The man Jesus has risen up to a name above all names … he was crushed in the flesh of sin, bore the form of a servant, was obedient to death; he became ‘Kyrios’ (Lord), ‘pneuma’ (Spirit). He is, then, the same Lord who walked unnoticed and persecuted through the fields of Palestine and at last ended his life like a criminal on the cross; now he rules the world as king and the Church is his bride. All his life, beginning in the Virgin’s womb, is the great mystery of salvation, hidden from eternity in God and now revealed in the ‘ecclesia’ (Church). The deeds of his lowliness in that life on earth, his miserable death on Calvary appear now in a different light: God’s own light; they are his acts, revealed, streaming with his light.
—Dom Odo Casel, OSB
