Fr. Timothy V. Vaverek: How His Passion and Death Become Ours

St. John’s account of the Passion begins by drawing us into the mind and heart of Jesus: “[He] knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end.”

Jesus is God the Son, sent by the Father to accomplish the Trinity’s eternal plan of wedding humanity to Himself despite our sinful betrayals. (Is. 62:5) To begin this reconciliation, He united our nature to Himself in the Incarnation.

That “hypostatic” union means Christ, in body and soul, participates in the life of the Trinity as the perfect expression of the Person of the Word.  So it is that Jesus is able to know and love all of “His own in the world,” embracing not only those living in his time, but the dead and those yet to be born. Through this new, personal relation He makes us one with God . …