Lent 5 - The Crucifixion - Why would God do that?

For the passions on day we read the epistle from Simpol to the Hebrews.

Brethren, when Christ appeared as high priest of the good things to come, he entered the

ones for all through the greater and more perfect Abernacle, not made by hands, that

is not of this creation, nor again by virtue of blood of goats and calves, but by virtue

of his own blood into the holies having obtained eternal redemption.

For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkled ashes of a hafer sanctified the

unclean unto the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ who through

the Holy Spirit offer himself unblemished unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead

works to serve the living God.

And this is why he is mediator of a new covenant, that whereas a death has taken place for

redemption from the transgressions committed under the former covenant, they who have been

called may receive eternal inheritance according to the promise in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We stand for the Holy Gospel, continuation of the Holy Gospel according to St. John.

At that time, Jesus said to the crowds of the Jews, which of you will convict me of sin?

If I speak to you the truth, why do you not believe me?

He, who is of God, hears the words of God.

The reason why you do not hear is that you are not of God, the Jews therefore in answer

said to him, are we not right in saying that thou art as a meritan and has the devil?

Jesus answered, I have not a devil, but I honor my father and you this honor me, yet I

do not seek my own glory.

There is one who seeks and who judges.

Amen, amen, I say to you, if anyone keep my word, he will never see death.

The Jews therefore said, now we know that thou has a devil.

Abraham is dead and the prophets, and thou sayest, if anyone keep my word, he will never

taste death.

Are thou greater than our father Abraham, who is dead?

And the prophets are dead.

Who does thou make thyself?

Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.

It is my father who glorifies me of whom you say that he is your God.

And you do not know him, but I know him.

And if I say that I do not know him, I shall be like you, a liar.

But I know him and I keep his word.

Abraham your father rejoiced that he was to see my day.

He saw it and was glad.

The Jews therefore said to him, thou are not yet fifty years old and has thou seen Abraham.

Jesus said to them, amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I am.

They therefore took up stones to cast at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out from

the temple.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen, Hail Mary, full of

grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of

thy womb, Jesus.

Our Lady, sit up with us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen.

Please be seated.

My dear friends, during the visiting, as you know, for the mens retreat, during this

land, I have been trying to do a series of sermons on the passion of our Lord.

Land is very convenient in that way.

It has five weeks before Palm Sunday, and that allows you in each week to meditate on one

of the sorrowful mysteries of the rosary.

This week, then, passion week would be the fifth, and we are to meditate on the crucifixion

of our Lord.

But my dear friends, before we do, don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid to enter into this sanctuary that St. Paul described in his epistle.

For although it is gruesome, it is difficult at first.

It is indeed terrible to behold.

It is also the most beautiful thing we will ever see.

The one that brings salvation.

The reason for eternal happiness for billions of souls and angels.

On the one side, you see the evil, yes, that belongs to us.

But on the other side, you see the infinite goodness and mercy, and that belongs to God,

but is given to us.

Recently, I was talking with a religious soul who has been a Catholic all her life.

And this person told me, I don't understand.

When I see our Lord on the cross and all that He suffered, and then they speak to me of

a merciful God, of a compassionate God, I just don't understand.

Why do all that?

Why make Him go through that?

He could have saved us doing anything with a little thing.

If God is so compassionate, so merciful, this person asked, why go through that?

And my answer was to tell this all well, first thing that a priest always does, the answer

to that is in the Catechism.

It is in the Catechism of St. Pius's attempt.

Why go through that to show us how much He loved us?

But I still saw doubt in this person's face.

And so I told her, okay, imagine that you have people that you love deeply, your children,

for example, the children in your classroom, your children in your family, wherever.

And imagine that our Lord comes and says to you, you have one day to show them how much

you love them.

That's all you have.

You won't have days before or after.

Just one day to show them how much you love them.

What would you do?

You know that you will exert yourself in every single way to show them your love?

Well, our Lord has this one day to show humanity how much God loved them, how much He loved

them.

Does that make sense now?

Do you understand why he did what he did?

You see, my dear friends, then why the crucifixion is so sweet for us, so beautiful for us?

Put yourselves then there at the moment of Calvary and see our Lord arriving to it.

Everything about Him speaks of an exhaustion of love.

His legs, his feet are trembling from walking to Calvary.

His arms are exhausted and loose of embracing the cross.

Everywhere in his body there are wounds.

Wounds as many times as he has pardoned us, scars as large as the sins they cleanse in

our souls.

His head is crowned with thorns as the groom was crowned with laurels and pine branches

when he approached his wedding.

In his face, he semi-seated, it has disappeared under the mark of his blood and bruises.

His cheeks are shattered, his jaw beaten, his beard ripped off.

The Virgin Mary stands in a distance with Mary Magdalene, John and other pious women.

They cannot come close, the soldiers will not let them as the crucifixion is taking place.

And when our blessed mother sees Jesus' stripped of his garments without compassion, when

she sees him falling to the ground harmless, meek, she cannot but remember that pascal lamb

that Moses had commanded them to eat each year on this day.

They would take the lamb and skin it off, leaving out only the living flesh, and then stretch

him over a stick tied up on the form of a cross.

Leaving the front legs of the lamb, tying them to the sticks in such a way that his

chest would be opened, opened all the way to his heart.

The Virgin Mary sees this scene of our Lord, and now it all makes sense to millennia of

Hebrew history is fulfilling before her eyes.

But you, right now, you, before we continue, close the eyes of your soul and see this

scene.

Hear the cries of the crowd.

The insults here and there, the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, leaving the crowd in the

years and mockery.

Listen to the Roman soldiers shouting, appeasing them.

Feel the cold wind, the blowing sand and dust at the top of the hill.

See with your eyes how the sun seems to be dimming and a strange darkness when you could

almost touch, start covering the land, but none of that matters for what takes place

with our Lord takes hold your attention.

When Jesus is stripped of his garments, the violence makes him fall to the ground.

As the soldiers begin crucifying the thieves, you see them fight back, kick back, trying

to escape.

It takes several soldiers to hold them down for the grueling process.

But this one prisoner, your Lord and Savior, as he sees them prepare the cross, as he sees

the cross lay on the ground, he doesn't run with the little strength that he has.

He crawls back on his force to get there.

The soldiers marking him put back on his brow the crown of thorns that fell off.

And Jesus, reaching the cross as a king that sits on his throne, lays himself on it, puts

his hands on the arms of it, lays his feet on its face.

Why?

Because in his heart for him, this was the glory, the will of his father.

He knew that we ourselves had climbed the tree many thousand million years ago in Adam

and we disobeyed God.

He knew that the only way to rescue us was for him to climb this one tree.

He knew that the cross was the price of our salvation.

And this in the same way that he embraced it, upon receiving it, he embraced it now when,

as men speak, push come to shove when he was time to put it into action.

And the Virgin Mary watches what is to come.

Ah, my dear friends, there is no way you know it.

There is no way to understand the pain, the anguish of the Virgin Mary, the helplessness.

Instead, have you ever felt this kind of pain and anguish?

Were you so numbed, you can speak, were you so sad, so distressed, you can't walk,

were you so exhausted, you can't even cry?

Take that human anguish, the words you have filled, multiply it to the hundreds of thousands.

For our blessed mother is not just the pain of watching her son crucified.

It is the pain of watching her God trampled by his creatures.

See now the hands of our Lord trembling already, being pushed against the arm of the cross,

as all their nails on the forearm to hold them in place, others tie the wrists to the

wood to hold them tight.

Here also the blow of the hammer upon the nail, and try to imagine all the nerves of the

body of our Lord, contract entering to shock.

Imagine all his members, all his limbs, contract at the terrible pain, his jaw locked, his

eyes shut, or perhaps looking up to heaven in a supplication to the Father.

Imagine the moment when the soldiers take those trembling knees, one of the soldiers

perhaps sitting on his legs to hold them, and all their tying them up, and the feet

already convulsing from the pain.

The soldiers put them together, and it takes them several attempts to finally make the

nail go through both.

The bones in the limbs of our Lord are open and dislocated.

Blood starts pouring from the wounds as from a spring, and the heart of Mary becomes

crucified as well.

She is bound to watch.

She is also nailed to the crucifixion, unable to move, unable to defend her son.

She is just as nailed to the cross as he is, but only in spirit.

And as you see my friends, as you will see it today in mass, as you see the cross, this

ominous instrument of torture being raised with the lamb, all in open wounds, all in the

living flesh, nailed to it, being raised before your eyes, hear the words of the Father

or rather the words of the Son who told us of the Father.

Not the seven words yet, those you will have to fry this from now.

But the words of the Father, this motto, this explanation to the question that was posed

to me, God sold off the world that He delivered His Son for the salvation of the world.

Look in the eyes of your soul.

Look at the man who has loved you the most, who has, and we love you like no one ever

has.

Men, these God men on the cross loves you to extensions your wives will never do.

Wives, these men loves you with a permanence and intensity.

Your husband will never reach.

Once youth, the love you have created throughout your life, eternal love, extreme love, unbounded

love, unrestrained love, is here to be found, religious soul, sister, brother, priest.

Nothing you do will ever match this level of surrendering, of giving, of love until

the ultimate sacrifice.

Listen to that word of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost that inspired and

moved Christ to this extreme.

God so loved the world.

Look at the body of the Messiah of your Jesus, not rest for Him.

He is asphyxiating the cross-dostat.

If He elevates Himself for air, the nail digs into His bones and marrow, into His veins

and nerves.

If He descends to alleviate the pain, the body resists asphyxia returns.

His arms are shaking, constantly moving the wound of the nails in His hands.

Opening more and more, aggravating the wound, the nerves shoot all throughout the body and

cause Him horrible strain everywhere.

God so loved the world that He delivered His Son.

And if we could breathe in the heart of our Lord, if we could breathe between the lines

of His seven words, what do you see, Christian Soul?

What is He saying with those nail hands, with those crushed feet, with His scars, with His

curges, with His storms?

What is He telling you?

He says, our Lord, O Christian Soul, behold me here, placed up on high to be seen by

all.

See me, you, yes, you that suffer, you the poor, you the mistreated, you the abandoned,

you the sick.

Your soul has been searching for happiness and for true love.

You have sought everywhere for someone that would not let you down and would not mistreat

you, someone who wouldn't turn His back on you.

And you abandoned me.

You searched in the world, in human friendships, in creatures, in sin, ah, poor soul, looking

for living waters, but looking in the mud, in the sand, in the filth.

And yet our Lord says to you, here I am, I have bound my hands by nails that no matter

what, you always find me with my arms open to receive you.

I have nailed my feet that you know that I will never run away from you.

You said God doesn't know what is like to be sad, so I was sad to death in the garden.

You said God doesn't know what is like to be betrayed, so I was betrayed by a case of

my disciple.

You said God doesn't know what is like to be judged and condemned all the time.

So by four tribunals, the Sanhedrin, Pilate, Herod and the people, I was judged and condemned

unjustly.

You said God doesn't know what infirmity, what sickness, what pain is, so I submitted my

body to be torn by shreds and I was turned into a dying man in discouraging.

You said God doesn't know what is like to be humbled, despised, spit upon, derided,

so I was crowned with thorns and beaten and spit upon.

You said God doesn't know what is like to be a sinner, to be abandoned by God.

And so I was abandoned by God as a sinner would, although I could not sin.

You said God doesn't love me.

All dear soul, our Lord says, how else can I prove it?

They say that our Lord wept when He was in agony and perhaps this was the reason.

But after our Lord was on the cross and as He was dying, what else happened?

I can speak for myself.

I, a sinner, still not believing, still forgetting, I stood there as Jesus died and as He

uttered His final words and then when His body collapsed, when the muscles relaxed and

His head fell.

I, the sinner, in the madness of sin, as the skies darkened, as thunder fell, I, unrepentant,

I, pertenacious.

I sinned again yet and I took the lands and before His small mother, I pierced Him in

the heart, saying, still, you don't love me.

And as the lamb with the stroke of my sin, His heart opened and poured upon me, not lightning,

not fire, not brimstone, nor stones.

He poured upon me, blood and water.

And even when the lips of our Lord went silent, even when He sold the part of His body, even

when He was death, with the last drops of His blood, He said to me, even after my last

sin, once yet again, I so loved the world, I so loved you.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.