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Christ our God has loved his own to the uttermost. Because of love he created the world, because of love he took up our broken humanity into himself and made it his own. Because of love he identified himself with all our distress. Because of love he offered himself as a sacrifice, choosing at Gethsemane to go voluntarily to his Passion: “I lay down my life for my sheep…. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (Jn. 10.15,18).
It was willing love, not exterior compulsion, that brought Jesus to his death. At his agony in the garden and at his Crucifixion the forces of darkness assail him with all their violence, but they cannot change his compassion into hatred; they cannot prevent his love from continuing to be itself.
—Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way
