You can not think about this aspect of the mystery of the Person of Jesus without the Christological hymn of the Letter to the Philippians (2:6-11). There may be a radical more eloquent than that which is proposed by Paul's reflection on kenosis "He who has not seen a booty to keep well hidden (in the most inaccessible of the house) to be equal with God"? In fact, it seems to be just the point of departure.

Did Jesus stole his equality with God, so he must put all his care to keep it well hidden in order not to have it to go, but especially not to have it out as a kind of corpus delicti and a trial of his alleged robbery? We would then be faced with something like the mythical  theft of fire perpetrated by Prometheus that climbed the mountain of Olympus to steal fire to Zeus, tool and powerful symbol of his power? Of course not. In fact, maybe this is finally overcome of the myth that it intends to propose the Christological hymn of Philippians. But rather than an overrun is actually a real reversal. The Christian proposal is quite another.

Word and Sacrament

       The Christian faith is not based on something similar, nor is one of many possible allegorical explanations allegories of greek myth and other myths. In fact it is a story with all its connotations of a story. The Word was made flesh, John the Evangelist would say (Jn 1:14), in a precise time in history, in a space as precise and well-defined geographically of our land, a people easy to identify, arrived, thanks to God, to ourselves, despite all attempts to destroy it.

t was not therefore the ascension of a hero to the house of God as the schools, which proliferate everywhere, that guarantee the deification of man, try to persuade. The Christian tradition has always been unyielding in rejecting any "religious" assault of this kind, always proclaiming that "if God had not made man in vain man would attempt to reach God." There are in fact, teeming with dozens of schools that promise the  "rest",  the "apatheia", the "serenity" or similar things in every corner of our so-called modern or postmodern society, therefore, consider that, after all, irrelevant to refer whether or not the action proper to Jesus of Nazareth and his Word.

Word and Sacrament, this combination that has always been founded and nurtured for centuries the Christian path of "deification" as possible, certainly has not lost its effectiveness due to the fact that increased dramatically the proliferation of methods called "scientific" of competitors. Do not overlook the substantial food of the Word and Sacrament who brought us Jesus, with his radical choice to reveal the Son, and that he wanted to come into the world as a man to reveal to what extent can get love. His words are not false when he says his words with divine solemnity: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life" (Jn 6:54). Neither can exist more effective radicalism than this to lead man to communion with God.

Real radicalism

        So it is faced with facts that we are invited to consider to make a decision that leaves half of our life, understood not only as a "health" of the body, but as a real "salvation" of  the whole person. Meditating about the kenosis of  the Son who became bread for us, and internalize it to the point of identifying with him, is the conditio sine qua non for being intimately united, sticked, glued, even when, having fulfilled his total dispossession, he will receive from the Father "a name which is above every name" (Phil, 9).

The radical nature of Jesus is therefore very real historical experience, but it is also an experience in which the tragedy pines away into the physical body, the flesh, of the Son of Mary, who is simultaneously also the Son of God. Two natures in one person, but so different between them that the divine nature is perfectly herself at the same time that the same statement applies to human nature, with all the consequences of human nature.
A truly great mystery in the Christian proposal that the evangelist John describes with extreme rigour when he puts in the mouth of Jesus these exact words: "I have my power to give life and take it again" (John 10:17), it is a single divine Person who does not cease, even for a moment, to be such, while remaining united and distinct from / to the human nature, accepting all and for all the consequences of his decision to "take the form of a slave, becoming as men "(Phil 2:7).

Contemplating the love

I think the radicalism of Jesus is to be glimpsed especially in this. This involves first the clear choice to "become obedient." Obedience tested by the only person of the Son of God made flesh, who agrees to "humiliate himself" in taking in all and for all the consequences of his choice to "appear in human form." A choice that does not flinch even when the same becomes so demanding obedience to cause "death and death on a cross" (Phil 2:8). Any other proposed historical narrative about Jesus of Nazareth can not help but to start from here, that this contemplation of the mystery of "the Word became flesh" (Jn 1:14).

In fact, our whole relationship with Jesus stands or falls from this contemplation. But if we stop for a moment on the term "contemplation" in greek called theoria, and we try to identify where and about what or whom we can speak of contemplation, we are once again faced with something very similar, even identical to what we found in the hymn of the Letter of Paul to Filippesi. The evangelist Luke, the one that once used this term in greek, it is to indicate the crucified Christ (Luke 23.48).

A contemplation that shakes the chest of those who had come from Jerusalem and had gone on that hill outside the walls, which was called "Golgotha" in search of human emotions and returned beating their breasts due to a real spiritual upheaval. The radicalism of  love that, in spite of themselves, they had to "contemplate" was engraved in them as if their breasts were exposed without a protective shield to the piercing of a  mysterious lance that, instead of just hitting the crucifix to verify death , had lodged in their hearts, becoming a heart of stone, as it had been up to that point, in the heart of flesh. In fact, you can not expose the face to that who love without measure, and therefore in the most radical possible way , without being provoked to love in our time the same way. The radicalism of Jesus therefore leaves no one indifferent. This is the paradox of Christian contemplation. We leave home to "contemplate" a crucifix and we come back with our heart pierced by his crucifixion that opens all the doors of real life.

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