This is a sign that the Word of God truly became flesh, indeed dwelling among us in our world full of fear, suspicion, and envy; this is a sign that it completely surrendered itself into our hands, so that we could do with it as we wished; this is a sign: that we killed it. The cross is our guarantee that God does not deceive us about His love. He truly wanted to see Himself, not only in His own eternal image, but also in our imaginations, as one of us, and thus as part of our dreadful world, part of a suffering, selfish, divided world, as we have made it in our own image. And our joy springs from how greatly God loved us; from how He took upon Himself all the consequences of the reality that He was one of us, that He was love in the world of people who do not know how to love very well, people for whom love is a threat.
(Herbert McCabe OP /1926–2001/, God, Christ, and Us)
