St. Thomas Aquinas once said
that the death of Christ,
for us and for our salvation,
“is so tremendous a fact
that our intellect can scarcely grasp it.”
In the midst of the horror of death
the mercy of God manifests itself;
divine love and compassion
burst forth from within an act
of human hatred and condemnation.
As the hymn “How great Thou Art” puts it,
“And when I think
That God,
His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die,
I scarce can take it in.”
that the death of Christ,
for us and for our salvation,
“is so tremendous a fact
that our intellect can scarcely grasp it.”
In the midst of the horror of death
the mercy of God manifests itself;
divine love and compassion
burst forth from within an act
of human hatred and condemnation.
As the hymn “How great Thou Art” puts it,
“And when I think
That God,
His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die,
I scarce can take it in.”
But we want to take it in.
Our souls want to grasp such love
so that it might dwell within us.
And so, like someone
circling a magnificent sculpture
in order to see it from all angles,
or someone listening to a symphony
over and over to find
new nuances and hidden harmonies,
the cross of Christ,
God’s magnum opus,
must be seen from as many sides as possible,
must be called to mind again and again,
in order to catch even a fraction
of the beauty of divine love that it reveals.
We must mediate on the cross of Jesus
so as to drink in its riches
and be transformed by the grace
that pours forth from it.
The Letter to the Hebrews tells us
that in Jesus “we do not have
a high priest who is unable
to sympathize with our weaknesses.”
In taking on our human nature,
God has taken on human weakness as well.
Jesus, like us, skinned his knees as a child;
he got colds and grew hungry;
he was misunderstood and disappointed.
But most of all,
on the cross God has taken on
the weakness of the persecuted,
of those condemned to death by systems
that care more about the exercise of power
than about justice or mercy.
God has entered into solidarity with those
who lives are crushed by forces
that do not even recognize their humanity.
God has made himself present to the countless millions
ground beneath the wheels of human hatred—
of war and injustice and oppression—
those whose names are lost to history
but whom God remembers.
But God’s solidarity with us
in our suffering and weakness
is only one facet of Jesus’ cross.
As our mind moves around this great work of God,
as we listen again to the symphony of salvation,
we see that, in Christ, God not only suffers with us,
but he also suffers for us.
Jesus does for us what we cannot do for ourselves,
by offering his life in perfect love to the Father
so that we might be freed from sin’s prison
and be reconciled to God.
Fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy of the Servant of God
who “gives his life as an offering for sin,”
Jesus tells his followers that “the Son of Man
did not come to be served but to serve
and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
More than simply suffering alongside us,
Jesus offers his sinless life as our “ransom”—
the price that is paid to redeem us
from sin and death, which hold us captive.
How this exchange is accomplished
he does not explain;
what matters is the simple fact
that he will drink for us the cup of suffering
and be baptized for us in the waters of death,
so that we might be saved from eternal suffering
and raised up from eternal death.
Yet there is still another side of all this
that we must see,
another harmony we must hear.
If on the cross the Son of God
joins us in our suffering,
and by his love
pays the cost of our freedom,
we now are left with the question
posed by Jesus to James and John:
“Can you drink the cup that I drink
or be baptized with the baptism
with which I am baptized?”
For while Jesus does for us
what we cannot do for ourselves—
gives his sinless life
to free us from sin and death
and reconcile us to God—
we are in turn called to give our own lives
in service to God and neighbor.
We are called to imitate the love
by which we have been saved.
Thomas Aquinas wrote that
“Whoever wishes to live perfectly
need do nothing other than despise
what Christ despised on the cross,
and desire what Christ desired.”
What did Christ despise on the cross?
He despised all earthly honors and riches,
preferring to be found among the ranks
of those who are oppressed and killed.
What did Christ desire?
He desired to give himself for our salvation,
a salvation bought with charity and patience,
humility and obedience;
he desired the will of his Father,
which seeks us out in our lostness
to bring us back to our true homeland.
So we too, in turn,
must despise earthly honors;
we must refuse to feed
what the philosopher Iris Murdoch called
“the fat relentless ego.”
We too must desire selfless love
and endurance of suffering,
a recognition of our own poverty of spirit
and a willingness to answer God’s call.
We too must find greatness in service
and freedom in binding ourselves
to God’s holy will.
The love of God shown forth
in the cross of Jesus:
I scarce can take it in.
But just as we can find ourselves
captivated by a magnificent work of art
or absorbed by a great piece of music,
so too we are drawn into this great work of God.
What I cannot take in,
can take me in.
By the mercy of God,
I, unworthy as I am,
become myself a part
of God’s great work.
Christ welcomes me to drink
his cup of suffering and joy;
he washes me in his baptism of death
and raises me to life in his Spirit
and calls me into God’s service.
And all this because of his mercy.
So let us pray that we might know this mercy,
and that God, who is merciful,
might have mercy on us all.