His name is Jesus, in the sense of a new presence, when He entered time and illuminated the obscurity of history, “God redeems.” And when man ascended to Him, he repented, seeking Him, and the fire of longing in the depths inflamed him; he forsook heaven and came to Him, that perchance, if he met Him, he would encounter Him, and if he encountered Him, He would draw him to Himself.
He was born from the womb of the earth, in the embrace of a woman. She wrapped Him in burial cloths from His birth, as though she were reversing the movement of history. For the end is at the dawn, and the beginning is at the setting. He was transfigured as one dying; He dies first, then becomes an old man, then His youth is renewed, then He is born when “time is fulfilled upon the cross.” He cries out like a child to his mother that she may nurse Him; that perchance, if He is quenched with human milk from her breasts, He falls asleep — the “final slumber” before He awakens, fleeing from the tyranny of the accursed Herod, the slayer of children, and from the chief priests, who yearned to see Him dead; for if He died, the thrones of the sultans would settle upon His blood.
He appeared in a cave in the House of Bread (Bethlehem), as though the earth borrowed the bowels of the Virgin Mary, so the cave became the womb of the earth, and the earth a mother. Therefore they named Him the new Adam, after the image of that ancient one who was taken from the dust of the ground. Then, after He dies, He will return whence He was taken, to the dust, to the hollow of the earth, to set it free. Thus He was transfigured, sealing history in the manger.
As for the birth of Jesus, it burst forth upon the cross, when He came to write the cosmos with His blood. His body was kneaded with whips and torture, and leavened with prison and spitting; then He was set upright as bread is set in the oven, hung upon its walls, as He was hung upon the walls of the cosmos, when the cross became one of its walls. And He overflowed with His spirit upon the cosmos, bestowing it, as incense cast upon the coals overflows; as though the incense which the Magi offered Him in His childhood were an embodiment of Him, a corporealization of the meaning of His incarnation. So Golgotha becomes a censer, and the cross a glowing coal, and His tender body incense that He offers to us, and His spirit overflows upon the corners of the cosmos to save it.
He spent His life above the surface of the earth; it did not exceed thirty-three years. He wounded us with the arrows of His love, and left us wounded; then we went panting after Him, like a woman intoxicated with love whom her lover wounded and then departed, and who then went searching for him in the crevices of the earth to meet him, that he might save her; perchance, if she met him, he would heal her bleeding wound. But He ascended to whence He came, then the sky veiled Him from our eyes, and the clouds added distance to us from Him, and above the skin of the sky there is a veil of cloud. He said that He would return, but He did not return; and to this day we seek Him and call to Him: come, Lord Jesus. Longing draws us to Him; perchance, if He did not turn to us, we turned and lifted the world up to Him.
But He came, to take us to the Father who awaits our return, so we ascend to Him and meet Him, and before we meet Him we encounter Him. So we die in the laver of baptism as though it were His Golgotha, and the Church shrouds us as His mother the Virgin wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and history is reversed with us, and we grow old as He grew old, then youth is renewed in us, then we are born bursting forth upon the cross, and we are transfigured, and Golgotha becomes a womb that gives birth to us after the labor of love, and casts us into the embrace of Christ.