My God and your God

edited April 2011 in Faith Issues
When Our Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene, He said to her that He will be ascending to "My Father and your Father, to My God and to your God"

How is God the Father the God of God the Son?

If they are the ONE God, not one is then the God of the other.

Please can someone explain me this.

Thanks

Comments

  • Read  dogmat of Trinity
  • I have always wondered the same thing.
  • Im not sure if this is correct or not but Jesus is yelling Mary to say that to the diciples and here are quotes around the sentence so it would make sense if it was worded like that.
  • Let us always and without cease turn first of and last of all to our holy Father to learn how to understand the Scriptures and never rely on our own understanding. I have spent some time translating the commentary of St Cyril on this passage from incomprehensible Victorian English into something more understandable. Let us all read this passage carefully and with attention and learn how to understand this passage..

    I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and my God and your God.

    Do you, for your part, accept this great and profound mystery, not allowing your heart to leap beyond the measure of the truth of the Divine doctrines. Consider how the Only-begotten Word of God came among us, that we also might be even as He is, in so far as it is possible for our nature, and in so far as relates to our new creation by grace. For he humbled Himself so that he might lift up that which was lowly by nature to His own high position; and he wore the form of a servant, even though He was by Nature Lord and Son of God, so that he might raise that which was enslaved by nature to the dignity of sonship, in conformity with His own Likeness, and in His Image.

    How then, and in what sense, does He, becoming Man as one of us, so that we might also be like Him, that is gods and sons, receive our attributes into Himself and gives unto us His own, you may well be anxious to enquire.

    I will explain then, as far as I am able. In the first place, though we are servants by rank and nature (because all creatures are subject to their Creator), nevertheless He calls us His brethren, and names God the common Father of Himself and us. Making humanity His own, by taking our likeness upon Him, He calls our God His God, though He is His Son by Nature. This is so that as we rise up to an exceedingly great dignity by our likeness to Him (not because we are sons of God by nature, but because He cries in our hearts by His own Spirit, Abba, Father), so also He, since He took our form - for He became Man, according to the Scriptures - might have God for His God, even though he was truly God by Nature, and proceeded from Him.

    So do not be offended even though you hear Him calling God His God, but rather contemplate His words with a teachable spirit, and attentively consider their true meaning. For He says that God is both His Father and our God, and both of these sayings are true. Indeed it is true that the God of the universe is Christ's Father, but not ours by nature, rather he is our God as our Creator and Sovereign Lord. But the Son, as it were, uniting Himself with us, allows to our nature the dignity that is in a special and peculiar sense His own, so that we might call the one of whom He is begotten the common Father of us all. While on the other hand, He receives into Himself, by taking upon Himself our own likeness, that which belonged to our nature.

    For He calls His Father His God, because he is unwilling to dishonour our likeness, which He had taken upon Himself through His inherent love and mercy towards mankind. If you choose in ignorance to be offended at this saying, and it seems intolerable to you that the Lord should say that God the Father was His God, then you will be bringing a charge, out of perversity, against the plan of God for your salvation. When you ought to be offering up thanksgiving you will be dishonouring your Benefactor, and be foolishly objecting to the manner in which He showed His love towards you. For if He humbled Himself, despising shame, and became a Man for your sake, then the charge of humiliation belongs to on your head, and the exceedingly great honour is due to Him who chose to undergo this for your sake.

    I am amazed that you have ears merely to consider the eclipse of glory (for He humbled Himself for our sakes), and will not consider its restoration. You regard only the degradation and will not reflect upon the exaltation. For how was He humiliated if you do not regard Him as perfect, and as being God? And in what sense was He degraded if you will not take into account the lofty attributes of His ineffable Nature?

    Therefore, even though He was perfect and all-sufficient as God, He humbled Himself for your sake, transforming Himself into your likeness. And though He was exalted on high as the Son of God, and of the very Essence of the Father, He degraded Himself, being deprived of the attributes of Divine glory, so far as His nature admitted. So then, He is at the same time God and Man, being exalted on high because of His parentage (for He is God of God and truly Begotten of His Father), and also made lowly for our sake (for He became Man for us). Let your mind be at peace when you hear Him saying, I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. For it was proper and right that, being by Nature God and Son of God, He should call Him of whom He was begotten His Father, while also being Man, even as we are men, He should call God His God.
  • ah, what a beautiful comtemplation for the resurrection feast  :)
    Christ is risen, may He reward those who work so hard to teach us and nurture us.
    :D
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