A quote from Richard John Neuhaus as we prepare for Good Friday and the Triduum:

Over the centuries theologians have contrived wondrously refined theories of the atonement; why it is that this One had to die, why it is that his dying is for us death’s death, why it is that his open tomb opens for every last child of earth the door to tomorrows without end. And all the theories of atonement are but probings into mystery, the mystery of a love that did not have to be but was, and is. All the theories are intellectual variations, imaginative riffs, on the assertion of St. Paul that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation." As the prodigal son was reconciled to his father, but infinitely more so.

"Not counting their trespasses." Accountants reconcile the books, and there is no doubt that the disordered books of our lives need reconciling. But the books are disordered by our disordered lives, and our lostness cannot be remedied by the accountant’s craft. Someone must go to the distant country where we have strayed, as a good shepherd seeks a sheep that is lost. Someone must go, but not just anyone. If we are to be brought home, it has to be one who is, in the words of the Nicene Creed, "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God."

Only he can bring us home who comes from home, who comes from God. Coming from the very heart of God, he is God. And so we say that God became man. It is the longest journey, long beyond our ability to imagine. God became man. We say it trembling, we say it puzzling, but more often we say it rotely, counting on routine to buffer what we cannot bear. What can we do with the burden of such a truth? This is the awful truth: that we made necessary the baby crying in the cradle become the derelict crying from the cross. The awful truth—as in awe–filled, filled with awe.

Atonement. It is a fine, solid, twelfth–century Middle English word, the kind of word one is inclined to trust. Think of at–one–ment: what was separated is now at one. But after such a separation there can be no easy reunion. Reconciliation must do justice to what went wrong. It will not do to merely overlook the wrong. We could not bear to live in a world where wrong is taken lightly, where right and wrong finally make no difference. In such a world, we—what we do and what we are—would make no difference. Spare me a gospel of easy love that makes of my life a thing without consequence.

St. Paul again: God was in Christ "not counting their trespasses against them." Atonement is not an accountant’s trick, it is not a kindly overlooking, it is not a not counting of what must count if anything in heaven or on earth is to matter. God could not simply decide not to count without declaring that we do not count.

But someone might say that, if God is God, He could do anything. Very well, then, God would not decide not to count because He would not declare that we do not count. And yet God’s "would" implicates and limits His "could." The God of whom we speak is not, in the words of Pascal, the God of the philosophers but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the God of unbounded freedom who willed to be bound by love. God is what He wills to be and wills to be what He is. St. John tells us, "God is love," and love always binds. In the seminars of philosophical speculation, many gods are possible. In the arena of salvation’s story, God is the God who is bound to love.

He does not count our trespasses against us because something has been done about them. He reckons us sinners to be righteous because sins have been set to right. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement among the poor, spoke of a "harsh and dreadful love." It is the love of Christ’s cross borne for us, and of the cross he calls us to bear. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Lutheran pastor and martyr under the tyranny of the Third Reich, wrote against and lived against the "cheap grace" that cheapens sin and forgiveness alike. Cheap grace is easy grace. Cheap grace does not reckon what went wrong; it requires no costly love.

We confess to hurting someone we love and she says, "Forget it. It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter." But she knows and we know that it is not nothing and it does matter and we will not forget it. Forgive and forget, they say, but that is surely wrong. What is forgotten need not, indeed cannot, be forgiven. Love does not say to the beloved that it does not matter, for the beloved matters. Spare me the sentimental love that tells me what I do and what I am does not matter.

Forgiveness costs. Forgiveness costs dearly. There are theories of atonement saying that Christ paid the price. His death appeased God’s wrath and satisfied God’s justice. That way of putting it appeals to biblical witness and venerable tradition, and no doubt contains great truth. Yet for many in the past and at present that way of speaking poses great problems. The subtlety of the theory is overwhelmed by the cartoon picture of an angry Father who demands the death of His Son, maybe even kills His Son, in order to appease His own wrath. In its vulgar form—which means the form most common—it is a matter of settling scores, a drama vengeful and vindictive, more worthy of The Godfather than of the Father of whom it is said, "God is love."

And yet forgiveness costs. Forgiveness is not forgetfulness; not counting their trespasses is not a kindly accountant winking at what is wrong; it is not a benign cooking of the books. In the world, in our own lives, something has gone dreadfully wrong, and it must be set right. Recall when you were a little child and somebody—maybe you—did something very bad. Maybe a lie was told, or some money was stolen, or the cookie jar lies shattered on the kitchen floor. The bad thing has been found out, and now something must happen, something must be done about it. The fear of punishment is terrible, but not as terrible as the thought that nothing will happen, that bad things don’t matter. If bad things don’t matter, then good things don’t matter, and then nothing matters, and the meaning of everything lies shattered like the cookie jar on the kitchen floor.

Amen