Today's Word

The Seven Last Words: Finished

Steve · March 25, 2016 · 1 Comment

During the hours when Jesus hung on the cross leading up to his death, he uttered seven “words” (actually short sentences, as recorded across the four gospels), and these words continue to be meaningful and insightful to us today if we’re willing to spend some time in quiet with them. For they are not only remembrances of that day and of Jesus’ suffering and death, but also serve as reminders of how we are to live in our own moments of suffering. As we enter Holy Week, I offer seven short reflections on these words and ask you to consider what they might mean to you, today.

Six: “It is finished.” John 19:30

Jesus sips the sour wine and — in this last purely human act — knows that his end has come. But notice his words. Not “I am finished” but “it is finished.” This tragic scene before us, filled with passion and drama, is about much more than a man dying. This is beyond a sad tale of a failed prophet and teacher. This is the end of something bigger. This is the culmination of the Father’s plan for the salvation of the world.

From the manger in Bethlehem to the cross on Calvary, the Incarnate Word of God visited earth and lived among us so that God might draw us all to himself. That experiment in divine interaction was coming to a close, and none of us would ever be the same. Bowing his head, Jesus handed over his spirit.

The overall scene is brutal, violent and bloody, but the end reflects the gentleness of a God who only wants us to embrace and say yes to him. As he has done throughout his ministry and passion, Jesus does not lash out. He does not hate. He does not promise retribution to those who persecuted and killed him. He does not scream. He bows his head and “hands over” his spirit. No one has taken his life from him, for he has freely given it.

Here, in these simple and surely whispered words, is the model of living and dying that he has left us. Even as Jesus pours out his life for us, we are called to a life of surrender to God, to the creator and author of life who knows us better than we know ourselves. I am reminded as I write this of a prayer called the Suscipe from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, that prayer of abandonment and detachment from the things of this world in exchange for something much greater — the presence and grace of God:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty,
my memory, my understanding,
and my entire will,
All I have and call my own.
You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

Perhaps the best and most authentic response to the grace offered to us on the cross is giving away our own lives to others and to God. We are called to be servants. We are asked to be more for others than for ourselves. We are invited to love in the face of fear, confusion and hatred.

Ask yourself in silence: What in my life needs to change so I can pray, “Take, Lord, receive…all is yours now?”

Tomorrow: Commend

The Seven Last Words: Thirsty

Steve · March 24, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Five: “I thirst.” John 19:28-29

Jesus, on the cross for many hours now, is losing bodily fluids like a wrung-out sponge. He is growing weak, his body emaciated and dehydrated from sweating, crying, even breathing. He needs to drink something. There is not much time left, he senses. His lips are parched and dry, his head spinning. Aware of the end, and in order that once again scripture might be fulfilled and we all might come to belief, he says quietly — for certainly the time for crying out has now left him — “I thirst.”

Once again, he is hearkening back to the psalms of his Jewish heritage (Psalm 69:21-22):

Insult has broken my heart, and I despair;
I looked for compassion, but there was none,
for comforters, but found none.
Instead they gave me poison for my food;
and for my thirst they gave me vinegar.

Indeed, there was a vessel nearby filled with common sour wine. So someone — was this person helping him with such a drink or not? — soaked the simple wine on a sprig of hyssop (the same small branch from the mint family that Moses dipped in blood for the Passover sacrifice) and put it up to his mouth. Jesus sips from the “sacramental” wine — however sour — and prepares for his final words.

If we have any doubt of Jesus’ humanity — and that he is truly suffering — this simple and natural urge to slake his thirst ought to set us straight. Throughout his life, Jesus shows us over and over again the emotions, traits and urges that make him human. He weeps and cries, he mourns, he gets angry, he becomes tender, he eats and sleeps and thirsts. It is his incarnation — Word of God into flesh and bone —that binds and attracts us to him. God the Father knew we would need this, would need someone like us, if we were to believe and be drawn back to God despite our sins that separate us from the Divine.

As Jesus thirsted for drink — a human need in the midst of his physical and spiritual turmoil so, too, do we thirst. We thirst for God and for a relationship with him. We thirst for spiritual nourishment in the midst of our busy, physical lives. We thirst for the one thing that cannot come from any place other than Jesus — living water that never dries up and never fails to satisfy. Tonight at our Holy Thursday mass we sang:

O let all who thirst, let them come to the water.
And let all who have nothing, let them come to the Lord.
Without money, without price.
Why should you pay the price, except for the Lord?

John Foley, SJ (Come to the Water, 1978)

Ask yourself in silence: In my life, for what I am most thirsty? How do I feel as I answer that honestly?

Tomorrow: Finished

The Seven Last Words: Forsaken

Steve · March 23, 2016 · 2 Comments

spear — Pierced for our transgressions. SJG photo.

Four: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mark 15:33-34

It was perhaps Earth’s darkest three hours ever, from noon to three o’clock on that first Good Friday, when the world was draped in a gray veil and Jesus hung heavy and nearly lifeless on the cross, his life slowly ebbing away and his breathing labored and weak. It is the man Jesus — the human just like us — who cries out loudly these words of hopelessness and utter dejection: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

They are words prayed in fulfillment of the psalms (Psalm 22) that he certainly heard as an attentive young man in the temple:

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Why so far from my call for help, from my cries of anguish?
My God, I call by day, but you do not answer;
by night, but I have no relief.

But this was no mere repetition of a childhood prayer in a moment of anguish. For he had good reason to wonder where God was. After all, he had done everything right. He was certainly innocent of these so-called crimes. He knew the Father loved him and approved of his life and ministry. His miracles and healings and feeding of thousands were the work of the Father through him. He had never been alone before.

Yet even as he knew all this, even as he was accomplishing and fulfilling the purpose for which he became “Emmanuel,” he feels the emptiness and pain of being a man seemingly forgotten — the suffering servant of God. With the weight of the world on him, he was still “man enough” to feel like a man, to sense abandonment by the One who loved and sent him. He can’t help but ask the question: Why?

Because he is fully man, no pain escapes him. The suffering is as real for him as it will be for us. As we come face to face with our own moments of pain and death, we, too, may be pushed to the brink of doubt and faith, seemingly forsaken by the One who loved and created us. And we will not be able to not ask the same question: Why? Why come so far to end like this? Why here and why now? Why, God, if in fact you are God…

For when it comes to pain, suffering and death, we don’t get a “get out of jail free card” because of our faith. Faith in Christ doesn’t promise us “easy,” but it does promise us what Jesus came to experience in the fullness time — life in the eternal presence of God.

Ask yourself in silence: When have I felt forsaken? When have I felt the eternal presence of God?

Tomorrow: Thirsty

The Seven Last Words: Behold

Steve · March 22, 2016 · 4 Comments

Mary — Woman, behold your son. SJG photo.

Three: “Woman, behold your son. Behold your mother.” John 19:25-27

Jesus looks down from the cross and sees what must be a son’s worst nightmare — his mother, watching him suffer and die. Standing there with her friends, close relatives and his beloved disciple (John), his thoughts turn from his death to their life, to their care for one another. Looking at his mother, he says, “Woman, behold your son.” And to John, “behold your mother.” He knew those were all the words he needed to say. He knew from that day on she would be cared for and revered by John and the early Church community. She was to be blessed indeed.

As I read and contemplated this passage today, the phrase “no mother should bury a child” kept coming to mind. I wondered to myself, where is the greater pain: in the mother watching her son die or in the son watching his mother watch him die? For us all, the pain of death can be so intense that we find ourselves asking (or screaming), “why God?” We hurt so much because we love so much, of course, because even as the life we love so much slips away we already feel the loss of relationship and presence.

Certainly Jesus knew the pain his mother was feeling, knew that she needed to be cared for in a society where widows and motherless children were often ignored or worse. So he did the best he could for her in offering her the companionship of John. Jesus neither asks nor commands John about this task; he simply and gently presents them to one another.

As we walk our Christian life, we are called to be more aware of one another. We are asked to “behold” one another, for certainly there are those in our life — whether we are aware or not — who are suffering and in need of our attention. Indeed, perhaps what they most need is for us to simply see — behold — them.

It is this same interaction of beholding that St. Ignatius uses to describe our prayer and relationship with God. When we enter into prayer, he suggests that we “consider God considering us.” As I write this the world once more is grieving over the killing of so many innocents in Belgium, so as we pray tonight we offer up a prayer especially for all those affected. We ask God to consider them, to behold them and gather them into his arms.

Ask yourself in silence: Who needs me to behold them today?

Tomorrow: Forsaken

The Seven Last Words: Paradise

Steve · March 21, 2016 · 2 Comments

Pardise — Paradise in Nicaragua. SJG photo.

Two: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Luke 23:39-43

Hanging on a cross and utterly helpless, Jesus’ torture — both physical and mental — continues. He has been in relentless pain for hours. He has plenty of reasons to be angry, to seek vengeance, to lash out at his attackers. And who would blame him? What man — especially an innocent man — would not defend himself, after all? Even one of the criminals hanging beside him, condemned to death the same as him, gets his licks in. “You’re the Messiah,” he shouts at Jesus, “save yourself and us!” But Jesus does not respond. Is this weakness or strength, we wonder? For this is how we see the world. An eye for an eye…

But in a quiet moment between the harangues of the thief, the other man speaks up, perhaps seeing for the first time the error of his life and ways. He knows, after all, that he deserves what he is getting. He calls out in anger and confusion at the one attacking Jesus, “Have you no fear? Are you a fool? We are guilty and our punishments fit our crimes. But this one — what is it about this one? — has done nothing wrong. Jesus,” he calls out in some last-minute attempt at redemption, “remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

What kind of response he was expecting we can only guess, but I can’t believe he thought for a moment he would hear this from Jesus: “Okay, I will,” Jesus says. “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Paradise — another world, another day, another chance.

Once again, we see the wounded, hurting, oppressed Jesus turning to love and forgiveness. He had no reason to do this and yet he is ready and quick to forgive and offer redemption. Hanging there, wracked with pain, he continues to love as if he has no choice.

The offer of paradise he offers the penitent thief is what he offers us still. In spite of our pain, our failings, our doubts, dependencies and deep-held grudges, he offers us paradise — another world, another day, another chance.

Ask yourself in silence: How can I find it in myself to be compassionate to those who lash out at me? How can I somehow find the strength to love in the very face of illness, evil, hatred or even death? How can I accept the offer of paradise?

Tomorrow: Mother