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Why the Passion Was the Perfect Means of Salvation
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Couldn’t God, being almighty, have chosen a faster way to reconcile man with himself?
Answer
God could certainly have chosen any method he wanted to save us. God chose the Passion because it showed the depravity of sin and the depths of his love.
Thomas Aquinas (Summa III Q46 A3) noted that while anything God chose would have sufficed for our salvation, the Passion was the perfect means because:
Thomas Aquinas (Summa III Q46 A3) noted that while anything God chose would have sufficed for our salvation, the Passion was the perfect means because:
- “In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love him in return.”
- “Secondly, because thereby he set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion, which are requisite for man’s salvation.”. . .
- “Fourthly, because by this man is all the more bound to refrain from sin, according to 1 Corinthians 6:20: ‘You are bought with a great price: glorify and bear God in your body.'”
- “Fifthly, because it redounded to man’s greater dignity, that as man was overcome and deceived by the devil, so also it should be a man that should overthrow the devil; and as man deserved death, so a man by dying should vanquish death.”
The saving Passion of Christ is the great mystery of faith. At Mass when the priest celebrant intones “The mystery of faith” after the consecration of the chalice, he is referring to the Eucharistic sacrifice that has just been made present in our midst.
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