Put yourself at the foot of the cross. Darkness has settled in over the land, even though it is midday. Perched on top of a hill, for everyone to see, He hangs, stripped naked, unprotected, clinging to earthly life. The winds pick up, and the dry desert sands are kicked up, blasting Him, yet another thing piercing His body. It’s cold. With every breath, He winces and cries in pain, His Precious Blood drips down His Body and down the cross to the ground.
He’s not a criminal, though He’s surrounded by them. He did nothing wrong, yet He is paying the price that we should be paying. He’s endured a day of agony, scourging, mocking, ridicule, and intense pain and torture. Yet here He is, doing this, enduring this slow death, so that we sinners, past, present and future, can be saved from the evil that is Satan.
Close your eyes, and put yourself at the foot of the cross, look up and see Him, as he looks down at you, eyes filled with blood, tears – and love. An agape love. A divine love. You see, only God can give this kind of love. We can’t find it, we can’t grow it. We can’t choose to have it. We have to be given it by God.
And on this day, through what Jesus endured, and as you close your eyes and see what He is enduring on that cross, He is choosing to give us this love. He is choosing to love us, amidst our sinful nature, in spite of what we are doing to Him, because He knows it must be done. It’s His Father’s will – to show us how to love, and that this type of love, the only love that will save humanity and bind us with God forever in Heaven is this divine love, that which only God can give.
You open your eyes, and your back in 2017. We’re sitting in our comfy homes, or workplaces, or local coffee shop reading this. Perhaps you’re in your church before Mass. Life is buzzing with activity outside, 2000 years removed from the scene we just envisioned. For many people, the world today is the best it’s ever been, with technology and all the “advancements”. More freedom. But as I look at it, it’s really the same as it always has been, in some ways – worse.
There is a lot of good in it, an inherent goodness. Everything starts from goodness, but then as we grow and go about life, the distractions come that steer us away from that good. This is no secret, no great revelation. And that scene of Jesus hanging on the cross 2000 years ago, happens every day, in different ways. Through our actions, we’re constantly scourging Him, and mocking Him, and pressing that crown of thorns onto His head, piercing His scalp. With every passing hour, choices are made that drive those nails deeper and deeper through His wrists, and his ankles, tightly fastening Him to that cross.
We even get to the point, through it all, after we continue to crucify Him, we, we are the ones who question, and yell out to Him “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?
But it’s the darkness of the world that prompts us to ask this, just as it even prompted Jesus while He hung there. It’s the darkness that settles in over us, that separates us from God, times where we ask – God, where are You? Where are You in my life?
God knew that it had to be this way. From the very beginning, once sin entered the world. He knew that the only way to save us from destroying ourselves was to let His divine love bleed out into the world. And it’s at these times, when we’re going through pain and heartache and our own crucifixions in life – when we yell out to Him, yearning for Him, because we need His love to ease that pain and fill that void. He is there.
He may not pull us down from that cross. He may not ease the pain. He may not even answer us, and we may think He has abandoned us. It’s at these times where we ride it out, where we take it all in, and simply live, or struggle, or endure, or even die for Him. We persevere knowing that His divine love will fill our hearts, and get us through it, helping us to live through the pain, to navigate the struggles, and to love fully – even our enemies.
Close your eyes again, and be at the foot of that cross. Look up to Jesus, and look into His eyes. He’s enduring that pain and agony every day for you and me. His love is bleeding out for us, and those tears in His eyes you see – they are tears of joy, because He knows that it is almost over. Not his suffering, but our suffering. Our slavery to Satan and sin. He’s seeing us – past, present, and future – all at that instant. He’s suffering for the sins of Adam and Eve, King David, Pontius Pilate, the Jews who want Him crucified. He’s suffering for you, me, and everyone we know. He’s suffering for the world to come. And those tears in His eyes are not only in sadness, but also for the joy knowing that His Passion provides a means to end the suffering and sadness that fills our lives, a path for us to be forgiven and for us to live eternally in Heaven.
We’re all burdened through that cross and the tree from where it came. It doesn’t matter where we live, our economic status, our social status, if we have a huge house or are homeless. We all have pains and burdens and crosses we carry. And yet, and we live through carrying that cross, it’s all part of His cross, which in the end, becomes our tree of life.
We cannot fully understand this divine love. I would argue that we only understand a small fraction of it. And I’m at peace with that, because I don’t need to understand it in order to feel it, and to know it.
Often we think too much. We try to analyze too much, finding the various meanings in things. It’s good to think, and to contemplate the meanings, but sometimes we just think too much. And I know this because I am a thinker, and a very analytical person. I’m very contemplative. It’s a strength, but also a curse at times, especially when I encounter the crosses in my own life.
And so as I reflect on the Passion today, and envision Jesus up on that cross looking down at me, I can’t comprehend what that means. I just have to take it in, take in His Divine Love. Sometimes, that’s all we can do.
When I encounter things in my life, my pains and struggles, and I see people who get things like cancer, or when others are in accidents – young kids who lose parents, and parents who lose young kids, and so on, it reminds us that we have no control. When I see the suffering in war torn countries, the fighting, the terror and everything in between – it’s impossible to understand. We can’t possibly understand the reason for these things, the full reason for the Lord’s Passion, and most certainly the reasons for the passions in our own lives. It can get exhausting trying to.
The only thing we can do oftentimes is simply persevere and take it all in. Whether it’s a death of a loved one, or just a really bad day at work – sometimes we just need to gaze up at Christ and receive His divine love through it all, not searching, not seeking, and not trying to understand. There’s time for that later. Just be with Him, letting Him be in us, and accept the divine love He wishes to share.
I think the thing that pains me the most in today’s world is not the struggle and suffering that people go through, it’s the fact that people choose to go through it alone – without God. Granted, some may not know Him, but for many it is a choice. Many ask, God, why have you forsaken me? Or why would God let this happen? And then they don’t like the answer because it isn’t what they had planned. Many don’t talk to Him at all, and think that God is not real, and that this life, this world, is all there is, that they are their own god. This saddens me, because they have not experienced and felt His divine love, and they may never get to. Will it take away the struggles? Not usually… But it will allow you to see them in a different perspective, and see Him in their midst.
This is what pains me more than anything, because the more I search for Him in the everyday, I know His divine love is everywhere in everything, especially our struggles. And I know most of you have felt this too.
We don’t need to know everything. We don’t need to understand everything. Mostly, we simply need to feel, simply take it all in – the good and the bad – and ride out the storm. Persevere. Put yourself at the foot of the cross, and let His Divine Love bleed into our hearts from His Passion, and into the passions in our own lives.
IS 50:4-7; PS 22; PHIL 2:6-11; MT 26:14—27:66
