is not only spiritual: it is also philosophically more coherent than the alternatives proposed in the history of religions. This point deserves to be made, because it illuminates in return why the Incarnation is, in St Thomas's words, the "most fitting" way of salvation.
The question put to the Muslim doctrine of pardon
Islam, it must first be said, takes God's pardon very seriously: the Quran multiplies the divine names of pardon — Al-Ghafûr, the Pardoner, the Most Merciful — and sura XXXIX promises that God forgives all sins to whoever returns to him without despairing of his mercy[79]. The Muslim doctrine of repentance (tawba) is therefore, in itself, a strong doctrine of pardon.
Islam refuses, on the other hand, both the Incarnation and the Redemption. For classical Quranic doctrine, God pardons believers by unilateral decree and needs no one for that; and Christ did not die on the Cross (sura IV, 157)[80]. But then a question arises, frontally: how can God pardon without ceasing to be just?
If God pardons without reparation, his justice — rendering to each his due — seems compromised. If he does not pardon without reparation and no man can pay, then no one can be saved. From the Catholic point of view, these two affirmations — a just God and a merciful God — remain here juxtaposed without the passage from one to the other being articulated: it is precisely this passage that the doctrine of the Redemption claims to hold. It is the classical critique formulated repeatedly by Christian theologians, from St John Damascene (8th century) to contemporary apologists[81].
And on the level of facts?
There remains the historical denial itself: if Christ did not die on the Cross, the whole doctrine collapses. Yet this denial rests on no contemporary testimony of the events. On the contrary, the crucifixion of Jesus under Pontius Pilate is attested by an independent and hostile pagan source: the Roman historian Tacitus, relating around 116 the persecution of Christians by Nero after the fire of Rome, writes that "this name comes to them from Christ, who, under Tiberius, was delivered to punishment by the procurator Pontius Pilatus"[82]. The Quranic verse affirms, on the theological level, that God did not abandon Jesus to his executioners; it brings no documented counter-narrative of history. The historical objection removed, there remains the substantive question, properly theological: does a pardon without reparation satisfy justice? It is to this that the doctrine of the Redemption answers.
Christianity holds both ends
Christianity, on the contrary, holds the two demands together. It maintains integral justice — "the wages of sin is death" — and it reveals an infinite mercy — "he gave his Son". It holds them together because in Jesus Christ, it is God himself who pays the price he demands. Justice and peace kiss (Ps 85:11 Hebrew (84 Vulgate)) — the spiritual tradition also reads Justice and Mercy in it — because it is the same one who condemns and who lets himself be condemned, who demands the punishment and who undergoes it.
It is this point that Joseph Ratzinger stressed in his Introduction to Christianity: unlike religions in which expiation rests on human initiatives, the Bible shows God himself restoring, by his "creative mercy", the relationship broken by sin[83].
Without Incarnation, pardon is arbitrary or impossible. With Incarnation, it becomes "just" in this precise sense: justice is satisfied — by God himself, in the flesh of the God-Man.
Receiving the Redemption: the spiritual response
Doctrinal exposition does not exhaust the subject. If the Redemption is real, it calls for a response — and it is on this receptive dimension that the whole Catholic spiritual life turns.
A gratuitous grace to be welcomed
The first word is: nothing to pay. Christ paid everything. The pure logic of redeeming love wills that the one ransomed be not enslaved to a new price, but simply set free. St Paul writes it in terms almost scandalous for the Jewish legalism of his time:
"They are justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." — St Paul, Romans 3:24[84]
The Greek word dōreán ("freely, without cause") is awesome: it means "without any counterpart due on our part". The whole of justification is gift. The believer's role is not to merit — it is to receive, by living faith, by the sacraments, by repentance, by trust.
Completing what is lacking (Colossians 1:24)
And yet the Catholic tradition has always maintained, with St Paul, a second word, more mysterious:
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church." — St Paul, Colossians 1:24[85]
Christ paid everything objectively; but subjectively, his Passion asks to be prolonged in his members until the end of the world. What "is lacking" — hysterēmata — is no gap in the Cross: it is the personal application each Christian makes to his own life of what Christ accomplished. That is the meaning of the baptised person's participation in the redemptive work: the baptised, adding nothing to the objective worth of the Cross, actively participates in the redemptive mission by offering his own sufferings in union with Christ.
This gives Christian suffering a radically new meaning: it is no longer passively endured, but offered. It becomes love, as Christ made it love.
Loving in return the One who loved us first
The ultimate word of the Redemption — the only one that truly answers God's love — is not an act, it is a love. St John writes it with the sobriety that characterises him:
"We love because he first loved us." — St John, 1 John 4:19[86]
Truly receiving the Redemption means letting this love transform the heart into a return of love. The saints reduced the whole Christian life to this single demand: "Love, and do what you will," said Augustine[87]; "In the evening of our life, we shall be examined in love," said John of the Cross[88]. And St Alphonsus spent his whole work entreating sinners to meditate on the Passion, to let themselves be conquered by a God who dies for us[89].
Such is the ultimate invitation of the second abyss. The first, Creation, tells us that God willed us. The second, the Redemption, tells us that he ransomed us at the price of his Son. And eternity itself will not be too long to fathom the depth of this "how he loved us".
Go further — To pass from doctrine to concrete prayer — meditation on the Passion, prayer of reparation, abandonment to the divine Will — discover the free formation: open the Via Divina formation.
To go further
- God's Infinite Love in Creation — first abyss, on the gratuity of creation.
- God of Justice and of Mercy — the non-opposition of these two divine attributes.
- God's Infinite Love in the Eucharist — third abyss, on the real presence.
- God's Infinite Love in the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy — fourth abyss.
- Knowledge of God's love produces trust — the complete spiritual response.
Notes and References
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 1, art. 2: the fittingness of the Incarnation. Thomas shows that the Incarnation, without being absolutely necessary (God could have saved otherwise), was the "most fitting" way to manifest his love, conquer evil and raise man to divinisation. The same article, in reply to objection 2, formulates the quasi-infinite gravity of the offense against God ("peccatum contra Deum commissum habet quandam infinitatem ex infinitate divinae maiestatis"): the attribution to Thomas is therefore apt, the Anselmian argument being assumed therein. Cerf edition, vol. 4, 1986.
1 30St John, 1 John 4:10: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins." Jerusalem Bible.
2St Paul, Romans 5:8: "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us." Jerusalem Bible.
3St Leo the Great, Tomus ad Flavianum (Letter 28 to Flavian of Constantinople, 449), founding text of Chalcedonian Christology — the two natures of Christ in one single Person. PL 54, col. 755–782. Taken up at the Council of Chalcedon (451). It thus founds Christology, not the doctrine of satisfaction, which belongs to St Anselm and then to St Thomas.
4Council of Trent, Session VI (13 January 1547), Decretum de iustificatione, chapter 7 (Denzinger-Schönmetzer §1529). Official text in Conciliorum Œcumenicorum Decreta, ed. Centro di Documentazione, Bologna, 1973.
5St John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia (encyclical letter on divine mercy, 30 November 1980), §7 and §8. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1980; official text on vatican.va.
6St Alphonsus Liguori, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ (Pratica di amare Gesù Cristo), Naples, 1768 — the work that made meditation on Christ's sufferings the centre of his pastoral battle. French edition: éd. Artège, Paris, 2020.
7St Alphonsus Liguori, Novena to the Holy Spirit (Novena dello Spirito Santo), 8th meditation: "I would be ungrateful if, after that, I loved Thee little, or if I let creatures share my heart with Thee, who gavest Thy life and Thy blood for me" (our Fr. trans.; Engl. text: "I would be an ungrateful wretch if I loved Thee little after that (...) Who hast given Thy life and Thy blood for me").
8St Paul, 1 Corinthians 1:23–24. AELF liturgical translation, quoted word for word (here the AELF renders the Greek Christos as "Messiah"). Greek text: hēmeis dè kēryssomen Christòn estaurōménon, Ioudaíois mèn skándalon, éthnesin dè mōrían.
9Deuteronomy 32:4 — Canticle of Moses. AELF liturgical translation, quoted word for word.
10St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 58, art. 1, respondeo. Takes up Ulpian's classical formula (Digest, I, 1, 10): "Iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuendi." French edition: trans. directed by A.-M. Roguet, Cerf, Paris, vol. 3, 1984.
11Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1807. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992; text on vatican.va.
12Book of Proverbs 17:15. Jerusalem Bible.
13The theme of "God's wrath" (Hebrew: aph, charon-aph, ‘ebrah; Greek: orgē Theou) runs through the whole biblical canon, from the Psalms to St Paul (notably Rom 1:18; Rom 2:5; Eph 5:6). For a synthesis: R. V. G. Tasker, The Biblical Doctrine of the Wrath of God, Tyndale Press, London, 1951; H. U. von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, vol. III/1.
14St Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue of Divine Providence, ch. CXLV, n. 14. Critical Italian edition: Il Dialogo della divina Provvidenza, ed. G. Cavallini, Cantagalli, Siena, 1995. Fr. trans.: Le Dialogue, trans. L. Portier, Cerf, Paris, 1992, p. 519.
15Psalm 7:12. Jerusalem Bible.
16St Paul, Romans 3:5. Jerusalem Bible.
17St Paul, Romans 3:6. Jerusalem Bible. Greek text: mē genoito — Paul's classical formula of protest: "By no means!", "Far be it!".
18St John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris (apostolic letter on the Christian meaning of human suffering, 11 February 1984), n. 4. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1984; text on vatican.va.
19St John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia (30 November 1980), §7: "Thus the Redemption bears within itself the revelation of mercy in its fullness. The paschal mystery constitutes the summit of this revelation (...), which is capable of justifying man, of restoring justice as the realisation of the salvific order which God willed from the beginning." And: the divine justice revealed in the Cross is "in the measure" of God, "because it is born of love and is accomplished in love". Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1980; text on vatican.va.
20St Paul, Romans 3:10, 23. Jerusalem Bible. Verse 10 is a free quotation of Psalm 14:1–3 and Ecclesiastes 7:20.
21St Paul, Romans 3:20. Jerusalem Bible.
22St John, 1 John 1:8. Jerusalem Bible.
23St Paul, Romans 6:23. Jerusalem Bible. Greek text: tà gàr opsōnia tēs hamartías thánatos.
24St Matthew 5:21–22 — Sermon on the Mount, first of the antitheses. Jerusalem Bible.
25St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 87, art. 3–4: the question asked is precisely "whether a sin incurs a debt of eternal punishment" — answer: yes for mortal sin, which turns man away from his last end; art. 4 specifies that the corresponding punishment is privation of the infinite good (pain of loss), while sensible punishment remains finite. Cerf edition, vol. 2, 1984.
26Catechism of the Catholic Church, §402–§403. On the transmission of original sin: "All men are implicated in Adam's sin (...). That is why sin is called Adam's sin and the sin of all, because all bear it in germ within them." Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992.
27St Paul, Romans 9:14–18. Jerusalem Bible. St Paul quotes Exodus 33:19 ("I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy") to found God's absolute freedom in the act of grace.
28St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 79, art. 3: hardening has two aspects — the movement of the mind toward evil, of which God is not the cause, and the withdrawal of grace, of which God is the cause. The article quotes in sed contra Rom 9:18 itself. Cerf edition, vol. 2, 1984.
29St Thomas Aquinas, Opuscule 62 — On Beatitude (De Beatitudine), ch. 7. The Thomistic authenticity of this opuscule is debated by modern criticism, but the formula is canonical in the Catholic spiritual tradition and was taken up by St Alphonsus, by Fr Garrigou-Lagrange and by many spiritual masters.
31Book of Proverbs 8:31. Jerusalem Bible. This verse, spoken by Wisdom personified — figure of the Word according to the tradition's constant Christological reading — expresses God's delight in the creation of man. Hebrew text: m'shaqéqeth b'tével ’artso, w'sha‘ashu‘ay ’eth-b'nei ’adam.
32St John 13:1. Jerusalem Bible. Greek text: eis télos ēgápēsen autoús — "he loved them to the end", or "to the uttermost".
33Psalm 85 (84 in the Vulgate), 11. Jerusalem Bible — which follows the Hebrew numbering. Hebrew text: chesed we’emeth nifgashu, tzedeq w'shalom nashaqu — "Steadfast love and faithfulness meet, righteousness and peace kiss."
34St Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermo in festo Annuntiationis B.V. Mariae ("De aquaeductu"), 1, n. 8. PL 183, col. 437–438. Critical edition: Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, vol. V, Rome, Editiones Cistercienses, 1968. The dialogue of the "Four Daughters of God" (Justice, Truth, Mercy, Peace), begun in Bernard, would be amply developed by the medieval theologians after him, notably by Hugh of St Victor (De arrha animae) and by the Meditationes Vitae Christi of the pseudo-Bonaventure: the quoted formulation belongs to this tradition.
35St Alphonsus Liguori, Christmas, Novenas and Meditations, meditation for the first day of the Christmas novena. French edition: Éditions Saint-Paul, Paris, 2009, p. 25–27. The original Italian text of the cycle (Novena del santo Natale) was published in Naples in 1758. The dialogue reported here is a poetic amplification of the debate of the Four Daughters of God going back to St Bernard; it is not found in these terms in the Meditazioni per l'Avvento of the critical Italian edition (Opere ascetiche, vol. IV, Rome, 1939).
36St Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo, book I, ch. 3. Critical edition: Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, vol. II, Edinburgh, Nelson, 1946. Fr. trans.: Pourquoi Dieu s'est fait homme, trans. M. Corbin, Sources Chrétiennes n° 91, Cerf, Paris, 1963. Latin text: "Convenit ut, sicut per hominis inobedientiam mors intravit in genus humanum, ita per hominis obedientiam restituatur vita."
37St Paul, Romans 5:19. Jerusalem Bible. Verse quoted literally by the Catechism of the Catholic Church §615.
38St Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo, book II, ch. 6. Latin text: "Non potest hoc facere nisi qui sit verus Deus. (...) Non debet facere nisi homo: alioquin non satisfaceret homo." — "Only he who is true God can do it; and only man ought to do it." Ed. Schmitt, vol. II, p. 100.
39St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 48, art. 2, respondeo. Latin text: "Christus autem ex caritate et obedientia patiens, maius aliquid Deo exhibuit quam exigeret recompensatio totius offensae humani generis." Cerf edition, vol. 4, 1986.
40St Paul, Romans 5:20. Jerusalem Bible.
41St Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:21. Jerusalem Bible. Greek text: tòn mē gnónta hamartían hypèr hēmōn hamartían epoíēsen, hína hēmeis genōmetha dikaiosúnē Theoū en autō.
42St Athanasius of Alexandria, De Incarnatione Verbi, ch. 54, §3. PG 25, col. 192. Critical edition: Sources Chrétiennes n° 199, Sur l'Incarnation du Verbe, intro., trans. and notes by C. Kannengiesser, Cerf, Paris, 1973. Greek text: autòs gàr enēnthrōpēsen, hína hēmeis theopoiēthōmen — "He became man that we might be divinised."
43St Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), book V, preface. Sources Chrétiennes n° 153, intro., trans. and notes by A. Rousseau, L. Doutreleau and C. Mercier, Cerf, Paris, 1969. Latin text: "Verbum Dei (...) factus est quod sumus nos, uti nos perficeret esse quod et ipse."
44St Leo the Great, Sermon 21, In Nativitate Domini I, ch. 2. PL 54, col. 191. Critical edition: Sources Chrétiennes n° 22 bis, Sermons, vol. I, intro. and trans. by R. Dolle, Cerf, Paris, 1964.
45Catechism of the Catholic Church, §457–§460. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992; text on vatican.va. This four-reason synthesis takes up the Greek Fathers (Athanasius, Irenaeus, Gregory of Nazianzus) and Latin Fathers (Augustine, Leo).
46St Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:21. Jerusalem Bible. See previous note on the meaning of the verb epoíēsen ("he made") in this Greek construction.
47St Paul, Galatians 3:13. Jerusalem Bible. The verse quotes Deuteronomy 21:23 ("Cursed is he who hangs on a tree"): Paul reads the Crucifixion as the paradoxical fulfilment of this curse, Christ having taken upon himself the curse of the Law to free man from it.
48St Peter, 1 Peter 2:24. Jerusalem Bible. Verse taking up Isaiah 53:4 and 53:12.
49On the unity of the book of Isaiah and its attribution to the 8th-century prophet: Pontifical Biblical Commission, decree of 28 June 1908. The hypothesis of a "second Isaiah" (or "deutero-Isaiah") of the Exile rests on the philosophical presupposition that a precise prophecy would be impossible — not on a discovery.
50Book of the prophet Isaiah 53:4–5 — fourth Servant song. Jerusalem Bible.
51Book of the prophet Isaiah 53:6, 10, 11. Jerusalem Bible. The fourth Servant song (Is 52:13 – 53:12) is read by the whole Christian tradition as a messianic prophecy of the Passion. See C. Westermann, Isaiah 40–66, OTL, SCM Press, London, 1969; and B. Sesboüé, Jésus-Christ, l'unique médiateur, Desclée, Paris, 1988–1991, 2 vol.
52St Paul, Romans 3:22–25. Jerusalem Bible. Greek text: hilastērion dià pisteōs en tō autoū haímati — "instrument of propitiation through faith in his blood". The term hilastērion is also the one the Septuagint uses to translate kapporet, the golden mercy seat covering the Ark of the Covenant (Leviticus 16).
53St John, 1 John 2:2. Jerusalem Bible. The Greek word hilasmós ("propitiation, expiation") is of the same family as the hilastērion of Romans 3:25.
54St Alphonsus Liguori, Considerations on the Passion of Jesus Christ, chapter II, §IV. Original Italian edition: Considerazioni sopra la Passione di Gesù Cristo, Naples, 1761. French edition: Œuvres complètes de saint Alphonse de Liguori, ed. Hippolyte Walzer, vol. III, Paris-Tournai, Casterman, 1864.
55St Faustina Kowalska, Diary — Divine Mercy in My Soul, §481. Reference French edition: trans. directed by the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, éd. Hovine, Marquain (Belgium), 2009. Original Polish edition: Dzienniczek — Miłosierdzie Boże w duszy mojej, ed. Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy, Krakow, 1981. Imprimatur of Cardinal Macharski, Krakow, 1981.
56Book of Jeremiah 25:15. Jerusalem Bible.
57Book of Isaiah 51:17. Jerusalem Bible.
58Revelation 14:10. Jerusalem Bible. The theme of the "cup of wrath" is explicitly taken up in the New Testament and will link, throughout tradition, Gethsemane to the last judgment, that is, to God's final judgment at the end of time.
59St Matthew 26:39 — Jesus' agony at Gethsemane. Jerusalem Bible.
60St Matthew 20:22 — Jesus' answer to the sons of Zebedee. Jerusalem Bible.
61St Paul, Philippians 2:6–8 — hymn to the Philippians, one of the oldest Christological testimonies of the New Testament (probably earlier than the letter itself, around AD 50–55). Jerusalem Bible.
62St John 10:18: "No one takes it [my life] from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it up again." Jerusalem Bible.
63St Paul, 1 Corinthians 7:23: "You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men." Jerusalem Bible.
64St Peter, 1 Peter 1:18–19. Jerusalem Bible. The verse contrasts the "perishable" ransom (silver, gold) with the "precious" ransom (Christ's blood) to stress the infinite worth of the Redemption.
65Catechism of the Catholic Church, §615. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992; text on vatican.va. The paragraph condenses Rom 5:19; Is 53:10–12; and Trent's decree DS 1529.
66Council of Trent, Session VI, Decretum de iustificatione, ch. 7. Denzinger-Schönmetzer §1529. Latin text: "Cum essemus inimici, propter nimiam caritatem qua dilexit nos, sua sanctissima passione in ligno crucis nobis iustificationem meruit, et pro nobis Deo Patri satisfecit."
67Roman Liturgy, chant of the Exsultet (Praeconium paschale), Easter Vigil. The present text goes back to the 4th–5th century; it is attributed in turn to St Ambrose, St Augustine and St Peter Chrysologus. The formula "O felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem!" was commented on by St Thomas Aquinas (Summa, III, q. 1, art. 3, ad 3) and taken up throughout tradition.
68St Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted by St Alphonsus Liguori, Christmas, Novenas and Meditations, Éditions Saint-Paul, Paris, 2009, p. 28. The quotation comes from Bernard's Advent sermons (cf. Sermo II in Adventu Domini, n. 1–5, PL 183, col. 41–43), but St Alphonsus gives here a condensed version.
69St John 3:16. Jerusalem Bible. Greek text: hoútōs gàr ēgápēsen ho Theòs tòn kósmon, hōste tòn huiòn tòn monogenē édōken. The verb édōken ("he gave") has in biblical Greek a strong sense of gift without return.
70St Mark 15:34. Jerusalem Bible. Here Christ quotes, in Aramaic (Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani), the first verse of Psalm 21 (22 in the Hebrew) — the psalm containing the precise announcements of the Passion (vv. 17–19).
71St Paul, Romans 5:8–9. Jerusalem Bible.
72St Alphonsus Liguori, Christmas, Novenas and Meditations, Éditions Saint-Paul, Paris, 2009, p. 32–33. Meditation on the Incarnation and redeeming love, from John 1:14 and Revelation 1:5. Italian text: Novena del Santo Natale, Discourse I (Opere ascetiche, vol. IV, Rome, 1939) — where Alphonsus himself attributes the analogy to "a devout author" (dice un divoto autore).
73St Anselm of Canterbury, Meditatio XI, De redemptione humana (Meditation on Human Redemption). PL 158. Critical edition: Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt, vol. III, Edinburgh, Nelson, 1946. The meditation takes up, in praying form, the doctrinal argument of the Cur Deus Homo. Passage summarised here in paraphrase.
74Father Jean of the Heart of Jesus d'Elbée (1892–1982), I Believe in Love (Croire à l'Amour), éd. Téqui, Paris, 2007, p. 19–20. The work, written in the spirituality of St Thérèse of Lisieux, has become a discreet classic of 20th-century spirituality.
75St John Mary Vianney (Curé of Ars), Thoughts, selection by Bernard Nodet, éd. Artège, Paris, 2015, p. 17. Collection of sayings attributed to the saint of Ars from notes taken by his contemporaries and the canonisation Processes.
76St John Mary Vianney (Curé of Ars), Thoughts, selection by Bernard Nodet, éd. Artège, Paris, 2015, p. 17. Second saying from the same collection, on the superabundance of love that surpassed the strict demands of satisfied justice.
77St Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus ("The Catechetics of Beginners"), ch. 4, n. 8. PL 40, col. 314–315. Critical edition: Bibliothèque augustinienne, vol. 11/1, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1991.
78Quran, sura XXXIX (Az-Zumar, "The Groups"), verse 53: "O My servants who have transgressed against themselves, do not despair of God's mercy. For God forgives all sins." Fr. trans. M. Hamidullah. The verse founds the Muslim doctrine of repentance (tawba) and of hope in pardon.
79Quran, sura IV (An-Nisâ’, "Women"), verse 157: "they did not kill him, they did not crucify him, but it appeared so to them." Classical Muslim doctrine thus historically denies the crucifixion (with variants according to schools: substitution, divine illusion, etc.). On the exegetical debate: M. Hayek, Le Christ de l'Islam, Seuil, Paris, 1959; J. Jomier, Bible et Coran, Cerf, Paris, 1959.
80St John Damascene, De Haeresibus, ch. 100 — first systematic Christian treatise on Islam (8th century). PG 94, col. 763–774. French edition: Écrits sur l'islam, presented and trans. R. Le Coz, Sources Chrétiennes n° 383, Cerf, Paris, 1992. Cf. A. T. Khoury, Polémique byzantine contre l'Islam (VIIIᵉ–XIIIᵉ s.), Brill, Leiden, 1972.
81Tacitus, Annals, XV, 44: "This name comes to them from Christ, who, under Tiberius, was delivered to punishment by the procurator Pontius Pilatus." Trans. J.-L. Burnouf, Paris, 1863 (text on fr.wikisource.org). The historian, pagan and hostile to Christians ("pernicious superstition"), writes around 116 about the persecution ordered by Nero after the fire of Rome (64).
82Joseph Ratzinger (future Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1990, p. 214: "God restores the damaged relationship on the initiative of his own power to love, by making unjust man just again, (...) through his own creative mercy." Passage quoted in M. Turek, "'In this way the love of God was revealed' (1 Jn 4:9): Atonement as a 'patrogenetic' process (Part I)", Communio 47/1, spring 2020, p. 12, n. 19. Original work: Einführung in das Christentum, Kösel, Munich, 1968.
83St Paul, Romans 3:24. Jerusalem Bible. Greek text: dikaioúmenoi dōreán tē autoū cháriti dià tēs apolytrōseōs tēs en Christō Iēsoū.
84St Paul, Colossians 1:24. Jerusalem Bible. For the patristic and magisterial commentary: Pius XII, encyclical Mystici Corporis (29 June 1943), n. 44; Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1508.
85St John, 1 John 4:19. Jerusalem Bible.
86St Augustine, In Epistolam Joannis ad Parthos tractatus, VII, 8: "Dilige, et quod vis fac" — "Love, and do what you will." PL 35, col. 2033. Edition: Sources Chrétiennes n° 75, Commentaire de la première épître de saint Jean, intro., trans. and notes by P. Agaësse, Cerf, Paris, 1961.
87St John of the Cross, Spiritual Counsels and Maxims (Dichos de luz y amor): "A la tarde te examinarán en el amor" — "in the evening, you will be examined in love" (our translation; the numbering — here n. 60 — varies according to editions: n. 59 or n. 64 elsewhere). French edition quoted: Œuvres complètes, trans. directed by Fr. Lucien-Marie de Saint-Joseph, Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1990.
88St Alphonsus Liguori, The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ (Pratica di amare Gesù Cristo), Naples, 1768 — the whole work is a plea addressed to sinners to meditate on the Passion. French edition: éd. Artège, Paris, 2020.
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