Broken Jar - Broken Body

We are saved by the death of Jesus! This is a central tenet within the Christian faith. Jesus' death on a cross changed history forever.  In the coming days of Holy Week we will journey in faith with Christ to the Cross and through it to his resurrection.

But how does this work? How can one man's death 2000 years ago be an act that saves us today?

There was more here than can be accounted for upon the historical or human level. God was in it. We must use mystical, poetic language to try to express the inexpressible – we speak of the sacrifice of the spotless lamb, we are washed clean in the blood of Christ, by his wounds we are healed. We have to use images - because the reality is too wonderful to grasp fully.

Some Fathers of the Church look at the anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany – a Gospel we hear on each Monday of Holy Week. By breaking the alabaster jar of very expensive perfume over the whole body of Jesus and filling the house with that gorgeous scent, Mary’s lavish gesture symbolised the deepest meaning of Jesus' passion and death. The body of Christ is the jar containing the most precious perfume of all time, namely, the Holy Spirit. It was about to be broken open so that the Holy Spirit could be poured out over the whole of humanity - past, present, and to come - with boundless generosity.

Until that body had been broken on the cross, the full extent of the gift of God in Christ and its transforming possibilities for the human race could not be known or remotely foreseen.

This mystery of God's love revealed on the Cross is something we can understand more in the gut than in the head. We can know and experience its truth, even when we can’t fully understand or explain it.

A blessed Holy Week.

Handed Over

“The Son of Man is going to be handed over into the power of men.” Handed over! On one level, on the surface, Jesus was handed over to his enemies by Judas. But on a deeper level, for love of us, with a complete yielding to the Father’s redeeming purpose – he unreservedly handed himself over.

Jesus, we are told, set his face resolutely toward Jerusalem and all that awaited him there. He could say: “Nobody takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.”  

It was a moving forward in love, a letting go totally into the hands of God,  allowing his life fall like a grain of wheat into the dark earth.  It was with such absolute trust that Jesus went to the Cross and, with such abandonment to the Father, he handed over his life for us.    

And what of us, as the Lord’s disciples? St Francis so often refers to the Scripture: “Christ suffered for you leaving you an example that you might follow in his footprints.” And it is, above all, this interior disposition of trusting surrender that is the heart of Christ’s example we are called to follow.

The saints constantly teach us this message of handing over all our lives, especially the inevitable, unavoidable sufferings and struggles and trials we face. St Ignatius prayed: “Take, Lord, receive... all is yours. Dispose of it wholly according to your will.” John Newton, slave-trader turned servant of the Gospel, wrote in a time of great trial: “It is sufficient that the Lord knows how to dispose of me, and that he can and will do what is best. To him I entrust myself for I trust that his will and my true interests are inseparable. To his name be the glory!”

The saints know that in the end the Lord asks for everything so that we might receive everything. There has to be an immense space for the gift of God!

Something to hold in our hearts as we approach the week we call Holy.

GOOD Friday!

Have you ever thought like me: GOOD Friday! Why in God's name do we call this day of all days GOOD? Surely what happened on that Friday on a hill outside Jerusalem made it the blackest day in human history.

When I reflect on it I realise that this day is good because of the astonishing goodness of God that was revealed, and because God has turned our greatest evil  into our greatest blessing, an unending source of goodness for us.

Some mystics have used an image that I have found helpful in deepening my understanding of what happened when Jesus died. The image is that of a poultice - a home-made remedy placed on a festering wound to draw out the puss.

On the Cross it is as if Jesus willingly and with inexpressible love laid himself on the awful, foul, raw wound of this world's sin and anguish and bottomless sorrow. He took into himself all the dark evil this world could offer and he overcame it with love. To the horrific end he kept on loving, kept on forgiving, kept on praying, kept on trusting in his Father. There was no hate or desire for revenge, no self-pity in his great heart.

Like the healing poultice Jesus draws out the poison and gives goodness in return for hate,  mercy for vicious cruelty, light for darkness. The Lord's love unto death sets us free.

The Cross shows our sin at its worst and divine love at its best.

The Passion in Jesus' Heart

Jesus went to the Cross with a fire and a love we simply call the Passion. But the heart of the Passion of Jesus was the passion in the heart of Jesus for each of us.

You and I - all of us - can say with St Paul: 'He loved me and sacrificed himself for me."

He gave himself for me, totally and freely!

I can't I get my mind around that. If I live to be 600 I can never grasp the full meaning of the love revealed on Calvary, what it meant for Jesus and means now for me and the world.

To be honest with you - sometimes I almost regret that he loves me with such a passion. How can I be causal about my relationship with him when he has sought me with such lavish goodness - this Hound of Heaven whose love has brought him so far for my sake?

 He has literally gone to hell and back for me.

Sometimes I wonder:

How could my poor, mediocre life  draw such love from him?

How could I  mean so much to him?

How could I have such value in his eyes?

This Holy Week, with the community of the Church, I gaze once again with faith on Christ Crucified, ponder his love and allow it to go deep, where it needs to go now in my life.

And, please God, my response to his passionate love will be joyful, free and wholehearted!