Jesus knows himself to be the Messiah, the Anointed One par excellence. He is the king. His realm consists of those human hearts that are devoted to God, of the world that such hearts have transformed. He is the Priest; he lifts to the Father hearts made malleable by love and purged by contrition and fills them with God's grace, that their whole existence may be one great mystery of union. And he does not act by force, but by the prophetic power and truth that is spirit and life (see Jn 4: 24). The figure of the Messiah is immeasurably important. Not the word that he speaks, not the work that he performs, not the instructions that he gives are decisive, but what he himself is. Through him, the living one, heaven addresses earth, and man's will is directed to heaven. In him worlds meet and fuse. There is no immediate relationship based on forgiveness and homecoming between man and the God of Revelation; only via the intermediary runs the road from man to God and from Holiness to us, and he is entirely selfless, living not for himself, but for the honor of his Father and the salvation of his brothers... His very essence is one of sacrifice; how that sacrifice is to be carried out depends on the course of history, which in turn is determined by the inseparably interwoven wills of God and man. The sacrificial act can be realized through simple love - if men will believe; it must be realized through destruction if they do not. Anointment is the mysterious divine act by which the individual is lifted out of daily life and placed at the cross-roads between heaven and earth. This role is so perfectly fulfilled in Christ that all other anointing is only a foreshadowing of his. - from Monsignor Romano Guardini's book, The Lord
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