The Soul's Descent and Christ's Identification with Human Misery

He does not merely say 'having endured, I remained' as if to please the body and soul; rather, he endured with knowledge and as was necessary, not to receive a prize, glory, or praise from men. To endure thus is to say, as I might say, 'I acted wisely according to wisdom.' It was said in the preceding psalm that God is the endurance of the righteous: 'And now, what is my endurance? Is it not the Lord?' (Psalm 70:5). He who bears the heavy things falling upon him through this endurance says, 'Having endured, I remained with the Lord.' He bore the heavy things with an enduring disposition, for many, as I have said, bear the heavy things for some other reason. God is therefore the endurance of the holy. And in Jeremiah it is indeed said: 'A throne of glory rising, our holiness, endurance of Israel, Lord of Israel' (Jeremiah 33:16). He who is therefore established according to this endurance and is named from it says, 'Having endured, I remained with the Lord,' speaking as a slave. He who serves God calls him 'Lord' through his deeds, his mindsets, and his words. This one says, 'In the Holy Spirit, Lord Jesus'; for not everyone who calls Jesus Lord does so in this Spirit, but hypocrites indeed do this. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord' (Matthew 7:21-23), and what does he say to them? 'I never knew you.' I never knew you having served me. And again: 'Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?' (Matthew 7:23). Therefore, he who calls Jesus thus Lord, doing the will of his Father in heaven, is the one who calls him 'in the Holy Spirit' Lord. The voice is therefore that of a slave.

And he heard my prayer. Being in distress, I cried out, and God, attending to my prayer, has fulfilled these things. For I 'having endured, I remained' obeyed the commandment concerning which the Savior said, 'He who endures to the end, this one will be saved' (Matthew 24:13). The 'I remained' is a state of having come to rest. And what kind of face did the Lord have? For we have not spoken out of necessity. If, then, you take it from the face of the Savior—for it has become a matter of pre-passion, it has not become a matter of passions—Jesus 'began to be amazed and distressed' (Mark 14:33). Such things happened to him until the beginning. We do not say that pre-passion occurs without disturbance; for we do not say that anyone other than the Trinity is without disturbance.

For the soul, which Jesus took up, is something other than the Trinity; it is of a nature to receive passion and the beginning of being terrified and distressed. And I say according to the apostles: 'Instead of the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising shame' (Heb 12:2). If it had not become a victor in passion, it would not have been a feat or a contest.

Furthermore: the 'pay attention to me' is instead of 'he sighed'. And he brought me up out of the pit of misery and from the clay of matter. If each of the saints says this, 'the pit of misery' refers to the place concerning the earth; for a pit is a place where the waters falling from above gather. Often, in the divine writings, both the place concerning the earth and Hades are signified by this name; for when in the twenty-ninth Psalm it is said according to the man: 'You have saved me from those going down into the pit' (Ps 29:15), I do not myself go down into a pit. Because of others, I have been there. No one else brought me down.

Moreover, this appears more clearly from: 'I was counted among those going down into the pit; I became as a helpless man among the dead, yet free' (Ps 29:15). I am not one of those being led into the pit, but I 'was counted'. I counted myself among those. Therefore, I 'became' 'as a helpless man'. Not being helpless, he became as helpless; for when the Jews came to seize him, if he had not delivered himself, they would not have been able to take him. If he is 'free among the dead', he is not one of those becoming members of Hades by nature through choice and action, but he counted himself into this.

Therefore, he 'brought me up' 'from the pit of misery'. He who humbled his own body and enslaved it, and while still walking upon the earth, having acquired his citizenship in the heavens, he was lifted up from the pit of misery and from the clay of matter. And now indeed he was lifted up in power from the world and from matter and from the clay, from which the clay body has sailed. 'And God formed man from dust from the earth' (Gen 2:7). And even Job says: 'Remember that you formed me of clay' (Job 10:9). And Jesus will also say this according to the man: I have become into the pit of misery, I was counted, so that I might free them from misery and from the clay of matter; for because of them, I have become into the clay of matter.