There is only one thing more remarkable than the idea that man, ably assisted by the Devil, might actually succeed in putting God to death, and that is the idea that God, in response, would not forsake man at last, leaving him to inhabit the desolation he so desired, nor enact His final punishment, swooping His elect to Heaven and blasting the Earth to a charred hulk, but would, very simply, refuse death the last word, reinstating the logos of human life to the same human body that a human woman had given Him, and after that returning almost casually to the company of His human friends, or if not casually, at least with a demeanour of bewildering calmness and words of dumbfounding gentleness.
Actually, I am wrong — there is a second thing, more astonishing still: that this was the intention all along. The Passion, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection — no, the Fall, the Exodus, the enslavement — through all this the last word was already provided for, though He allowed this to be hidden from Himself for the sake of the perfection of His love. We could do our worst: the Word would not be suppressed; mankind, the summit of creation, would not be discarded. Our old sentence is completed, and what begins now is a tale of everlasting freedom. And even though our earthly Eastertide also now draws to its close, it is only a vision of the Easter that awaits us, which has no ending.
