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Carmelite Family – Bulletin of Lay Carmel
Number 13. Spring 2002
Contents
The Response of Love: why Christ so died
Patrick Burke,
O.Carm.
It is difficult
for us as humans to understand the suffering that Christ had to bear during
his passion and dying on the Cross, particularly in the context of an
obedience to the Father. In his human nature, Jesus is like anyone else in
all things ‘except sin’ (Heb 4:15). He is in himself the most perfect of all
our humanity. His ordeal of the passion was unworthy of him, of his person,
dignity, wisdom and goodness. During his mortal life, he bore our
infirmities, our labours, our pains and our tears. He wept as anyone else
would, touched by the sadness and love of friends. The Scripture says that
he was moved by compassion at things or people he saw. Indeed his human
nature being more perfect, his natural response or sensibility was also more
delicate, more intense. It is all that is to be expected, since in his
humanity he is the reflection of his Father’s infinite being, ‘the radiant
light of God’s glory and the perfect copy of his nature’ (Heb 1:13).
Yet Jesus suffered
and died ‘for us.’ Can we understand why the Father demanded of the Son the
debt due to Him in justice because of our sin? The Father willed that Jesus
would be bruised for our wickedness. Jesus, our brother, saw the sickness
that consumes our world, the evil that brings all class of pain, agony and
disease on humans, the mindlessness that created unimaginable torments to
human beings. What is described as Christ’s Agony in the Garden of Olives
began with a flood of sadness, fear and weariness, which gradually gave way
to pain and even to a 'sweat of blood.’ Can we see him offering us love as
he is overwhelmed by the torrents of our iniquities? In fact in his natural
reaction of revulsion, he pleads with his Father: ‘Father, if you are
willing, take this cup away from me. Nevertheless, let your will be done,
not mine’ (Lk 22:42). In fact, Jesus was surrounded by the powers of
darkness. Betrayed by one of his own company, the Sinless One was first
handed over to the soldiers who make a mockery of him to chide the Jews.
They beat him; torture and scourge him as a common criminal. Ignominy is
heaped on the Holy One of God. Eventually he is condemned and fastened to a
Cross, mounted between two thieves. The Prophet Isaiah had foretold the
outrages that afflicted him and the humiliations that oppressed him. The
Prophet foretold the scene at Calvary: ‘As the crowds were appalled on
seeing him, so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human, so
will the crowds be astonished at him.. Without beauty, without majesty we
see him, no looks to attract our eyes; a thing despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, a man to make people screen
their faces; He was despised and we took no account of him.’ (Is 52:14;
53:2-3).
His passion and
death was Christ’s sacrifice that gives infinite glory to his Father and
expresses in his love what the Father asked for. It would redeem humanity,
restore the proper order in creation and open for us the springs of
everlasting life. So St. Paul was able to tell the Romans: ‘There is
therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law
of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin
and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not
do; sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he
condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law
might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according
to the Spirit.’ (Rom 8:1-5).
The love that
Jesus showed for the Father was prompted by his love and concern for the
apostles and all who would accept them and their successors throughout the
centuries. ‘Greater love than this no man has, than a man lay down his life
for his friends’ (Jn 15:13). St Paul states this as; ‘Christ die for all’
(2Cor 5:15).
When speaking of
the Good Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep, Jesus says ‘The Father
loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one
takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and as it is in my
power to take it up again; and this is the command I have been given by my
Father’ (Jn 10:17). Before his arrest, Jesus resisted the temple guards,
arguing that ‘I sat daily with you in the Temple and you laid no hands on
me’ (Mt 26:55). When he is brought before Pilate, he makes it clear to him,
‘You would have no power over me, if it had not been given you from above’ (Jn
19:11). However, because it is his Father’s will, he submits himself to
Pilate - for our sakes.
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