De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae
Christ Our Sympathetic High Priest
Because Christ shared our human weakness through experience, believers can entrust their infirmities to him as the God who heals, the neighbor who wills, and the brother who truly understands.
By this experience, I don't mean that he became wiser, but that he drew closer — inasmuch as the weak sons of Adam, whom he did not disdain to make his own and call his brothers, would not hesitate to entrust their weaknesses to him: the one who could heal them, as God, and would, as a neighbor, and would understand, as one who had suffered the same things. Hence Isaiah calls him a man of sorrows, one who knows infirmity.✦ The Apostle says, 'We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses.'✦ And to show how he could do this, he adds, 'One tempted in every respect by reason of likeness, yet without sin.'✦
The Self-Emptying That Made Mercy Known
Before the Incarnation Christ knew mercy by nature but not by experience; in emptying himself to become a suffering servant, he gained experiential knowledge of mercy and obedience, thereby drawing near to us and giving us confidence.
Blessed indeed is God, blessed is the Son of God, in that form in which he did not consider it robbery to be equal to the Father — far beyond doubt impassible, before he had emptied himself by taking on the firm form of a servant — just as he had not experienced misery or subjection, so he had not known mercy or obedience through experience.✦ He knew indeed through nature, but he did not know through experience. But when he was made less, not only from himself but even a little less than the angels — who themselves are impassible through grace, not through nature — all the way to that form in which he could suffer and be subjected, which assuredly, as was said, he could not do in his own nature, and in suffering he experienced mercy, and in subjection, obedience: through which experience, however, not to him, as I said, did knowledge grow, but to us confidence grew, while from this wretched kind of knowledge, he from whom we had wandered far was made nearer to us.✦✦
Confidence Before the Throne of Grace
Because Christ was made lower than the angels and suffered in our likeness, we who would never dare approach an impassible God are now invited to come boldly to the throne of grace, knowing he bears our weaknesses and sorrows.
For when would we dare approach him, while he remained in his own impassibility? But now, with the Apostle urging us, we are admonished to approach the throne of his grace with confidence — him who, as it is written elsewhere, we know to have borne our weaknesses and carried our sorrows, and we do not doubt that in the very thing in which he himself suffered, he is able to sympathize with us.✦✦
Read the original Latin
Quo quidem experimento non dico ut sapientior efficeretur, sed propinquior videretur, quatenus infirmi filii Adam, quos suos fieri et appellari fratres non dedignatus est, suas illi infirmitates committere non dubitarent, qui sanare illas et posset ut Deus, et vellet ut proximus, et cognosceret ut eadem passus. Unde Isaias virum eum appellat dolorum, et scientem infirmitatem. Et Apostolus: Non enim habemus, inquit, pontificem, qui non possit compati infirmitatibus nostris. Unde autem possit,indicans adiungit: Tentatum autem per omnia pro similitudine,absque peccato.
Beatus quippe Deus, beatus Dei Filius,in ea forma, qua non rapinam arbitratus est esse se aequalem Patri, procul dubio impassibilis, priusquam se exinanisset firmam servi accipiens, sicut miseriam vel subiectionem expertus non erat,sic misericordiam vel oboedientiam experimento non noverat. Sciebat quidem per natura, non autem sciebat per experientiam. At ubi minoratus est non solum a seipso, sed etiam paulo minus ab angelis, qui et ipsi impassibiles sint per gratiam, non per natura, usque ad illam formam, in qua pati et subici posset, quod utique, sicut dictum est, in sua non posset, et in passione expertus est misericordiam, et in subiectione oboedientiam Per quam tamen experientiam, non illi, ut dixi, scientia, sed nobis fiducia crevit, dum ex hoc misero genere cognitionis, is a quo longe erraveramus, factus est propior nobis.
Quando enim illi appropinquare auderemus, in sua impassibilitate manenti? Nunc autem, Apostolo suadente, monemur cum fiducia adire thronum gratiae ipsius, quem nimirum, sicut alibi scriptum est, languores nostros tulisse et dolores portasse cognoscimus, et in eo quo passus est ipse, nobis compati posse non dubitamus.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Isa.53.3 — He was despised and rejected by people, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we did not regard him.
- ↩Heb.4.15 — For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tested in every way, yet without sin.
- ↩Heb.4.15 — For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tested in every way, yet without sin.
- ↩Phil.2.6 — who, existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to exploit,
- ↩Ps.8.6;Heb.2.7 — You have made him a little lower than God, and crowned him with glory and honor. Heb.2.7 — You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor.
- ↩Phil.2.8 — And he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
- ↩Heb.4.16 — Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
- ↩Isa.53.4 — And Surely he carried our sicknesses and bore our pains, yet we considered him stricken, struck by God, and afflicted.
De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae (On the Steps of Humility and Pride) companion
Humility is climbed one day at a time
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