1. Here, O my God! Is Your most secret hiding-place.
2. In the creation You hide in life and being. Here You hide in death and destruction. This is the memorial of Your Passion.
3. What You left us by Your testament was Your Body and Blood, the physical evidence of the most impossible of all crimes: deicide, the killing of God.
4. And we, mankind, are the culprits.
5. We talk much in our days of communal activity and shared responsibility. Such talk contains this much truth: in front of You, truly present on the altar, we share in the community and responsibility of guilt.
6. There is the victim; here is the culprit. What further evidence is there required for our condemnation?
7. But it is here, where You are most hidden, that You most reveal Yourself: “omnipotentiam tuam parcendo maxime et miserando manifestas” (X p. Pent.). It is in sparing and pitying that Your omnipotence is supremely evident. In comparison to this, the creation is an insignificant bauble.
8. In Your hands the evidence of the most inconceivable crime becomes the guarantee of the criminal’s forgiveness.
9. Because You are almighty, to you “all things work to a good end”—even the greatest possible crime. This is the act of the transcendent God, living and true.
10. Such is the luminous cloud in which is hidden and revealed the God of Christians—and there is none other.
11. Let us adore in silence lest the spoken word create an idol and shatter reality.
— Bryan Houghton, Mitre and Crook, 1979, p. 180.
