What can we say today except, thank you Jesus! Thank You for Your conquering love. Thank You for pouring out Your blood for our forgiveness. Thank you for winning us the victory over death, sin and hell!
There is a moment in the movie, The Passion of the Christ, that always strikes me. It is the moment where the centurion takes his spear and thrusts it into the side of Christ’s lifeless body and immediately blood and water spray out right onto him. He staggers back, looking awed. On this Good Friday, we are called to stand with that centurion, to allow ourselves to be awed by the Lord’s abundant mercy and love pouring out from the cross and marking us forever as His own. As we heard Isaiah prophecy: “by his wounds we were healed.”
As when the waters overwhelmed the troops of Pharaoh pursuing the Hebrews while they marched toward freedom through the Red Sea, so now the flow of Jesus’ precious blood from the Cross overwhelms Satan, our ancient foe, and covers over all the sins that have broken us apart and separated us from God and from those we love. This flow from Christ’s wounded side continues to wash over the world, cleansing us completely in Baptism and making us new every time we encounter His Divine Mercy in Reconciliation. What an underserved, amazing gift we have in the Cross!
This day reminds us of the ugliness of sin; it reminds us just how far our God will go in order to save us from that ugliness. He took on enormous pain in His sinless human body in order to win us the victory over sin and death. He could have won our redemption however He wanted, but our loving Savior chose to die a torturous death so that each of us can know for certain, even in our darkest and most painful moments, that He is close and His love is victorious even then.
As you ponder His Holy Cross, let the words Jesus spoke to Pilate about His Kingdom echo in your heart today: “My kingdom does not belong to this world.” Brothers and sisters, marked by our Baptism with the blood of the Lamb, we are sealed for a kingdom which goes beyond this world. We are destined for eternal life with Jesus and the angels and Saints in the joys of Heaven. To win this kingdom, Jesus was willing to pay the price for your sins, my sins, and those of the whole world by His Divine Mercy for each of us on the Cross. He poured out His life for you and for me to let us know that there is nothing more important to Him than our lives. He wishes to share His own perfect life with you and me for all eternity and has made the way there by the blood of His Cross!
Today and always, Jesus invites you and me to be filled with His fullness, to respond to His love poured out by offering our own life in love back to Him, to return love for Love. As we kiss His precious Cross, let us lean into His abundant grace and offer ourselves back to Him, allowing Him to remove from our hearts anything that would keep us from answering His call to live for His kingdom now, so that we might reign with Him forever.
+ We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world. +