Good Friday: The One About BEING TORTURED AND EXECUTED BY THE PERSON YOU LOVE MOST

By Ann Barnhardt

Several emails have come in asking advice on cultivating an authentic, genuine “personal relationship” with Christ.  The answer is simple, and it comes from Our Lord Himself who has told many mystic saints and doctors of the Church the same thing: THINK AND PRAY ABOUT MY PASSION AND DEATH.  Why?  Because thinking about Our Lord’s torture, agony and excruciating death forces us to confront Him as a Person, True God AND True Man.  Legal systems don’t sob until their capillaries burst.  Philosophies don’t suffer the agony of unrequited love.  Imaginary friends don’t lay down their lives.  Bureaucracies don’t fight asphyxiation by pushing themselves up on their impaled feet.

Only a PERSON can do these things.  Only a DIVINE PERSON did.  And remember, He would go through His ENTIRE PASSION just for you alone, and He would go through it REPEATEDLY for you alone, in fact as many times as you assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and even more.  That is how much He PERSONALLY loves you, PERSONALLY.

Think about that early and often, and I promise that you will develop a PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP with Him.

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The key to beginning to understand the Incarnation, God becoming Man, is Christ’s agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. If you recall, after the Last Supper in the Upper Room, Jesus and the apostles, except for Judas who was on his errand of betrayal already, went to the Garden of Gethsemane. John tells us that Jesus went there with the apostles frequently to pray, and thus it would be one of the first places Judas would have known to look for Him. The wheels of the Passion are in motion. Jesus knows exactly what is coming, and that it is coming within a matter of hours.. (continued)

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• Good Friday: The One About BEING TORTURED AND EXECUTED BY THE PERSON YOU LOVE MOST

'The Passion': A 'deeply moving spiritual experience'

By Cardinal Roger M. Mahony

While in Rome last week, I had the opportunity to view the film, "The Passion of the Christ."

Having read so many conflicting reviews about the film, I --- like so many others --- did not know how this portrayal of the last 12 hours of Jesus' life would affect me. When the film began, the various movie reviews were lurking in the back of my mind: Would the film be too violent? Was there too much emphasis on Jesus' sufferings? Did hints of anti-Semitism creep in?

Amazingly, all of the film reviews and questions quickly receded into the background. In their place, I found myself somehow absorbed into that band of disciples who were with Jesus that dreadful night and the next day. The person of Jesus seemed so real --- so close to all of those images which prayer and meditation created over the years. I felt transported into the scenes, not as a viewer, but as a friend of Jesus, one who was terrified and mystified by each tragic event that blended into the next.

"The Passion of the Christ" became for me a deeply moving spiritual experience, a time of prayer. Immersed into the sacrifice of Jesus for the redemption of us all, one refrain echoed in my soul: "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark 8:34). That call to authentic discipleship was never so real to me.

Scene by scene, I was struck by the meekness, the humility and the generous love of Jesus for us all. His emphasis on the love of neighbor, especially of enemies and those who persecute us, became so genuine when you beheld the badly beaten Son of God never waver. Mary, His mother, John the disciple and Mary Magdalene seemed to reach out and draw me into their small circle of disciples. Together, we recoiled in fright at what was happening to Jesus, we tried desperately to get near Him, to let Him know that we were now with Him --- as He is with us when we carry our crosses.

For me, "The Passion" had a deep, spiritual impact that will long endure. The total surrender of Jesus into His Father's hands, His gestures of forgiveness spoken from the heart in the midst of excruciating suffering, and His modeling of the redemptive power of suffering --- absorbed me powerfully. As I reflected back on the crosses I have had to embrace over the years --- practically none carried with the generosity of Jesus --- I discovered a new strength, even a zeal, to accept my own present crosses.

The film connects well the Last Supper with the sacrifice of Jesus upon the Cross. While I had always understood that the celebration of the Eucharist was the celebration of the sufferings, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the film has given me a deeper appreciation of that truth. Each time I celebrate the Eucharist, I will be immersed into the mystery of our redemption and salvation in a fuller way than before.

As "The Passion of the Christ" concluded with a simple scene of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, I did not feel sadness nor remorse; the brutal scenes did not linger. Rather, I felt the power of Jesus' words: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13).

My Friend had laid down His life for me, and I had been there. I walked out into the cold Rome night a renewed disciple of Jesus, and I was not alone --- my Friend was walking alongside me, reassuring me that He would always be there for me and with me. Somehow my own crosses seemed so much lighter now.

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Christ's Suffering

Eleison Comments XCI

The eve of Palm Sunday is surely a good moment to consider with St. Thomas Aquinas (IIIa, Q46, art.5,6) how Christ's suffering surpassed all other sufferings. Of course Christ could not suffer in his impassible divine nature, but he had chosen his perfect human nature, conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary, to provide him with an incomparably sensitive instrument of suffering, in body and soul, to redeem us all and to save us from Hell if we wish.

As for Christ's body, every part of it, from thorn-crowned head to nailed feet, was tormented in his Passion, culminating in the excruciating pains of death on the Cross, three hours racked between cramp from pushing up on nailed feet to breathe, and breathlessness or suffocation from slumping down on nailed hands to relieve the cramp. Crucifixion was positively designed to be excruciating -- both words derive from the Latin for "cross" (crux, crucis).

As for Christ's soul with its far greater range of perception than that of mere bodily senses, however perfect, St. Thomas names three heads of suffering. Firstly, by infused knowledge, Christ saw all sins of all men of all time, and chose to pay by his self-sacrifice for all those sins in general. In other words he used his superhuman gifts not to avoid suffering but to suffer the more. Yet at the same time he wished to suffer not just by a divine reckoning according to which a mere pin-prick of the Divine Person would have been payment infinite and more than enough, but by a human reckoning, as though he alone were to undergo umpteen executions to pay for umpteen criminals!

Secondly, by normal human knowledge, Christ suffered in his soul from observing all the kinds of people contributing to his Passion: Jew and Gentile, man and woman (e.g. the serving-girl mocking Peter), leaders and people, friend and foe. In particular, says St. Thomas, Christ suffered in his soul from being hated by his own people, then still God's Chosen People, and - worst of all - from being abandoned and betrayed by his very own Apostles. Thirdly, like any man, Christ suffered in his soul from having to die, and the more innocent and perfect his life had been, the more keenly he suffered its loss and the injustice of its loss.

Now what other human being, or mass of human beings, have lived a perfect and innocent life: have chosen to lay it down by a death anything like as terrible as crucifixion: have been able to see all sins of all men and wish to pay for them; finally have observed abandonment all around them to the point of feeling deserted even by God ("lama, lama, sabactani")? Were there any such men, still they could not claim that their sacrifice was informed with anything like a charity such as that of Christ, with his overwhelming love for every one of us poor sinners. So their sacrifice would still not be comparable to His. Kyrie eleison.

London, England

Posted by Bishop Richard Williamson at 10:12 AM

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