Spiritual Quote of the Day (Frederica Mathewes-Green, on ‘God as Suffering Parent’)

“Maybe this crazy thing happened: God came down in a suit of skin and bones, and walked and talked, and offended people, and finally they tortured him to death. And by that death he destroyed death; he rescued us and gave life everlasting and every other good thing. Into this universe crammed with pain we say that God came down, because he loves us with the kind of love that we can only understand by thinking of how a parent loves.” —Religious author and commentator Frederica Mathewes-Green, “God as Suffering Parent,” Beliefnet, December 22, 1999, reprinted in The Best Christian Writing 2000, series editor: John Wilson (2000)

The image accompanying this post, The Crucified Christ, was created in 1610-1611 by Flemish artist and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (C.S. Lewis, on Jesus, ‘Inventor of All Loves’ on the Cross)

“God, who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them. He creates the universe, already foreseeing - or should we say ‘seeing’? there are no tenses in God—the buzzing cloud of flies about the cross, the flayed back pressed against the uneven stake, the nails driven through the mesial nerves, the repeated incipient suffocation as the body droops, the repeated torture of back and arms as it is time after time, for breath's sake, hitched up. If I may dare the biological image, God is a ‘host’ who deliberately creates His own parasites; causes us to be that we may exploit and ‘take advantage of’ Him. Herein is love. This is the diagram of Love Himself, the inventor of all loves.”—British novelist and religious author C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Four Loves (1960)

(The image accompanying this post is Crucifixion, by German 16th-century painter Peter Gertner.)

Song Lyric of the Day (Isaac Watts, On the Crucifixion)

“There from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flowed mingled down;
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?”— “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” (1707), lyrics by English hymn writer Isaac Watts (1674-1748), music by Edward Miller (1735-1807)
 
The image accompanying this post, Christ on the Cross, is a 1631 oil-on-canvas painting by Rembrandt.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (George Herbert, on God’s Love Shown on the Cross)

“Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
Did set again abroach; then let him say
  If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquour sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.”—English poet and Anglican minister George Herbert (1593-1633), “The Agonie,” in The Works of George Herbert: Poetry, Prose and Proverbs
 
The image accompanying this post, a detail of the painting Christ Crucified, was part of the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, by the Italian late Renaissance master Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Tom Holland, on Faith ‘In the Face of Unspeakable Suffering’)

“[I[n the face of unspeakable suffering, faith has provided solace where no other source of comfort could. Perhaps it is necessary first to have walked in darkness to see a great light.” — Historian Tom Holland, “Our Secular Society Draws From the Well of Christian Tradition,” The Financial Times, Dec. 23-24, 2017

The image accompanying this post, a detail of the painting Christ Crucified, was part of the Scuola di San Rocco in Venice, by the Italian late Renaissance master Jacopo Tintoretto (1518-1594).

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Blaise Pascal, on Why Jesus Suffered and Died)

“Let us, then, consider death in Jesus Christ, and not without Jesus Christ. Without Jesus Christ it is horrible, detestable, the horror of nature. In Jesus Christ it is altogether different; it is benignant, holy, the joy of the faithful. Everything is sweet in Jesus Christ, even to death: Jesus Christ suffered and died to sanctify death and suffering; he has been all that was great, and all that was abject, in order to sanctify in himself all things except sin, and to be the model of every condition.” —French philosopher and logician Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), letter of Oct. 17, 1651, to “Madame Perier and Her Husband, on the Death of M. Pascal, Pere,” in The Thoughts, Letters, and Opuscules of Blaise Pascal, translated by O.W. Wight (1869)

(The image accompanying this post is Crucifixion, by German 16th-century painter Peter Gertner.)

Quote of the Day (Christina Rossetti, on ‘Jesus, Man's Redeemer’)

“Up Thy Hill of Sorrows

Thou all alone,

Jesus, man's Redeemer,

Climbing to a Throne:

Thro' the world triumphant,

Thro' the Church in pain,

Which think to look upon Thee

No more again.”— English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), “Good Friday Morning,” from The Complete Poems, edited by R. W. Crump and Betty S. Flowers

The image accompanying this post is The Crucifixion with Donors and Saints Peter and Margaret, by Dutch painter Cornelis Engebrechtsz (ca. 1461–1527). This oil-and-wood painting now hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Quote of the Day (St. Peter, on the Power of the Cross)

“ ‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’”— 1 Peter 2:24

(The image accompanying this post is Crucifixion, by German 16th-century painter Peter Gertner.)

Quote of the Day (William Cowper, on Our Cross—and God’s)

“Let me not angrily declare

No pain was ever sharp like mine,

Nor murmur at the cross I bear,

But rather weep, remembering Thine.”— English poet-hymnist William Cowper (1731-1800), “Prayer for Patience,” in William Cowper's Olney Hymns and Other Sacred Works, compiled by Charles J. Doe (2010)

Quote of the Day (W.H. Auden, on Good Friday)

“Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.” —British poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973), A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

(The image accompanying this post is Crucifixion, by German 16th-century painter Peter Gertner.)

Quote of the Day (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on ‘The Figure of the Crucified’)

“The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Ethics, edited by Eberhard Bethge (1965)