 So, back to that very practical question, what does it mean to meditate on the humanity of Jesus? Are we just talking about his passion primarily, his suffering, like what we're doing here in Lent? Many of us are spending a lot of time thinking about all of what he went through, what led up to his betrayal in the garden, and then his trial, and then all of the abuse, and then ultimately the crucifixion. Is that what we're talking about? We talk about meditating on the humanity of Jesus? This has a special place, especially this time of year. There are other dimensions. You can look at the whole humanity of Jesus from the incarnation to his glorification at the right hand of the Father. This is what St. Paul does in the letter of the Philippians, though he was in the form of God. Jesus didn't deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but rather emptied himself. That self-empty takes him all the way back to the throne of the Father so that at Jesus' name every knee must bow and every tongue confess that he's the Lord. Do you see the pathway that opens up? The passion begins when the word becomes flesh, and it's fully manifest in his last wordless cry on the cross, and the silence after he's breathed his last. The Father has spoken to us everything we need to know for our salvation. We need to listen to the silence of God who suffered death for us. If we receive that mystery, ponder the mystery of Jesus' humanity, we also see the mystery of the Father's love, a love not vanquished by death, so powerful that they can raise up humanity. Our contemplation of Jesus' humanity also takes us into the resurrection. When we contemplate even the resurrection, it's the resurrection of the crucified Christ, so it's not resurrection or the cross. The crucified Christ has come to us and appeared to us, and we see his wounds, and we can ponder those wounds and what they meant for us, wounds that already are waiting to be unveiled to us in the first moment he's in the womb of his mother. The wounds reveal what's in the heart of Jesus, and so to go back to your thing, the passion and death of Jesus has a singular place, the mystics and the church say that there is a singular kind of grace that comes through meditating on the passion of the Lord, not because there's something less than the whole reality of it, but because that passion leads to the resurrection, because it comes from the annunciation, in the passion and the shedding of the blood, what is inside Jesus is unveiled to us, what is inside his humanity is made manifest to us, so now we can see what's in his heart, it's a heart that gives itself to the end and will hold nothing back for us, and this is what we receive when we consume the Holy Eucharist, this unveiling of the love of the Father that triumphs over death, but is unveiled and Jesus is suffering, and so it's going to be unveiled, as we enter into that mystery, it's going to be unveiled in our own suffering too.