Much in Many

Melito of Sardis is wonderful in the Office of Readings today:

Here he is who bore much in many; here is the one who was killed in Abel and in Isaac had his feet tied, who roamed, a foreigner, in Jacob, was sold in Joseph, exposed in Moses, had his throat slit in the lamb, was pursued in David, and in the prophets dishonored.

God's response to a broken and violent world is not to magically remove the suffering we have insisted upon for ourselves and each other--and thereby take away also the freedom which is his likeness--but to identify himself with it, that, if we consent to the salvation he is just dying to give us--literally--all the death we have purchased for ourselves might be destroyed from the inside by the divine humility joined to our humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.