(Audio)
So let us confidently approach the throne of grace
to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help.
Today we see the reason for our confidence and our hope. We see that there are no lengths to which God will not go to captivate us and to win us back with his love. Jesus need never have taken on flesh and become one of us. But he did so precisely so that in his flesh he could experience suffering and death for our sakes.
Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,
our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken,
as one smitten by God and afflicted.
We have sanitized this is our minds. We realize every time we watch the Passion and see the depths of pain that he endured that our normal pious devotions don't really capture the reality of what he did for us.
But he was pierced for our offenses,
crushed for our sins;
upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.
Indeed, if Jesus hadn't chosen to be pierced and crushed, we would have remained unhealed and broken. If God hadn't laid upon him the guilt of us all that guilt would still condemn us.
We don't realize how much Jesus loved us on that Friday when he offered his life. So too do we fail to realize how it is our sins and offenses that made it necessary. He prayed to his Father to forgive us who know not what we do. If the solution was as dire as the cross what must have been the problem?
Today, on Good Friday, we are invited to take stock of the ways in which we still prefer ourselves to God. We do this only at the same moment that God's love is fully revealed to us lest the depths of our depravity move us to despair. Instead, seeing his love, we can be confident of his mercy, just as the Good Thief was confident. We can be forgiven. We can be with Jesus in paradise.
From the Cross Jesus gave all he had to give. We must not overlook the gift of his mother to us.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved
he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son."
She is not just the mother of Jesus anymore. Neither is she given only to be the mother of John. We read in Revelation of "her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus (see Revelation 12:17)". She stood by the cross when we fled and couldn't bear to see the consequences of our sins. As we venerate the cross today she holds our hand and gives us courage. She teaches us to treasure the body of the LORD. Yet, though sorrowful, she does not despair. She knows, some way, somehow, the end is not yet written.
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