"our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality"

Morgan Library M.803, fol. 68v

"This is something amazing and unheard of! It was not we who actually died, were buried and rose again. We only did these things symbolically, but we have been saved in actual fact. It is Christ who was crucified, who was buried and who rose again, and all this has been attributed to us. We share in his sufferings symbolically and gain salvation in reality. What boundless love for men! Christ’s undefiled hands were pierced by the nails; he suffered the pain. I experience no pain, no anguish, yet by the share that I have in his sufferings he freely grants me salvation."

     St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis 20.5 =Mystagogical catechesis 2.5, as trans. Liturgy of the hours for the Office of readings for Thursday within the octave of Easter.  =PG 33, col. 1081, SC .  The NPNF translation is a bit easier to map onto the Greek:

O strange and inconceivable thing! we did not really die, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified and raised again; but our imitation was in a figure, and our salvation in reality [(ἀλλ' ἐν εἰπόνι ἡ μίμησις, ἐν ἀληθείᾳ δὲ ἡ σωτηρία)].  Christ was actually crucified, and actually buried, and truly rose again; and all these things He has freely bestowed upon us, that we, sharing His sufferings by imitation, might gain salvation in reality [(ἵνα τῇ μιμήσει τῶν παθημάτων αὐτοῦ κοινωνήσαντες, ἀληθείά τὴν σωτηρίαν κερδήσωμεν)].  O surpassing loving-kindness!  Christ received nails in His undefiled hands and feet, and suffered anguish; while on me without pain or toil by the fellowship of His suffering He freely bestows salvation.

Crux fidelis

Sankt-Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, 391 (late 10th cent.), p. 62

". . . when Adam first offended, | Eating that forbidden fruit, | Not all hopes of glory ended | With the serpent at the root: | Broken nature would be mended | By a second tree and shoot."

     "Crux fidelis," current Roman missal, Friday of the Passion, as very loosely paraphrased by Michael Hodgetts and then appropriated by the ICEL (according to a number of pages on the Internet, most of whose commentators seem to be pretty unhappy with this "translation").  But "Crux fidelis" as reproduced in the Missale

• [Stanza 8:]  Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis, Nulla talem silva profert, flore, fronde, germine! Dulce lignum dulci clavo dulce pondus sustinens!
• [Stanza 1:]  Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis, Et super crucis tropaeo dic triumphum nobilem, Qualiter Redemptor orbis immolatus vicerit.
• [Stanza 2:]  De parentis protoplasti fraude factor condolens, Quando pomi noxialis morte morsu corruit, Ipse lignum tunc notavit, damna ligni ut solveret.
• [Stanza 3:]  Hoc opus nostrae salutis ordo depoposcerat, Multiformis perditoris arte ut artem falleret, Et medelam ferret inde, hostis unde laeserat.
• [Stanza 4:]  Quando venit ergo sacri plenitudo temporis, Missus est ab arce Patris Natus, orbis conditor, Atque ventre virginali carne factus prodiit.
• [Stanza 5:]  Vagit infans inter arta conditus praesepia, Membra pannis involuta Virgo Mater alligat, Et manus pedesque et crura stricta cingit fascia.
• [Stanza 6:]  Lustra sex qui iam peracta tempus implens corporis, se volente, natus ad hoc, passioni deditus, agnus in crucis levatur immolandus stipite.
• [Stanza 7:]  En acetum, fel, arundo, sputa, clavi, lancea; Mite corpus perforatur, sanguis, unda profluit; Terra, pontus, astra, mundus quo lavantur flumine!
• [Stanza 9:]  Flecte ramos, arbor alta, tensa laxa viscera, Et rigor lentescat ille, quem dedit nativitas, Ut superni membra Regis miti tendas stipite.
• [Stanza 10:]  Sola digna tu fuisti ferre saecli pretium Atque portum praeparare nauta mundo naufrago, Quem sacer cruor perunxit fusus Agni corpore.

is basically Fortunatus' 6th-century "Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis" only very slightly rearranged.  Though the last stanza in the Missale,

• Aequa Patri Filioque, inclito Paraclito, Sempiterna sit beatae Trinitati gloria; cuius alma nos redemit atque servat gratia. Amen,

corresponds only very, very roughly to the various versions of Stanza 14 given at Analecta hymnica 50 (1907):  71-63 (no. 66).  The edition ed. F. Leo at MGH Auct. Ant. 4.1 (1881), pp. 27-28 (no. II.3) offers only the first ten above.  I have not compared the rest of the Latin of the current Missale Romanum, taken from here, with that in the two critical editions just named.

Also, why not simply forgive? Cur Deus homo?

"formerly, when nothing at all existed, only a nod and an act of will was needed for the creation of the universe.  But when the human being had once been made, and necessity required the healing, not for things that were not [(τὰ μὴ ὄντα, as in 1 Cor 1:28)], but for things that had come to be, it followed that the healer and Savior had to come among those who had already been created, to heal what existed. . . .  For it was not non-existent things [(τὰ οὐκ ὄντα)] that needed salvation, so that a command alone would have sufficed, but the human being, already in existence, who was corrupted and perishing."

     St. Athanasius, On the incarnation 44, trans. John Behr (Popular patristics series 44a (Yonkers, NY:  St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 145, 147).

"as true man . . . and as true God"

Source below

"It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord.  For as true man he wept for Lazarus his friend and as eternal God [he] raised him from the tomb, just as, taking pity on the human race, he leads us by sacred mysteries to new life.  Through him the host of Angels adores your majesty and rejoices in your presence for ever.  May our voices, we pray, join with theirs in one chorus of exultant praise, as we acclaim:  Holy. . . ."

"Vere dignum et iustum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere: Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus: per Christum Dominum nostrum. Ipse enim verus homo Lazarum flevit amicum, et Deus aeternus e tumulo suscitavit, qui, humani generis miseratus, ad novam vitam sacris mysteriis nos adducit. Per quem maiestatem tuam adorat exercitus Angelorum, ante conspectum tuum in aeternitate laetantium. Cum quibus et nostras voces ut admitti iubeas, deprecamur, socia exsultatione dicentes: Sanctus. . . ."

     Preface for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, current Roman Missal =Corpus praefationum no. 526 (CCSL 161A, pp. 146-147, and 161B, pp. 258-259).  A new composition patterned loosely upon Corpus praefationum no. 942 (CCSL 161C, p. 290, and 161D, p. 451), present in the the 9th (?)-century Supplement to the (Gregorian) Hadrianum as no. 1573 (ed. Deshusses, vol. 1, p. 517-518):

. . . Qui per humilitatem adsumptae humanitatis lazarum fleuit, per diuinitatis potentiam uitae reddidit, genus quoque humanum quadrifida peccatorum mole obrutum ad uitam reducit. . . .
. . . Qui per humilitatem assumptae humanitatis Lazarum flevit, per divinitatis potentiam vitae reddidit, genusque humanum quadrifida peccatorum mole obrutum, ad vitam reducit. . . .

. . . [He] who by the lowliness of [his] assumed humanity wept for Lazarus, by the power of [his] divinity restored him to life, and humankind buried under the quadripartite mass of sins led back to life. . . .

     More on this "quadrifida peccatorum moles":  French:  "une masse quadruple des péchés".

     Image:  Evangelist Painter, The raising of Lazarus (c. 1300), from Thomas F. Matthews and Alice Taylor, The Armenian gospels of Gladzor:  the life of Christ illuminated (Los Angeles:  Getty Publications, 2001), plate 57.

"In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed."

      Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Prudence" (Essays:  first series, no. 7) par. 14 (Library of America 15 (1983), p. 364).  The comma is absent from p. 235 of vol. 2 of the 1903-1904 edition of the Complete works.

"A better place by far to linger in the night season"

Wycliffe College

     "Even my mother and father may, and in death probably will, forget me (Isa. 49:15; Ps. 27:10). I feel this every day. Perhaps my children have their own version of this sorry sentiment of being abandoned to the solitude of memory. And so I lie awake at night, grasping at what those who gave me life have let go of and left for me to fathom and fix, the impossible task of sleeplessness and of the sleepless ages. Yet I am remembering the wrong things. God responds to Israel: 'Yet will I not forget thee' (Isa. 49:15). A better place by far to linger in the night season. There is, by definition, no guard, no incapacity, no limit set against a memory such as this."

     Ephraim Radner, "The back page:  What to remember," First things no. 350 (February 2025):  71 (72-71).  Opening paragraph:  "I had thought of calling this piece 'Against Memory.' Hyperbolic, perhaps, but I had my reasons. I’ve started regularly waking up in the middle of the night, often for hours at a time. I’m told it’s common for people my age. I start mulling things over. Not just from yesterday, but from all my yesterdays, my life and the people in it. The night is dark, and thoughts tend to go in one direction: failures, disappointments, fears. Things I wish I could forget, and whose disappearance would cost no one but only gain some measure of peace."

"no longer is death terrifying"

     "That death has been dissolved, and the cross has become victory over it, and it is no longer strong but is itself truly dead, no mean proof but an evident surety is that it is despised by all Christ's disciples, and everyone tramples on it, and no longer fears it, but with the sign of the cross and faith in Christ tread it under foot as something dead.  Of old, before the divine sojourn of the Savior, all used to weep for those dying as if they were perishing.  But since the Savior's raising of the body, no longer is death fearsome [(οὐκέτι . . . φοβερός)], but all believers in Christ tread on it as nothing, and would rather choose to die than deny their faith in Christ."

 St. Athanasius, De incarnatione 27, trans. Behr (St. Athanasius the Great On the incarnation:  Greek original and English translation, Popular patristics series 44a (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011), 108-109).