Just such a treasure is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews (2:9). There we read, “We see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for every one.”
In those few words is the summary of the Gospel, the good news that God has entered into our human condition. He has come into our lives, into every situation, into our every need.
How does He come? He comes by taking human flesh upon Himself, and becoming truly Man. He took our flesh and blood. He breathed our breath of life. He was, while He was here, a man with mankind. In fact, He actually chose to be below most of us, on a level with the most humble and helpless. He asked for no privilege as the Son of God. He went through everything that you and I have to endure. He did not exempt Himself from any burden of our mortality.
And throughout His earthly life, as each thing came in the course of the years, He accepted it. He grew up as we grow up. He came to be among us, not as some passing vision, not as someone strange or different, but He came to be “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.” He accepted what is part of the human experience. He accepted and experienced the pain and suffering that we all feel from time to time. He was willing to be man; a simple, plain man, unknown, unhonoured in the world, “made like in all things to his brethren.”
Because mankind is so precious in God’s sight, He came so that He might die as we do, and in dying, so to offer His death in sacrifice for us. And remember, too, that as He came for the good and the blessing of each of us, so He came for all those around us – for our friends and neighbours; for those whom we love, and for those whom we don’t especially like; for those from whom we are estranged, and for those against whom we might have done some wrong.
He came. He was incarnate and He died, not only for those who try to live in His grace and peace and hope; but He came, also, for those who are misguided; for those who are blinded by the things of this world. He came for the outcast and the forsaken and foolish. He came for those who are in ignorance. He came for all sinners, for criminals, for those against whom all doors seem to be shut.
He came for them all. For them He was “for a little while made lower than the angels.” He came to heal all mankind of the unutterable agonies that generations have suffered from war, from disease, from every torture. He came to alleviate all that has been endured throughout the ages by those faithful departed whom we remember by name at the altar.
And He has come for you, in whatever difficulty or tragedy you face. Christ our Redeemer embraces in His Sacred Heart every individual who has ever lived, or who ever will live – and He has pity. He remembers them in their distress. And even though we might not see all that He does, every single person is important to Him – whatever their sin, whatever their sorrow – each one as important to Him as I am, and as you are.
What a comfort it is to know that our Maker Himself came down among us, to share the nature of us all; to heal the wounds of all of us; to have compassion on the sorrows of all of us; to seek and to save the souls of each one of us. He knows our names, He knows every one of us from our mother’s womb. He is not ashamed to call us His brothers and His sisters, and because He was “for a little while made lower than the angels,” He is, in the words of one of the Church’s ancient liturgies, the “Succour of the succourless, the Hope of the hopeless, the Saviour of the tempest-tossed, the Harbour of the voyager, the Physician of the sick.”
What a simple message it is, and yet how profound, that He has Himself become all things to all men, He knows every one of us and our petitions, each household and its needs. And He pleads with us now, to turn our hearts towards Him and towards one another, to lay aside any high and arrogant thoughts we might have; to set aside our pride and our selfishness, our scorn and our little hatreds, and to bow before the great fact of His Incarnation, which is as real as our own existence.
He looks upon our human condition as His own. He is the unseen member of every family; He is the unseen partner in every marriage; He is the unseen companion of every single life. He holds out his arms from the cradle and from the cross: He is our teacher from the humility of His Infancy. He is our teacher from the pain and sorrow of His Crucifixion, and from this teacher comes the same lesson and call: “Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy-laden, and I will refresh you...”
And as He has invited us to come to Him, so we must invite Him to come to us: we must invite Him, and take Him into those difficulties we have in our everyday lives. We must invite Him, and take Him into marriages which are troubled; we must invite Him and take Him into our family decisions, and our business decisions, and our decisions about our children.
Christ will not force Himself into our lives, but He wants to enter through an open door. We must open our hearts to the healing presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that He who has “come to us,” might stay with us.