– Whilst praying today, there was a moment when I was unable to accept that my all-powerful God had to be crucified. I’m not sure what this means.
– When you felt you weren’t “able to accept”, what were your reasons? Is it because “He is all-powerful” and He could have very well done something to avoid it? Or is it another reason?
– Yes, because He is all-powerful. However, I know that His crucifixion was a necessary sacrifice. It was the Father’s will. But I find it difficult to accept this. I am not sure why. It’s a mental block that pushed me away. My best guess is that I need to better understand the magnitude of His mission. His willingness to suffer for us. His desire to come down from heaven. But maybe it is because He is all-powerful and had to be crucified. Why couldn’t He save us without having to suffer? I think that is what I feel.
These questions are of utmost importance. Throughout the ages, Christians have meditated on the Passion. They tried to find explanations. Some were focused on the way we were saved during Jesus’ Passion. Some felt that He needed to placate the Father’s wrath because of our sins. Others, along the same lines, said that He had to pay for us. That shedding His blood was necessary. The majority saw in His act an act of love—huge love, supreme love. Many are stricken by the physical suffering. Only a small number focused also on the sufferings of His soul.
There is no doubt that the Passion itself is horrendous. Hell unleashes! Hatred, torturing, murder… with different forms of the same sin depending on who is inflicting it—the Roman, the Jew!
Not only that, if we focus a lot on St. John’s Gospel, we notice that Jesus’ suffering because of the resistance of what John calls “the Jews” is constant, and almost from day one. He shows us in his Gospel all sorts of reactions (some believe, others don’t, others don’t know what to think,..). Of course, we have this also in the other Gospels. It is just that John is almost introduced into Jesus’ soul and feels every movement of the souls of the people around Jesus and its impact on Jesus.
The Lord says: – “Blessed is the one who is not scandalised by me.” (Matthew 11:6 / Luke 7:23) – “You will all fall away because of me this night.” (Matthew 26:31) The Passion is a scandal! A stumbling block. In a way, Jesus Himself is saying: blessed is the one who will not be shocked, will not fall, because of my Passion and death. We can add: blessed are those who will not be shocked, will not fall, because of the horrors of my horrendous Passion. So yes, on one hand, it is a very tough experience for anyone who was following Jesus back then. Let us also remember that nobody believed He would die, and moreover, after His death, talking about resurrection or hoping for it is something quite alien to them as Jews. The proof is that none believed in the resurrection. Mary Magdalene thought He was the gardener who had taken the body. Peter and John believed only when they entered the empty tomb.
The Scripture itself states very clearly that it is very difficult to believe that the one who is treated this way during the Passion (treated so horrendously) is Jesus, the Messiah. “Who has believed what we have heard?” (Isaiah 53:1) The second part of the verse shows that we need the grace of God to enter into the depth of the Passion: “And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1)
St. John himself, who writes after the year 96 (i.e. after so many years), constructed his Gospel as a long preparation, or rather purification, so we can contemplate God’s Glory in the Crucified. He conceived his Gospel as a journey of purification and growth, which will help us enter into the Passion.
Only the mystics can tell us something about the mysterious operation that occurs during the Passion. “Mysterious” because it is invisible. The Lord is saving the world during the six hours He is suspended on the Cross, and we don’t see how He does it. We need purification first, and the help of the Holy Spirit in order to truly enter into the mystery of the Passion. We need, first, to receive the Passion. To meditate on it, to receive it from the hands of the Lord, we need to be introduced by Him to this mystery of mysteries.
Receiving the Passion means the need to take time to meditate on the Passion. As St. Therese says: then the Lord transforms the Passion, revealing its true nature. In fact, she meditated a lot on the Holy Face of the Lord (as per Veronica’s Veil), and she said that the Lord revealed His beauty to her, the beauty of His soul and the depth of His love. As we can see, the grace of God introduces us into the invisible depths of the Passion. What looked like the Face of a martyred man becomes “transparent,” so to speak, or a mirror into His soul, showing His love for her. What a U-turn. Instead of seeing only the suffering, the Lord, beneath His wounded face, reveals, lifts the veil from His suffering, and opens His soul and heart to something unexpected. This is why St. John, in his Gospel, considers the Passion as the manifestation of Jesus’ Glory. Who would have thought that such a horrendous event could be the shiniest moment in the Gospel?
To the point that Therese will dwell “in His Face,” so to speak, i.e. in the mystery of His Holy Face! She will be invited to dwell in the Lord’s soul! As we can see, behind the shocking and very daunting appearances of the Passion, something difficult, very hard to face, behind it, God reveals something incredible. Not only that, but it is rather in the “place” that we need to dwell to discover God’s personal and unique love for us.
One recognises that “He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.” (Is 53:5) One sees the direct relationship between one’s iniquities (sins) and Jesus’ wounds. Our iniquities inflict wounds on Jesus and mysteriously, the wound itself has the healing power to transform us and heal us. One sees the direct relationship between the two. One could say: He could have saved us in a different way. But the way He chose is the closest one, the one where He receives/accepts the wounds made by our iniquities. The Incarnation makes Him close to us, and the Passion ends up uniting Him to us in a direct and unique way. Our iniquities are also wounds in us, because we are the first ones to be wounded by our own sin! Mysteriously, His wounds created a resemblance with us, and not only that, but uniting Himself to each one of us, His wounds heal our exact wound. Love creates resemblance, and here the resemblance is taken to the maximum. His wounds allow Him to understand, take care of, and heal our wounds. This is a mystery of true love, the truest, the closest.
Saint Therese
In her autobiography (“Story of a Soul”), in Manuscript A, page 71r° she says the following:
“Reduced to receiving one letter from him [her spiritual director] a year, out of 12 that I wrote to him, my heart quickly turned to the Director of directors and it was He who instructed me in this science hidden from scholars and sages that He deigns to reveal to the little ones… The little flower transplanted on the mountain of Carmel was to blossom in the shade of the Cross; the tears, the blood of Jesus became his dew and his Sun was his Adorable Face veiled in tears… Until then I had not fathomed the depth of the treasures hidden in the Holy Face, it was through you, my dear Mother, that I learned to know them, just as formerly you had all preceded us to Carmel, in the same way you were the first to penetrate the mysteries of love hidden in the Face of our Spouse; then you called me and I understood… I understood what true glory was. He whose kingdom is not of this world showed me that true wisdom consists in “wanting to be ignored and counted for nothing”, in “taking one’s joy in self-contempt”… Ah! like that of Jesus, I wanted: “My face to be truly hidden, so that no one on earth would recognise me.” I longed to suffer and be forgotten… How merciful is the path by which the Good Lord has always led me, He never made me desire something without giving it to me, so his bitter chalice seemed delicious to me…”
Can we go Deeper With God?
Yes, we can, at least a little bit deeper. We need to ask ourselves: what is happening in Jesus during these six hours while He is suspended on the wood of the Cross? Here, only the mystics can come to our rescue. Paradoxically, it is not the suffering that is the most important part of the Passion – of course, there is no intention at all to diminish the intensity and horror of the suffering the Lord goes through in His body. But also, His Soul suffers. There is an avenue rarely explored by theologians which is rather “mystical” but essential to understand the Passion, to understand what is happening in Christ during the Passion. He unites Himself to each one of us in a unique way during His Passion. The Holy Spirit, through a mysterious and mystical operation, unites Jesus, who is on the Cross, unites His Soul to our soul, each person in a unique way. Since we are in the darkness (“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of the shadow of death—on them light has shined.” (Is 9:2)), since we became darkness, and we are half-dead (“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.” (Luke 10:30)), and since the Holy Spirit unites Him to us, or us to Him, while He is on the Cross (and of course much before) in a supreme and total way, His Soul enters our darkness, and He experiences the “distance,” so to speak, between us and Him, the distance between the one who is “light from light” and us, who became the shadow of death, or half-death. Who can understand this mysterious union the Holy Spirit realises between us and Him, and the interior pain His soul feels? This pain is much greater than all the pains of His body, and we know that the pains in His body were beyond horrendous.
Who can understand that the operation on the Cross is a simple, straightforward act of Love: the Holy Spirit united Him with each one of us? Love makes the one who loves similar to the one who is loved! The Holy Spirit makes Jesus’ soul united to our soul, full of darkness and half-dead! This is out of love; this is the closest form of love God chose! He didn’t love us “from afar,” so to speak, with a decree of His all-powerful will. He chose the way of love, the way of union, the way of closeness, the way of uniting Himself to us, carrying us literally in His Soul, bringing us back to His Light and Love! Who can understand this? Who can understand God’s way? God’s gentleness? God’s way of healing us? Of bringing us to Him? He carried us! Literally carried us in His soul.
We can’t ask God, whose nature is love, not to love. And what is love? It is to unite Himself to us. As a consequence, our wounds hurt Him and create wounds in Him. His human will, with the help of the Holy Spirit, fights to bring us back to His Light and Love.
Can we ask God to choose another way? This is the way of true love, it is the way of Union. Since He is also God, His wounds, even if they are in His body and soul, in His human nature, are capable of healing us. Our gratitude is infinite. We are in awe before God’s means. “To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isaiah 53:1)