Compassio and Immutability of God

God, then, has no need to 'change' when he makes a reality of the wonders of his charity, wonders which include the Incarnation and, more particularly, the Passion of Christ, and, before him, the dramatic history of God with Israel and, no doubt, with humanity as a whole.  All the contingent 'abasements' of God in the economy of salvation are forever included and outstripped in the eternal event of Love.  And so what, in the temporal economy, appears as the (most real) suffering of the Cross is only the manifestation of the (Trinitarian) Eucharist of the Son: he will be forever the slain lamb, on the throne of the Father's glory, and his Eucharist - the Body shared out, the Blood poured forth - will never be abolished, since the Eucharist it is which must gather all creation into his body.  What the Father has given, he will never take back.

from the preface to the second edition of Mysterium Paschale by Hans Urs von Balthasar