The Hidden One

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… So God became man.  He took on the weakness and ordinariness of man, and He hid Himself, becoming an anonymous and unimportant man in a very unimportant place.  And he refused at any time to Lord it over men, or to be a King, or to be a Leader, or to be a Reformer, or to be in any way Superior to His own creatures.  He would be nothing else but their brother, and their counsellor, and their servant, and their friend.  He was in no accepted human sense an important person, though since that time we have made Him The Most Important Person.  That is another matter:  for though it is quite true that he is the King and Lord of all, the conqueror of death, the judge of the living and of the dead, the Pantokrator, yet He is also still the Son of Man, the hidden one, unknown, unremarkable, vulnerable.  He can be killed.  And when the Son of Man was put to death, He rose again from the dead, and was again with us, for he said:  “Kill me, it does not matter.”

                                                — Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation    

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