By the reign of His humanity or (as the Apostle says) His flesh, which takes place
in faith, He conforms us to Himself and crucibles us, making genuine men, that is
wretches and sinners, out of unhappy and haughty gods. For because we rose in Adam
towards the likeness of God, He came down into our likeness, in order to lead us
back to a knowledge of ourselves. And this takes place in the mystery [sacramentum]
of the Incarnation. This is the reign of faith, in which the Cross of Christ holds
sway, throwing down a divinity perversely sought and calling back a humanity [with
its] despised weakness of the flesh, which had been perversely abandoned. But by the
reign of [His] divinity and glory He will conform us to the body of
His glory, that we might be like Him, now neither sinners nor weak, neither led nor
ruled, but ourselves kings and sons of God like the angels. Then will be said in
fact “my God,” which is now said in hope. For it is not unfitting that he says first
“my King” and then “my God,” just as Thomas the Apostle, in the last chapter of
Saint John, says, “My Lord and my God.” For Christ must be grasped first as Man and
then as God, and the Cross of His humanity must be sought before the glory of His
divinity. Once we have got Christ the Man, He will bring along Christ the God of His
Own accord.
