Think About It

His Never-Ending Passion

Although our faith can be demanding, it will never demand that we surrender our intellect.  It is true that there are mysteries of our faith that are beyond our ability to comprehend. However, this does not mean we are to stop trying to comprehend them.  On the contrary.  It is when we push our intellect to its limits that we break through into revelation and faith.  We are created in the likeness and image of God with a free-will, an intellect and an immortal soul.  It is by engaging our free-will and using our intellect that our immortal soul is uplifted to the Divine Truth of revelation.

As we proceed through Lent towards Holy Week, we should grow more attentive to the Passion of Jesus. Mournfully meditate on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary and you will be better prepared to receive the joyful promise of Easter Morning. Reflect more deeply on the Hidden Passion of Christ and you will find yourself being drawn into the embrace of His Divine Mercy.

The Ever Present Now

When we say God created the universe, we use the past tense because we exist in the finite realm of space-time. We are subject to the flow of time and everything that we experience happens sequentially. For us, there is always a past, a present, and a future. However, God exists outside of creation and is not subject to the constraints of our space-time. For God there is no past, present or future because He exists in the ever present now. Everything that has ever happened or will ever happen in our flow of time happens to God in His ever present now.

We say that God created the heavens and the earth because that is how we perceive it from the flow of time. To us, creation is an ever-evolving process that began almost fourteen billion years ago and will end sometime in the distant future. However, God exists in the ever present now. The universe exists inside the mind of God, and it is His will that gives it form and substance. He wills creation into existence and loves us into being. He has known us since before the world began because for God, there is no before. His love creates and sustains our eternal and immortal souls giving purpose and meaning to our existence.

Sin

God did not create sin. He created the Heavens and Earth, and when He beheld His creation, it was “very good.” Initially, creation was rightly ordered towards God, but then the angel Lucifer (Satan), corrupted by his own pride, sought to elevate himself above God. Satan, one of God’s created beings rebelled against God and introduced sin into creation. He is the author and father of the sin that corrupts and deforms God’s creation.

We exist because God loves us into existence. He created us for eternity and wills only what is best for us. God’s love gives our existence purpose and meaning. It is the life force that animates and sustains our being. If we are cutoff from it, we wither and die. Sin is an act of the will that opposes and rejects God’s love. It creates a disorientation that turns us away from the ultimate good and impedes the flow of God’s love and grace.

The effects of sin are tangible and evident in the broken and dysfunctional world around us. Sin acts like a cord tightly wrapped around our souls choaking off the flow of God’s love.  It creates a void of God’s grace and goodness into which suffering and death flow.

The Passion

When we meditate on the Passion of Jesus, we usually think about the physical suffering he endured. The scourging that tore His flesh, the agony of the nails driven through His hands and feet, and His slow and painful asphyxiation upon the cross. Because Jesus was fully man, he endured physical pain and suffering. We can comprehend this and even empathize with it.  When I meditate upon Christ’s Passion, I cringe and become physically uncomfortable and squeamish. I can relate to the physical suffering of a man because I am a man. However, Jesus is both fully man and fully God, and there is a dimension to His Passion that eludes human understanding.

Jesus suffered the death of his physical body because He was a man, but He is able to take away the sins of the world because He is God. The Catechism tells us that Jesus took upon himself the “sins of the world.” We profess this with the Liturgy of the Eucharist; “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world,” but what does it mean to take away the sins of the world?

Again, sin is a tangible and real impediment that restricts the flow of God’s love and grace.  It doesn’t stop God from dispensing His love, because His love flows from an endless and inexhaustible fountain of mercy.  However, sin hinders our ability to receive God’s love.  It’s a corrosive and negative energy that repels God’s love. 

All the human pain and suffering, all the agony and misery that sin has inflicted throughout all of time, is experienced by Jesus upon the cross in His ever present now.  The physical suffering of Jesus’ Passion ended when the man was taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb. However, the spiritual agony of the Passion continues as Jesus hangs on the cross as God, taking upon himself the sins of the world.

Jesus is the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity. He is consubstantial with, and inseparable from the Father, “I and the Father are one.” Yet, Jesus takes upon himself the sins of the world.  Sin, the very thing that separates us from God, is taken by Christ onto himself upon the cross. Try to imagine the spiritual agony tearing at the unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit as the Trinitarian God is tormented and tortured by the sins of the world. It is beyond human comprehension but is something we need to meditate upon.  We need to delve deeper into the Passion of Christ and the spiritual agony which compels Him to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Think about the agony of our sins that compels Jesus to cry out not just from the cross two-thousand years ago, but right now, in his ever present now. Jesus’ Passion did not end.  It continues. He continues to endure the spiritual agony of the cross and sacrifice himself for our salvation as we continue to sin, because there are no limits to his love and mercy.

Your Sins are Forgiven

God will never violate our free-will.  Jesus will continue to endure the spiritual agony that our sins inflict in His ever present now until we give him permission to take them away. We must seek forgiveness to be forgiven. It is not until we enact our will to confess and repent of our sins that they can be taken away.  If we trust Jesus, have faith, and ask him with a sincere and contrite heart, he will say to us, “Your sins are forgiven.”

He Descended into Hell

The Apostle’s Creed tells us that Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried and descended into hell, but why would Jesus descend into hell?

Aquinas tells us that Christ descended into hell to deliver us from death, deliver the captives detained in hell, and to manifest his power in hell. This is speculative theology, but there might be a more fundamental reason for Jesus’ descent into hell.

Jesus can take away the sins of the world because he his God, but He can die and descend into hell precisely because he is a man.  The death and descent of the man Jesus enables God, the Second Person of the Trinity, to take away the sins of the world and deposit them in hell.  Christ’s descent into hell returns sin to it source, removes it from creation, and rightly reorders creation towards God.

Sin disfigures creation. It creates a void, an absence of goodness and life into which suffering and death flow.  Christ’s descent into hell mends that disfiguration by restoring the goodness and life that was absent and enabling God’s love to flow freely into creation.  This is victory over death. This is salvation.

Access to His Divine Mercy

Because Jesus understands our brokenness and our vulnerability to sin, he gives us access to his Divine Mercy through the Sacraments of the Church. Baptism absolves us of original sin and incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. It is the sacrament of initiation that gives us access to the other Sacraments. The Eucharist, which is offered at each mass in reparation for the sins of the living and the dead, is the actual body and blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. It increases our union with Christ, forgives our venial sins and preserves us from grave sin.  It is the heart and summit of the Church Life and the spiritual nourishment that sustains us on our journey to Heaven. Confession is the sacrament by which the contrite and penitent sinner, motivated by their faith and love for God is absolved of their sins and reconciled to Christ.

Prayer, the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, and the forgiveness of others are also ways that we can access Jesus’ mercy. However, it is by regularly participating in the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Confession that we are continuously reconciled to Christ. These are gifts, sacraments established by Jesus himself that we cannot afford to forgo or ignore.  They are the keys given to us by Jesus that open the door to His Divine Mercy and our eternal salvation.

We are created in the likeness and image of God with a free-will, an intellect and an immortal soul. We need to use the entirety of our being to fully open ourselves to the Divine Mercy and love of our Savior.