Good Friday 2025: "And it's from us that God awaits the crowning or the uncrowning of one of his hopes"

 The following passage from Charles Peguy's The Portal of the Mystery of  Hope (pp.82-84 in David Schindler's translation) seems appropriate for Holy Week. The startling suggestion that God himself has to place a hope on his part in sinners is placed in the context of references to the texts of St Paul's Letter to the Philippians read at Mass on Palm Sunday and to the Passion narratives of Palm Sunday and Good Friday. 

Such is the situation in which God, by the virtue of hope
In order to wager hope,
Allowed himself to be placed.
Before the sinner.
He stands in fear of him, because be fears for him.
You see what it is I'm saying: God stands in fear of the sinner, because he fears for the sinner.....

That is the situation that God made for himself.
He who loves becomes the slave of the one who is loved.
Just by loving.
He who loves becomes the slave of the one he loves.
God did not desire to evade this universal law.
And by this love he becomes the slave of the sinner.....

God put himself in this situation. As the most miserable creature was freely able
To slap freely the face of Jesus,
So the least of creatures is able to make God to be a liar
Or to make him speak truly.
Terrible delegation of power.
Terrible privilege, terrible responsibility.
As Jesus through centuries of centuries has given over his body
In the poor churches
To the discretion of the least of the soldiers.
So God through centuries of centuries has given over his hope
To the discretion of the least of the sinners.
As the victim surrenders his hands to the executioner,

So Jesus has abandoned himself to us.

As the prisoner abandons himself to the prison guard,

So God has abandoned himself to us.

As the least of the sinners was able to slap Jesus,

And it had to be so,

So the least of the sinners, a miserable, weak creature,
The tiniest of sinners is able to bring to failure, is able to bring to fulfilment

A hope of God;

The tiniest of sinners is able to uncrown, is able to crown

A hope of God.

And it's from us that God awaits

The crowning or the uncrowning of one of his hopes