We intuit just how fondly Father Médaille lived inside this great mystery of Love becoming incarnate. In praying this contemplation with him we are lifted into the innermost chambers of the Trinity where the Father speaks to his Son asking Him if he will go now and "ransom the bride suffering under the hard yoke".
John of the Cross wrote a similar poem on the Incarnation describing this scene in the Trinity) And the overflowing response of Jesus was "whatever it might cost me, I desire to save them." Such love, such zeal for souls, such self-emptying!
We see here in the mystery of the Incarnation, Jesus living in such total dependency upon His Father. This is the interior attitude that will set us free... not dependent on ourselves, not dependent or co-dependent on others, but totally dependent upon God for everything. To the extent that we give ourselves entirely and in all things to God, we experience the reality that God gives himself entirely and in all things to us.
"He emptied himself
to assume the condition of a slave,
and became as all men are;
... but God raised him on high
and gave him a name above all other names
... Jesus Christ as Lord
to the glory of God the Father."
(Phil 2:6-11)
Similarly, our willing co-operation to be emptied of our "false and wounded self" is lovingly complimented by "God raising us on high" to share a life of intimate union with the Trinity. What an exalted destiny for "creatures far too unworthy of it!"
Father Médaille prays here that he/we might enter into the attitudes of Jesus as revealed in this mystery - attitudes of continual self-offering and total submission to the Father's will and an active and all-consuming love for humanity. Jesus' condescension, "not clinging to his equality with God" comes from his outpouring love, choosing to be fully human, like us, one-with-us without power, arrogance or outward show. This is the kenosis of Jesus: he became as human beings are in order to be with human beings so He could be for human beings. What a gift! Jesus' love of humanity reveals itself as an overwhelming and uncontainable love that caused him to come to us in the form of a human fetus living in the womb of Mary, living on the life of his mother. What ineffable self-abasement for the Son of God!
"Ah, good Jesus, how true it is that there indeed you are an abbreviated Word!"
His human beginnings stir us with the incredible love God has for humanity. What surrender of his divinity, what an emptying, what admirable dependence on a human mother. What an embrace of the human condition - ennobling all of life, from the womb to death. It would seem that our neediness actually cries and calls forth this divine love to manifest itself in the person of Jesus in our midst. "You condescended to become man and to take upon yourself the sins of mankind, to wash them in your precious blood." What love that gives itself for love of the other.
In gratitude, Father Médaille encourages us to ponder this mystery and let our desire be like Jesus':
"Imprint these dispositions deep in my heart...
engrave them in my soul...
that I might begin to live out of your dear life."