Thursday, April 5, 2012

this is My Body

Station 11: Jesus is nailed to the Cross


We adore You, O Christ, and we bless You, because by Your Holy Cross, You have redeemed the world.

“they gave Jesus wine to drink mixed with gall. But when he had tasted it, he refused to drink. After they had crucified him, they divided his garments by casting lots; then they sat down and kept watch over him there.  Matthew 27:34-36

“They brought him to the place of Golgotha (which is translated Place of the Skull). They gave him wine drugged with myrrh, but he did not take it. Then they crucified him” Mark 15: 22-25

“When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left”  Luke 23:33

“and carrying the cross himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha.  There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus in the middle” John 19:17-18




Once again I am struck by the brevity and simplicity of the description of Jesus’ agony in the Gospels.  At least for my part, I feel I can understand why.  I do not enjoy recalling the sufferings of Jesus.  I do not like to think about the pain that He experienced on my behalf.  Pain that should have been mine.  But, I must. I cannot ignore and gloss over the Passion and Death of my Savior.  How can we even begin to grasp the depth of His Love for us if we do not seek to grasp the price He paid to have us with Him for eternity?  

When I was a child, I was told the story of Jesus from day one.  It was written into my life story from the beginning by my parents, and for a while, I got used to it.  Jesus came, He died for us, and He rose from the dead.  I heard it so much, there was a time that I had very little sense of wonder at what all of this meant.  

The Incarnation.  God becoming Man, the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us.  Giving up Heaven to be with us so we know we are never alone and that we are infinitely Loved and desired by our Creator.  That we were created for Heaven.  That He willingly suffered the most shameful, pain-filled death in order to give us the choice of Heaven, and of life eternal.  It has not been until I was shaken up with my own suffering, that I truly began to realize what it meant for Christ to suffer.  To choose freely what I hate most about being human.  The suffering I cause myself and others through my own sin.  The pain of losing someone I love through death, a reality we will all have to face.  The death that He transformed into life eternal by His own ignominious death.  



I am thankful that my meditation on the 11th station, the Crucifixion of our Lord, is falling on Holy Thursday.  Tonight, my parents and I will continue our Holy Thursday tradition of attending the Sacrifice of the Mass, and there we will hear the Gospel according to St. John telling us how Jesus spent the last hours of His life.  

“So when he had washed their feet
and put his garments back on and reclined at table again,
he said to them, "Do you realize what I have done for you?
You call me 'teacher' and 'master,' and rightly so, for indeed I am.
If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet,
you ought to wash one another's feet.
I have given you a model to follow,
so that as I have done for you, you should also do’” John 13:13-15

So “that as I have done for you, you should also do”.  Jesus never just speaks nice words about loving our neighbor, and praying for those who persecute us, and doing unto others as we would have them do to us.  So often, people reduce Jesus to His teachings and the nice things He told people to do.  They are willing to call Him a prophet, or a wise man, and leave it at that.  




Jesus did not just give out some ideas about being a better person.  He claimed to be the Son of God.  He was tortured, and murdered, for this claim.  To reduce Him to what He taught would be to completely miss the point.  Humanity didn’t need another wise man, or prophet, or crazy man who thought he was a son of God. 




Humanity needed a Savior.  Humanity needed a Love so radical, so profound, so unfathomable, that it would change the world.  It would transform the hearts of all nations.  It would restore sight to the blind, not just the physically blind, but the spiritually blind.  It would make the lame walk, the deaf hear, and the dead live again.  I believe that Satan, the father of lies, has sought to deceive the world, not as much by convincing people Jesus never existed (though some may still believe this), because a very large percentage of the world does believe the Man called Jesus of Nazareth did exist in history.  Satan is much more cunning than that and has sought to take the focus off of Jesus’ claim of being the Son of God and Savior of all humanity (whether they believe Him to be their Savior or not), and has directed their attention to some of the nice, agreeable things that He said. Things that a world obsessed with tolerance of anything as long as it feels good and “doesn’t hurt anyone” likes to hear.  I was surrounded by these lies in my experience of being a hospital chaplain.  People who claimed to be Christians, no longer found the belief in the significance of Christ's death or the reality of His Resurrection to be a necessary part of Christianity.  




Tonight we remember Jesus praying in agony in the Garden of Olives, sweating drops of blood for the intensity of His prayer and His Love for God and for us.  The next few days we commemorate and more deeply enter into the reality, not of what Jesus said, but what He did.  Jesus never uttered any words more profound than “This is my Body, given up for you”.  They are remembered now, because He gave up His Body for us on the Cross.  And He continues to give Himself as Food and Drink in the Eucharist.  




Let us remember how intensely and radically He Loves us.  Let us remember that each nail that pierced His flesh, and the thorns that tore into His head, and the whips that stripped away the skin on His back, was for each one of us. Because, Love does such.

I am reminded tonight of something a friend of mine once told me.  He happens to have a favorite star, and it’s the middle star on Orion’s Belt.  And he said that he thought of Jesus praying in the Garden of Olives, and looking up into the Heavens as He prayed, and seeing that middle star in Orion’s belt, and saying “Daniel, this is for you”.  




I pray each one of us has such a realization.  That He knew every single thing about you, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and He chose to leave Heaven to be crucified for you.  Because all He wants is to have you with Him for eternity in Heaven.  All He wants is for each one of us to live in Love and Joy and Light inaccessible with Him forever and ever.  

 Then he took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of me.”
Luke 22:19

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