That his light must sink down into the gloom... (Hans Urs von Balthasar)

  And now that God’s Word saw that his descent could entail nothing but his own death and ruination – that his light must sink down into the gloom – he accepted the battle and the declaration of war.  And he devised the unfathomable ruse:  he would plunge, like Jonas, into the monster’s belly and thus penetrate to death’s innermost lair; he would experience the farthest dungeon of sin’s mania and drink the cup down to the dregs; he would offer his brow to man’s incalculable craze for power and violence; in his own futile mission, he would demonstrate the futility of the world; in his impotent obedience to the Father, he would visibly show the impotence of revolt… He alone would henceforth be the measure and thus also the meaning of all impotence.  He wanted to sink so low that in the future all falling would be a falling into him, and every streamlet of bitterness and despair would henceforth run down into his lowermost abyss.

-- Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Heart of the World, Chapter II

Image source: Christ of the Abyss (a statue of Jesus submerged beneath the Mediterranean Sea)