Lent 2008
The Sorrowful Mysteries - 2
1.
Intro To and In The Garden
O
righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have
known thee; and these know that thou hast sent me. I made
known to them thy name, and I will make it known, that the
love with whic h thou hast loved me may be in them, and I
may be in them."
When Jesus had spoken these words, he went forth with his
disciples across the Kidron valley, where there was a
garden, which he and his disciples entered. - St John 18
& 19
I will begin this Lenten series with a confession. I am
recycling a Lenten Series after 7 years. It is not that you
didn't hear or read that series on the Sorrowful Mysteries.
It's something quite different. Here, in this special
place, we live the Sorrowful Mysteries. We see them acted
and replicated at ever turn of the corridor. They are
played out among us.
Having said hat, it is easy to say, "that's a bit
theatrical! Start handing out the academy awards for Best
Dramatic Suffering!" I would, except for one thing. There
is joy here. There are smiles. There is something that's a
bit different. Look, we've all seen places where people are
"cared for" and they are not like here. What's the
difference? Here's a hint: it's not the food, the religious
art or the location. It's the Sorrowful Mysteries among us.
And this Lent, I ask you see them not as a religious truth
somewhere out there. I ask you to pray them as something
more familiar.
One liberty I am taking is a concentration on the 1st - the
Agony in the Garden. We have so many opportunities to look
at the other four throughout the season of lent and
especially on Good Friday. This event in the Garden is our
great embarrassment. We mark it in the Liturgy only once by
walking away from in silence from the Eucharistic
respository on Holy Thursday. Like the sleeping disciples,
we say nothing. The Night Watch passes without liturgy or
rituals. Maybe it is too horrifying or too empty for us.
But that darkness is an invitation. Let me give an example.
If you fall through the ice and look up, you need to find
the dark spot above since this darkness is the same hole -
through the translucent ice - you fell through. I know, I
know. This is the type of silly information I pick up along
the way! In distress, we are to look for what doesn't make
sense to our panic. We are told to embrace what seems the
opposite of what we are looking for.
And this is precisely the invitation of Gethsemane. In the
distress of life, in the difficulties, we are invited not
to run away but to go in and through. So we enter
Gethsemane this Lent. And it is there, in the Garden, that
we find the darkness - as well as the Lord of light. We go
there not simply because God is everywhere but because God
is actually there, praying as us, with us, and for us.
Let's begin by going there. The Passover is finished and
they are walking through the streets of Jerusalem. Masked
by the darkness of the night, they move along as a group
guided by the dim lit coming from the other houses filled
with folks finishing their Passovers. They hear the Psalms
they just sang. The smell the lamb dinners and hear the
banging of plates and pots as the meals finish. As they
descend, those sounds grow quieter and more distant. They
cross a stream with the massive walls of the Holy City
shrinking behind them. They cross the small Kidron Valley
and head up a small rise to the olive grove. They are
following Jesus who is rather quiet. They whisper about the
strange things He did with the matzoth and the last cup of
blessing. And what was all that talk of death and love and
- hey - where is Judas? They get to the gate and He takes
those three (it's always them, isn't it!) and they go
farther amid the olive trees and brush. There's a big rock
they left sticking up and Jesus throws Himself on it and
starts praying. The Passover feast (and the wine) are
starting to take their toll and they start dozing. After
all, it is dark and it is night.
Let's stop there. Let's begin with the darkness. Since we
were children, we have a fear or at least a caution of the
darkness. Without light, we are not sure where things are.
We cannot distinguish and negotiate without contrast. We
have trouble identifying what's around us. Without colors
to show us, it's all a little murky. We have good reason to
fear the darkness. Try stumbling around you rooms here at
Jeanne Jugan in the middle of the night!
The darkness is real. Obviously, we're not considering just
the darkness of our eyes. We also face the darkness of the
soul. Only the foolish or deluded deny it is there.
The darkness of the soul is the horrifying emptiness that
none of this will end well. It is a numbing concern that
all we go through, all the pains, discomforts and
inconveniences, will amount to nothing. It is the taunting
murmur that God isn't looking or that He doesn't even
exist. Our senses tingle with alert that we will never see
beyond the bleak prospects of our worst fears.
The world around us seems to give in to so readily and live
as if it will never strike. But like the rapidly darkening
smoke from the Towers on that sad day, the soul desperately
and reluctantly admits it is there. All the pleasures,
luxuries and lies of modern life are of no avail. And most
people grow quiet as the darkness envelopes them. Soon,
however, humanity lights its own flames of false hope and
we comfort ourselves with platitudes. We tell each other
we'll pull through or get over it. We tell ourselves that
we will find the right concoction or the correct attitude
and all will be good as new. And when the childish attempts
to re-make reality finally fail, the darkness is still
there.
Is all this depressing? It sure is. I'm describing a very
hopeless life. But there is one thing and it makes the
deepest difference. It was this very darkness, this fearful
despair, that Jesus Christ encountered on the rock. As He
saw everything that would happen the next day, He embraced
the horror we commemorate in these mysteries because the
only way this darkness could be banished was to face it. In
His Divinity, Jesus saw our darkness through His Humanity.
He claimed the starlight of Bethlehem we fondly sing on
Christmas as He prayed on this night.
We are celebrating Jesus as the redeemer. Yes, He came to
bring hope. Yes, He came to preach peace. But He is
redemption itself. And our darkness, by His graced
Incarnation, became His and He redeemed it. The darkness
that started in a Garden was ended in one. The sorrow of
this mystery is light for ours.
2.
The Garden Prayer
Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsem'ane,
and he said to his disciples, "Sit here, while I go yonder
and pray." And taking with him Peter and the two sons of
Zeb'edee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he
said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death;
remain here, and watch with me." And going a little farther
he fell on his face and prayed, "My Father, if it be
possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I
will, but as thou wilt." And he came to the disciples and
found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, "So, could you
not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not
enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but
the flesh is weak." Again, for the second time, he went
away and prayed, "My Father, if this cannot pass unless I
drink it, thy will be done." And again he came and found
them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. So, leaving them
again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying
the same words.
St. Matthew 26.36-44
Even Peter, James, and John are falling asleep. It is late;
it is dark. The cool spring breeze is gently blowing
through the olive trees. Jesus is still praying. Something
is very wrong. He looks like He’s been fighting and
His face is red. He’s clearly talking with Some one
but it seems like a one-sided argument. But one thing He
says over and over is: “Father, thy will be
done.” He gets up occasionally to go over to His
sleeping friends. He knew they couldn’t help it but
couldn’t they at least be more than asleep at a time
like this? At a certain point, the struggle stops. He grows
calm and says those words again, but differently.
“Thy will be done” now sounds more like a plan
than a prayer. His face is more peaceful. The agonizing
contortions have vanished. He stands up.
What happened here?
As Jesus sees in His soul the sin of all time committed by
human beings, from the first to the last, He also sees
every detail of Good Friday. He sees the purest innocence
sacrificed for the careless iniquity. He is presented the
prospect of pain and that singularly unique position of
being the priest, the altar and the sacrifice all rolled
into one.
And yes, even as God and as Man, He prays this prayer over
and over. Was something wrong here? Has our theology made a
mistake? How could a perfect God say a prayer multiple
times when once would have been enough? Didn’t He say
that we should not go on and on like the pagans who thought
that the mere multiplication of works would gain them
divine access?
But this is no mere multiplication of words. This was
humanity’s finest hour. And a moment like this never
comes without struggle.
For the worst of human nature to be redeemed by the best,
we needed something radical. We needed our weakest to be
transformed by a greater. In His sacred humanity that was
what Jesus did in the Garden. It was the struggle to bring
the ego and desires and faults of humanity into line with
the Divine will. And it did not go easily into that dark
night. It rebelled and screamed in the heart of Jesus like
a mad dog being pulled away. It pouted and resisted like a
child getting a shot. It fought – literally –
like hell itself. But grace won that battle. Grace said
that there was another story to be written. And this time,
it was going to be written in the Blood of the Lamb.
The first Adam was redeemed by the second Adam. Now the
sacrifice was prepared and intended. And only the fullness
of Adam could be properly offered. In subjecting the human
will to the Father’s, it was ready.
We know that struggle. We know how difficult it is to
accept the Father’s will. And even when we learn how
good God is to us, we rebel. Case in point: some one I know
missed his train one morning because his kids left some
toys in the driveway. Because he had to clear the way, he
missed his train, his meeting and never made it to his
office in Tower 1. Years later, I asked him if he gets mad
when he’s late. He said ‘yes’ and we both
shook our heads and laughed.
There is no one – saint or sinner – who accepts
the Father’s will without struggle. Jesus brought
that sad fault to light in the darkness of the Garden. And
the mystery of this event, the grace of this offering, is
that in our struggle we find hope in Christ. We know by
faith that our own difficulties with and out-right refusal
of the Father’s will has been redeemed. Our battles
are traced in the war Christ fought and won in Gethsemane.
As we pray this mystery, we are praying for the courage to
fight. We are cautioned to be resolute as well as to be
understanding. We are never to be harder on ourselves than
God would ever be on us. The compassion of Gethsemane is
that our God is straggling with us. Rebellious as our will
can be, we are in this fray with the one who has already
conquered. We find the ultimate victory in the One who
accepted what we think is ultimate defeat.
So we stand before God and His holy will. We stand with
resistance and rebellion as we say in faith, “Thy
will be done.” And saying it like that is His will
for us.
3.
Christ, the Derelict
While
Jesus was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve,
and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief
priests and the scribes and the elders. Now the betrayer
had given them a sign, saying, "The one I shall kiss is the
man; seize him and lead him away under guard." And when he
came, he went up to him at once, and said, "Master!" And he
kissed him. And they laid hands on him and seized him. But
one of those who stood by drew his sword, and struck the
slave of the high priest and cut off his ear. And Jesus
said to them, "Have you come out as against a robber, with
swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I was with
you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But
let the scriptures be fulfilled." And they all forsook him,
and fled.. – St. Mark14. 43-50
From outside the low walls of the garden there is a
rustling and the soft clanging of steel. The wind is
fanning the soldiers’ torches and sending sparks into
the night air. In the cold orange glow, a figure steps
forward, approaches Jesus and embraces Him. There is a
scuffle and a bit of shouting. A servant is hit and healed
without much notice. Everyone is focused on the two
characters. Judas is shaking with anticipation. All of his
political dreams of Israel’s liberation from the
Romans were about to come true. Jesus is majestic in His
resolve to face this little mob. His is a nobility hidden
by the darkness of the night. As they finally get the
courage to take Him, the soldiers, really nothing more than
security guards, notice that the others who were with him
seemed to have disappeared under the cover of the olive
trees. But no matter. They were not here for them. They
were here for Him. Mission accomplished.
On Holy Thursday, after the Eucharist has been brought to
the Altar of Repose, something happens at the main Altar.
The modern rite calls for the sanctuary decorations and
appointments to be removed. In the older rite, something
far more profound was done. In darkness, a choir sang Psalm
51 and the Altar was stripped of candles and linens and
such. Then a bucket of water and olive oil was brought with
a whisk and the Altar was cleansed. The darkness, the chant
and the sound of the whisking was…well, creepy. It
was known as the Desolation or the Dereliction of the
Altar. Liturgically. It made an impact on the senses
because it something the soul knows all too well.
It is the experience of being left alone. It is what the
spiritual masters call Abandonment. And the experience,
though not the reality, is not limited to human beings.
We all know that there are some friends who are like
shadows. In sunlight, they are always there. But when
things grow dark, they disappear. No night, no friends
could have been more like the shadows of Jesus’
disciples. They felt fear, they were weak. And they saw
over their shoulders, the One they had just abandoned
standing there all alone. They were helpless and worse,
they knew that it didn’t matter if they had stayed.
The outcome would have been the same. But that was never
important. It never is.
A derelict is literally some one who has no one and nowhere
to go. Christ appears in this Mystery to be a derelict.
Alone and sad, He “looked around for consolers, and
found none.” The disciples felt this too. They were
made to feel empty by their own actions. Personally I
cannot think of a more tragic and sad scene in all the
Bible. But it is one which we pray because it a scene which
happens constantly in our life. In all the gardens, we can
so easily see ourselves as Jesus abandoned, the disciples
fleeing or the crowd observing.
We all know these emotions. We have all seen them in our
families, friends, parishes, and communities. Our hearts
break when we see it happening to others. We sometimes even
dare to imagine what others go through as they are left
alone in the midst of sickness or calamity. We are all too
aware of how painful we have felt this when we are left
alone. But we still go forward, we still step into this
empty place and bring this profound sadness to prayer. This
is the prayer of dereliction. It is a prayer of complaint,
of anger, of horror. We cry “it is not fair”
even if we are the ones who are doing the abandoning.
But there is an even deeper fear. We begin to feel and
think and even believe that we are abandoned by God. We
start to think that in a capricious turn of the Divine will
that God has chosen to forget us. And this is very hard
because we have to rely on faith alone in these dark nights
and days. We can and do, in these trying moments, identify
with Christ the Derelict standing alone in the darkness of
the Garden. Without the consolations of feeling the
Presence of God, we find ourselves standing there with God.
When we pray the Agony, we identify with Jesus, the
disciples and the on-lookers. It is a Mystery which seeks
to redeem this darkness in everyone’s life. It tries,
without answering, to make sense of the situation. And like
Christ, it gives strength to the one who prays it to
continue. Like the disciples, it gives the grace of
repentance and of making amends. Like the on-lookers, it
gives the clarity of vision to see the pain of others.
And here is the greatest fruit of this Mystery. It is an
act of faith. It prays, and thus affirms, that Christ is
never truly alone. It proclaims that those who suffer in
solitude are never ultimately abandoned. And it speaks
gently to our hearts that we are never truly derelicts who
have no place in the mercy of God. In a sometimes heartless
world when and where things and people are estranged and
neglected, the light of those soldiers’ torches
illuminates the truth of faith: God is with us. While more
may be appreciated, none else. is needed. Emmanuel, the
Derelict, is with us.
4.
Points of Pain: The Scourging and Crowning with Thorns
Then Pilate took
Jesus and scourged him. And the soldiers plaited a crown of
thorns, and put it on his head, and arrayed him in a purple
robe; they came up to him, saying, "Hail, King of the
Jews!" and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out
again, and said to them, "See, I am bringing him out to
you, that you may know that I find no crime in him." So
Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple
robe. Pilate said to them, "Behold the man!"
– St.
John 19.1-5
All through
the
night Jesus is led from official to official, from trial to
trial. Through it all, He says little. There is no point.
Since the Garden it is clear to Him what must happen
according to the Father’s will. Pilate is the worst.
While Herod may have been lacking in intelligence and the
priests may have been petty, Pilate was just cruel. He
never wanted this assignment and let everyone know it. And
it wasn’t as if the cream of the crop was sent to the
garrison either. The soldiers lived in constant fear of
insurrection from these zealots. Why couldn’t they be
like so many other countries under Rome? Some even welcomed
the improvement in life Rome offered. But not here. Not in
this dirty and dusty place where they claimed God lived
among men. What kind of god would live here?
Pilate makes a decision. To placate the priests, he orders
Jesus scourged. Without question, this was the most
sticking scene in Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ.
In fact, few can watch the scene without turning away at
some point. It was historically based on actual evidence of
Roman history. This is what they did and it was done to be
visually shocking, unforgettable and perhaps even fatal.
Maybe Pilate thought it would be enough for them. So off
Jesus goes. The soldiers go at it until their arms are
tired. Jesus Himself is limp with blood loss and pain. And
to add to it, the soldiers are furious that their morning
has been interrupted with all this because Jesus said He
was a king. “So let’s make Him one.” They
twist the thorns into a helmet and slam it on Him. They
dress Him up with a robe and scepter and humiliate Him.
Pilate sends the order to bring Him back in. Their game is
over.
So this is how we treat a king. This is the way we
acknowledge the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. This is
fallen humanity’s genuflection to the Son of God.
Images and acting can never fully grasp what happened here.
It is merely pathetic. I think that is why all the Gospel
writers do not go into detail. In that world they
didn’ t need to. But we enter into these Mysteries
because they resonate with our life. We enter into prayer
as we encounter these events because we are following the
royal road of the Cross. And we pray them because they are
not foreign to us.
Rarely do we see ourselves in the place of Christ. We are a
little more familiar with the place of the soldiers. We see
the price of our sins. Not that we are comfortable with
this, but we know it is true.
To see that there is healing and it is to see redemption.
Isaiah had said “by his stripes we are healed.”
It is in each stripe drawn by the soldiers that morning
where we find healing. It is in the mortification of
Jesus’ body that we find salvation from the sins of
each day. But here is the greater mystery: In praying this,
we unite our small sufferings with Christ at the Pillar. We
are healed and strengthened by His suffering and find that
we are sanctified in our own. Praying this mystery begins
to make sense of our own “whips and scorns of
outrageous fortune.” It is easy to be a martyr, to
ultimately follow in the way of the Cross. It is another
matter to daily see all the small things as part of the
road to holiness.
But there is more. It is not only through the offering and
uniting that we are made holy. There is another step. It is
the path of humility.
Of all the Christian virtues, this is the least understood
and appreciated. Coming from the Latin word meaning
“dirt”, a humiliation is something that brings
us to that level. We naturally avoid it at all costs and
instinctively fight it. But it is unavoidable. And so we
look to Jesus, scourged and enthroned as they place the
thorns on His head.
Humility is the central virtue. Without it, none of the
other virtues make sense or work. It means to acknowledge,
as far as we are able, who we truly are in the sight of
God, others and ourselves. Plagued by the self-delusion
that sin can cause, we often attempt to build up a self
which does not necessarily exist. And like a sand castle,
the waves of reality knock us down. Humility is the
strength to say who we are and who we are not.
Now in this mystery we see Jesus humiliated. We see Him
encountering how faithless humanity sees Him: a joke. But
there is nothing funny in His life or ours about
humiliations. They bring us down, and not just emotionally.
The grace of these Mysteries is the vision to see them as
an opportunity.
Some pray for humility. Others pray for the grace to accept
the humiliations life offers. Essentially, they are the
same. I prefer the language of the second. Humility grows
more by acceptance than by action. By them, we are taught
more than what we teach ourselves. We pray this Mystery so
that we have the gift of seeing ourselves through the lens
of humiliations. To accept the limits, mistakes, and even
the sins of life as an invitation to knowing more than we
naturally could about ourselves is to find healing.
These Mysteries are united. By knowing our truest need for
healing, we find it in the redemption of Christ. It offers
us a place in our lives where the hurts, pains, sorrows and
weaknesses of life can be redeemed even if not understood.
A religion without the praetorium courtyard is a false
faith. We each need that place where life can be
encountered in all of its brutality and embarrassment. In
praying these decades, we accept the invitation of God to
enter within ourselves and encounter the scourges and
humiliations of life. Don’t be afraid. Don’t
get caught up in the moment and forget that these are the
stripes by which we are healed. Don’t be so taken by
the embarrassment of our sins that we fail to see the weak
child God so deeply loves. And most of all, rejoice that
the One who underwent all this for us has risen above what
happened here.
And so shall we.
5.
The Carrying of the Cross: Jesus Falls
Your anger weighs down upon me:
I am drowned beneath your waves.
I call to you, Lord, all the day long;
to you I stretch out my hands. - Psalm 88
Sometime that morning, Pilate caved in. Weakened and
struggling, Jesus is led under an arch. They take His arms
and tie them to a cross beam with a notch carved in back.
They are not gentle about it. They are still mad that they
will have to go through the Passover crowds with this
charlatan who some in the crowd believe is a king. The
cross slams into the back of Jesus’ head with its
helmet of thorns. It is 700 yards to the place and most of
it down hill. They can see how weak He is. Did those two
have to go so hard on Him when they scourged Him? As they
move out, their swords are drawn and the crowds gather.
This was a public lesson with a shocking message. The
crowds are small today. Most of them seem to be hurrying
about getting ready for that lamb dinner these
‘one-god-only people’ are having tonight. But
there are those who look as if the hope of the world is
passing by. The soldiers see He is really struggling with
the patibullum. They wonder if He realizes that it is a
strange mercy that He is so weak. Better now than on the
cross. He keeps stumbling and falling. The captain finally
grabs a guy from the crowd to hold up the cross-beam from
behind. It helps a little. As they move down the hill and
leave the city, they come to the garbage dump where the
other two are already hanging and twisting. They’ve
had busier days. The governor had crucified more on a
single day than these three. Near that little hill, there
is a group of woman who are really getting hysterical. He
actually says a few words to them before He falls exhausted
at the foot of the upright beam. Now they have to do the
hard part.
Until Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, we had
really cleaned up the Way of the Cross. The Scriptures do
not describe much about it. It is not a journey the
Apostles were even there for. Remember, they ran away. They
had to be told about it later by those who were there. John
finally showed up and what must have struck him is that it
was Jesus who was carrying His own cross. He probably saw
that finally fall and collapse. No, today we have a noble
and clean Jesus gently carrying a toothpick cross behind
Him. And tradition has given Him three falls under the
gentle weight of the Cross. But deep down, with a little
imagination, we know that it was so much more. It was not a
pretty scene.
We have seen people working around the house carrying loads
too heavy for us. We see workmen moving furniture and
construction materials with their heads and eyes downcast
in the effort not to drop it. Far less dramatic, we may
have carried bags through the airport and felt that we had
just climbed Mt. Everest. But this was different. This was
the Son of God. This is the One who was carrying the weight
of all the sins of human history on His bruised and bloody
shoulders.
How could we expect Him not to fall? How could we not see a
struggle? We say that He “walked” the Via
Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross. Walking is not what I would
call it. Pushed, prodded, tripping, and falling is more
accurate. And all the while, most of the crowds ignored it.
Or at least they hoped that the spectacle would move on.
None of us likes a traffic jam - especially during the
holiday season.
By why is this a Mystery and why do we pray it? How could
we not, even if more out of devotion than identification?
It clearly captured the piety and imagination of
generations of Christians from early on and has continued
into almost every Church and chapel to this day. Most of
the time, we choose to see Jesus being crushed by the
heaviness of our sins. But what if we saw deeper into the
obvious. We are, after all, the ones He calls to follow in
His steps. We are the ones to whom He said: “Unless
you daily pick up the cross and follow Me, you cannot be my
disciples.”
Simply put, Jesus falls. No other gesture in life says
“weakness” like a fall. Every Sister, nurse or
aide here is on the watch that we don’t. Our
corridors have rails all over to insure our safety. Falling
is a movement from strength to frailty. It is means a
giving in, though not necessarily a giving up. It ends the
illusion that we are super-human. It says that we are not
in control. And we hate it.
But all of us fall. As children, we can only learn to walk
by repeated tumbling. We learn to ride a bike by taking a
few spills. And as we get older, we take steps to avoid
falls. But it happens. And not just physically.
When we fall morally or spiritually, we experience that
same weakness in our souls. We realize that we are far from
perfect and even farther from being strong. And for most of
us, this is not a once, twice or thrice event. It is not a
cleaned-up spiritual image. It is a hard and painful
reality of daily life for those who, following in the
Master’s steps, stubbles. Do we, then, have the right
to be surprised or even offended that we too would fall? Do
we pretend that the weight of our fallen natures would be
less for us than the One who carried ours to Calvary? How
could we not pray this Mystery if we honestly appreciate
the mystery of Redemption?
But here is the truth of this Mystery. We see in the
example of Christ, and of our own graced experience, that
we have to rise again, we have to get up when we fall. The
child who falls and never rises never learns to walk. Nor
does that child focus on the fall. Yes, we fall in so many
ways and so many times. We all know the weight of guilt and
habit. And we often feel alone in this struggle since like
Christ’s own Way, people around us seem to go about
dong what they always do. But we have a goal and we are on
a journey.
“Lift
us up strong Son of God” we pray today. Help us to
see that Your grace is strongest in our weakness. Let our
souls fall into Your peace even as we stubble through this
valley of tears. Take from us the arrogance of pretended
strength and give us the humility of heavenly Providence.
Teach us to walk as You did by holding our hands firmly as
we fall. Take the pitfalls and potholes we fall into each
day and make them hills and mountains of discipleship. Lift
us up, strong Son of God as You were, both now on way of
the cross and up to the glory of heaven. Amen.
6.
The Death of Jesus: I commend my spirit.
You
have laid me in the depths of the tomb,
in places that are dark, in the depths:
like one alone among the dead;
like the slain lying in their graves;
like those you remember no more,
cut off, as they are, from your hand. - Psalm
88
What a scene. While the townsfolk are running around
getting things ready for the Passover, while the Roman
soldiers are getting bored, while the few who remained
faithful watched, Jesus is dying. A storm comes in and
things begin to grow dark. Some earth-shaking bolts of
lightning cause a few to look up. But one is noticing
something strange about the day. A soldier stands there and
sees this young man being executed. Jesus, as His
mother’s only son, entrusts her to the care of a
younger man who seemed to be one of His followers. He even
promised paradise to one of the others hanging there. But
to forgive was more than he had ever seen. And there had
been a lot of these crucifixions since Pilate got into
office. In the late afternoon, this criminal seemed to look
off in the distance and gave something to some one He
called “Father.” A few minutes later, after a
splitting cry, He seemed to relax and died.
So now we have come to the end. It is the central moment of
the Stations of the Cross. In the Fordham University
Church, this station is a carved wood panel which is
different from most others. It is not just a cross with
Mary and John. Instead, when you view it, you see it from a
distance, standing slightly behind yet amid the crowd. And
I think that this is the only way each of us really can
view Good Friday. For our own sakes, we must be a little
removed. As you may have experienced while viewing the
Passion of the Christ, the reality is too much.
As we feel the crushing weight of life’s tragedies,
we squirm and get uncomfortable. As we see what the Cross
really is in our lives, it loses the ornamentation which so
often covers its brutality. Like Jesus fastened and
fettered to it, we also feel trapped and helpless. And at
the hour when we know we can do no more, we finally come to
the intersection that is the cross: We come to the place of
faith.
“Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”
This is the ultimate priestly act of Christ. He offers it
all to the Father who accepts it. Salvation is won by His
losing. Victory is achieved by His defeat. Life is gained
by His death. And so the awesome paradox of the cross is
shown in His silhouetted body hanging in the dark of the
gathering storm clouds while salvation pours out on all
humankind.
And it is into this Mystery that we enter. We pray the
paradox of the cross not because it is merely an object of
wonder; we pray it because we often are called to live it.
It is that strange set of contradictions we find each day.
A God of love who permits evil. A person of faith who
cannot forgive. A soul who longs for God yet is never free
of sin. A body which is a consecrated Temple of God falling
apart and ravaged by illness. A paradox is not a puzzle. It
is not something that has an easy answer or simple
solution. It is a reality with which we must live. But far
more importantly than just acknowledging it to be a part of
life, much like death and taxes, there is something
profound in the example of Christ which is the call of
holiness. It is the action by which we transcend the
paradox of the cross and find redemption in sanctity. We
hand over our life to the Father. There is nothing more we
can do and nothing less we need to offer.
The cross in our life is often so close to us that we can
look around rather than at it. It is the pain of our
family’s sufferings, it is the terror of loss, it is
the hell of sinful habits, it is the persistent weakness of
character and soul and body. But ultimately, the cross is
our life in paradox with our experience of grace and mercy.
How can we honestly compare what we go through to what
Jesus endured? How dare we? Well, we can. We should. And we
must. Jesus was quite clear about the cross. He told us to
take it up but never for its own sake. He told us to follow
Him with it, never to go our own way. The cross without
Christ make no sense. At worst, it is a meaningless
torture. No God of love could ever call us to the cross
without a graced-reason. And no experience of the Christian
faith could honestly define God’s mercy without it.
So how then, in imitation of Jesus, how do we hand over our
lives as Christ did? How do we pray this mystery in our
very real lives in following the Master?
We begin by seeing the cross and we must be clear about it.
We cannot sugar-coat our pain or suffering. Not that
suffering in itself is ever good, but God generously gives
us a particular grace. We begin to perceive that it is
something permitted by the mercy and will of God. I doubt
if we - as fallen human beings - would ever be able to
figure this out in a single moment of prayer. Instead,
coming to the cross is something that has to be a daily
procession, a thing in progress, a continual maturing of
faith. And once we begin to see the cross, we move to
realizing how truly powerless we are before it. Like
Christ, we are literally fastened to it and unable to move.
It was when Christ couldn’t move that He did the
most.
And then we begin to die to self. We begin that hardest
death of all, the death of the ego, with fear and stress.
But looking to Jesus, we begin to hand it over to the
Father. His prayer becomes ours as we, to quote those in
AA, begin to “let go and let God.” If there is
ever a true cross-centered spirituality out there, it is
the 12 Steps. It encapsulates the handing over of
everything to God. We make it an offering of praise to Him.
As salvation was won for the world by His act, our
sanctification is furthered by ours. That is why we end the
day at Night Prayer with Jesus’ own prayer of
commendation.
But each of us must discover, by the provident hand of God,
how we will join in this chorus. Trust in God”, as
Jesus told us the night before He went through all this.
The Father did not ignore the tears of His Son. Why could
we think that He would not see us? Hand this struggle to
give your life and your crosses over to Him. It will be in
this dying that we will find the way to truth and life.
When we follow Lent, when we follow the Way of the Cross,
we start to instinctively embrace the reality of life and
hand it over to the Father. This what these Sorrowful
Mysteries have been about. As we journey through Lent and
on to life, we are strengthened by the embrace of God even
as we move from light to darkness and struggle, in the
midst of loneliness, to accept the will of the Father. By
sharing in His own pain and humbly bowing before the
mystery of sharing in His cross, we state that we also were
made for the joy and glory of Easter. Many who are in this
purgative state of life find the Easter joy to be a very
distant anthem. But it is still there, and it
“strains on the ear the distant triumph song.”
May the days and years you pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of
the Rosary give you the grace to embrace what you pray and
lead you to the eternity of heaven.