In the
Responsorial Psalm we heard that horrendous cry of Jesus:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
For
a man like Jesus, that cry can only have been forced out of Him by unimaginably
intense suffering. For although Jesus
was indeed a man like us in all things but sin,
nevertheless, we are ordinary people, and even the saints I have
mentioned also began as ordinary people and only the gradual triumph of God’s
grace over their sinful inclinations enabled them to became saintly
people. Jesus, on the other hand, began
as man was loved and taught by Mary, protected
by Joseph, and grew up in constant favour with God and man and had been given
the task of saving the whole of mankind, saints and sinners together: so just
how deep were the sufferings of Jesus, sufferings which led Him to cry out, “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Look
at the psalm:
All
who see Me mock Me: He trusts in the
Lord, let Him deliver Him.
It
is hard to suffer unjust, ignorant, derision; derision from those whose life
and actions could not stand any investigation at all: from those who have no
principles, who will bend with every prevailing wind, and whose only courage is
to join in with and enjoy the hounding and the violence of the mob. But even those suffering in such
circumstances, when they have been brought low, when their suffering and agony
is visible to all, even those will usually hear some voices being raised on
their behalf, will find some compassion and help from one or other a little
more tender-hearted than the mob. There
were, indeed, some such more tender-hearted ones who witnessed Jesus’
agony. But they were only
tender-hearted, they had no sympathetic understanding of Jesus’ aims, why He
was suffering thus: they only lamented like the women of Jerusalem as Jesus
passed by carrying His Cross, or else, after the crucifixion, went home
striking their breasts in sorrow as we are told. None spoke up for Him. And the persecutors laughed at His
loneliness. Laughed; but even worse, in
their laughter they mocked His very thread of life:
He trusts in the Lord, let Him rescue
Him for He delights in Him.
How
Jesus had trusted in the Lord, His Father!
Throughout His life He had trusted totally in His Father and He knew
that His Father was totally trustworthy.
But now it seemed as if His life was closing and bringing about a
totally opposite result to that which He wanted above all: He had wanted to
lead the Jews to recognise the one true God they worshipped as the Father Whom
Jesus alone knew and loved above all, and here were those to whom He had been
sent mocking His Father, their God: “let Him save this fellow if this fellow is
His friend”.
Compared
to this agony the physical torment was as nothing, but physical torment it was:
the cramps as He hung there; the horrible difficulty He had in breathing,
continually struggling to raise His rib cage to find relief from the dreadful
and continuous feeling of being about to be smothered to death. The “holes in His hands and His feet” the
blood pouring out and His terrible thirst.
Every one of His bones He could count!
We
know that the psalm, which Jesus recited, went on:
O Lord, do not be far off , O
You my help, come quickly to My aid!
He
did not give up trusting in His Father, and indeed the psalm closed with word
of triumph:
I
will tell of Your name to My brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will
praise You. Give Him glory; revere Him, Israel’s sons.
The
question becomes all the more pressing, however, granted that outcome: Why did
Jesus have to suffer so dreadfully in order to complete His saving work, the
work His most loving Father had sent Him to accomplish, the work of our
salvation?
Jesus
suffered to give us the opportunity to be free from sin. Sin is such a horror and the extent and depth
of that horror had to be shown to us.
Think
of some old person, even more try and picture an old person, better an old
woman, who has lived a bad life and one
whose face now shows what sort of life she had been living for many years: the
selfishness, the effects of degrading passions in her eyes and on her lips, the
short temper and the vicious tongue, the greed and the hatred she has for her
present state of old age with its weakness and suffering. Look at such a person in your mind and then
think of a picture of a young girl of three or four, how fresh and full of
life, how simple and innocent, how charming and loving. Such was the old woman years ago, and now,
what a terrible transformation! Sin had
entered that young and beautiful person‘s life and turned her into a parody of
a human being. Sin has entered and disfigured, and now seeks to ultimately
destroy: destroy by severing, through
despair, the bond with God which had originally conferred such beauty to the
child and had offered such hope for her future as a woman; destroy by finally
robbing the body of the life which raises it above the dust.
Now
that is how Jesus saw each and every one of us when He came into this
world. That is what made Him sweat blood
in His agony in the Garden, that is why He hated sin so much: sin was trying to
totally destroy what His Father had made so beautiful!
Through
sin, suffering and death came into the world: suffering and death are the
threats whereby the Devil holds the world in thrall. Men and women will do anything to escape
suffering and death. Modern techniques of torture can break down
even the most determined and most courageous of people. That is why, for example, spies are given the
cyanide pill, or something else of that nature, to escape from the
unsupportable.
Jesus
had to feel abandonment, He had to suffer and to die as He did without yielding
to despair, because He had to conquer for us the total threat of the devil:
loss of God in the soul, suffering and death in the body. Only by enduring and triumphing over the
worst the devil could inflict could Jesus free us from fear of the devil and
give us hope and power to follow Him on His way and with Him begin to free our
world from the sin which weighs so heavily upon it today.
You
were bought at a price. Therefore honour God with your body.
You
were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.
(1
Corinthians 6.20, 7:23)
For
you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you
were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your
forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or
defect. He was chosen before the
creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through
him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so
your faith and hope are in God. (1 Peter 1:18-21)
