3. In its teaching, this sixth word ascends to the heights, to the mysterious and ineffable relationships of the Godhead—which are the inner reality
and meaning of all morality and religion—and it descends to the depths, to the lowliest details of the most commonplace life.
All work, for the Christian, is raised to the level, to the dignity of sacrifice. Once and for all we must rid ourselves of that idea which has wrought so much mischief, that sacrifice necessarily connotes pain, loss, death. Essentially our sacrifice is what essentially Christ’s sacrifice was, the joyous dedication of the will to God, the Source and Light of all our being.
The daily round, the common task,
Will furnish all we need to ask.
All work is sacred, or may be so, if we will. For all work has been consecrated for evermore by the perfect obedience, that is, the perfect sacrifice of the Son of man, the Head of our race. There is no task which any Christian, anywhere, can be called upon to do, which cannot be made part of that joyous service, that glad sacrifice, which, in union with that of Jesus Christ our Lord, we, one with Him in sacramental union, “offer and present” to the Father.
VIII
THE SEVENTH WORD
“Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” St. Luke xxiii. 46.
The consummation of sacrifice, the union of the human will with the Divine, leads to the perfect rest in God.
1. We have tried to deal with the Seven Words as constituting a revelation of the Divine Sonship of humanity. From this point of view it is significant that the first and the last begin, like the Lord’s Prayer, with a direct address to the Father.
The service of the Christian man is that of a son in his father’s house, of a free man, not of a slave. The Fatherhood of God is the very key-note of the Christian view of life and of death. In both alike we are the objects of the Father’s individual care and love; in both we bear the supreme dignity of “the sons of the Most High.”