[stephenkhoo]

CHRIST’S PASSION REVEALS THE HEART OF GOD’S COMPASSION 

SCRIPTURE READINGS:  ISA 52:13 – 53:12;  HEB 4:14-16; 5:7-9; JOHN 18:1 – 19:42
http://www.universalis.com/20140418/mass.htm 

Does God love me?  This is the all-important question.  Even the question of God’s existence is unimportant.  Why?  Even if we could prove beyond doubt that there is God but if this God does not love me, it doesn’t matter and won’t change our lives anyway.  That is why there are some who just speak about a philosophical God.  For them, God is just an idea based on reason alone.  Or we go to the other extreme of denying any reality of God by concluding that we are gods, as in pantheism and new age.  Indeed, today people are turning to impersonal prayers and an abstract relationship with an impersonal God because there is a loss of the experience of a personal God in their lives.  They end up confusing their psychological consciousness with God. 

But why have we lost the experience of a personal God?  Firstly, many of us feel that God does not care for us in our sufferings.  He seems to be oblivious to our pain, illnesses, innocent suffering and the injustices we suffer. Like the suffering servant in the first reading, how often have we been wrongly accused, punished or suffered injustices?   Like Jesus, we too often feel that we have been used, abused, taken advantage of and rejected.  Our friends and especially our loved ones have betrayed us and even turned against us after all the good we have done for them.  We cannot but think of them as ingrates.  When we are alone in our sickness, we cannot but in despair cry out to God.  Like Jesus, we say, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  And all we hear is a cruel and long silence, as if God has excommunicated us. 

The other reason why we, like Jesus, experience the absence of God is our sins.  On the cross, Jesus was separated from His beloved Father because of the sins He carried for us in His body.  Jesus was not simply punished in our state but took upon Himself our sins.  In our sinfulness we too feel condemned by the Lord.  We cannot forgive ourselves for the mistakes we made. We cannot forgive ourselves for the wrongs we committed.  We feel ashamed of ourselves for being so weak and cowardly in denying Jesus, especially for not standing up to the truth and our conscience.  We feel terrible for betraying our loved ones and those who trust us so much.

Of course, for some of us, it is others whom we cannot forgive.  We keep thinking of the past and nurse our wounds.  We become fearful of those whom we used to trust.  We are suspicious.  There is no more love left as there is no trust.  We just cannot forget.  The hurts, misunderstandings and betrayals come back to haunt us again and again.  As a result, we cannot get out of our depression.  We want to take revenge on our enemies for hurting us and our loved ones.  We are being tormented by the past.  As a consequence, our spirit is down, so too is our body.

Most of all if we cannot experience God, it is because we cannot forgive ourselves.  We transfer this un-forgiveness to God.  We think God will not forgive us.  We think that God will punish us and that He will send us to hell.  When there is fear there is no love.  We cannot love God whom we fear.  Indeed, many people see God as a policeman and a discipline master.  He is ever ready to catch us falling so that He can punish us.

This leads us to despair, like Judas.  When we do that, we allow Satan, the accuser, to win the victory over us.  The strategy of Satan is not just to lead us into sin.  This is just the first step.  Because when we sin, the Lord will forgive us anyway.  Having sinned, the battle is not yet won because Jesus, by His death and resurrection, forgave our sins.  The real victory of the devil is to make us fall into total despair like Judas, so that we commit suicide.  This is a sign of complete hopelessness and frustration.

As a consequence of God’s absence and the fear of punishment, the distance between God and us gets further.   A person in depression, instead of looking out, starts looking inwards.  He falls further into the dark hole.  He stops praying.  He is closed to the love of God and those who try to reach out to him.  Falling further into depression means falling further into sin as well because we cannot get up when we hate ourselves.  Hence sin leads to further sins.  When we are caught in sin, the punishment for our iniquities is to commit further sins till we become sins personified.  This is the great plan of the devil.  He will slowly destroy us by leading us from one sin to another till we give up on ourselves completely.  Then his victory is won for certain.

The way to victory is precisely through the love and mercy of God.  The passion of Christ is meant to reveal God’s incredible love for us.  By contemplating the Crucified God in Christ’s passion, we will recover our personal relationship with God.  In Christ’s passion, the Trinitarian God is revealed to us as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  How is this so?

Firstly, by identifying with us in our pains, Christ reveals to us that this God whom we worship is not immutable to suffering and pain.  This is reflected in all the three readings, especially the suffering servant in Isaiah. Christ who suffered with us surely could identify with us.  Indeed, it is important to ask ourselves what sufferings He had not undergone.  He suffered all these and more.  So we cannot say God did not suffer or don’t know how we feel.  We are not alone in our pain and sufferings.  We are not the only ones who have been betrayed by our loved ones, abandoned, used or humiliated or mocked at.

Secondly, Christ too was tempted by sins and threatened by fear.  He was tempted from the beginning of His ministry right up to the last moment of His passion.  At the garden of Gethsemane, He was sorrowful unto death, so much so that His sweat was like drops of blood flowing down.   And at the cross, He was mocked and taunted.  “He trusted in God that He would deliver Him: let Him deliver Him, if he delights in Him.” (Ps 22:8)  Jesus had to resist taking control of His life.  Hence, the letter to the Hebrews tells us that “Since in Jesus, the Son of God, we have the supreme High Priest who has gone through to the highest heaven, we must never let go of the faith that we have professed. For it is not as if we had a high priest who was incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us; but we have one who has been tempted in every way that we are, though he is without sin.”   The difference was that He conquered sins once and for all.  Indeed, more than anyone else, Jesus knows the meaning of temptation and understands the struggles involved.  Jesus knows our fear of pain and alienation, especially from people we love.

Thirdly, He suffered the effects of our sins.  Jesus knew no sin but He chose to bear sins in His own body.  In other words, as a man, being tried, tempted and suffered with and for us, He suffered the effects of our sins.  His was innocent suffering.  He was a lamb without blemish.  He did not have to carry the cross.  For us, we carry the cross because of our own sins and that of others.  As the Good thief remarked, “… in our case we deserved it: we are paying for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Fourthly, Jesus is forgiving because He knows our struggles and how difficult it is to overcome the temptations of the Evil One.  He is aware that we are weak and unable to resist evil because of our fallen nature.  Hence, He could say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they were doing.”  With His passion and death on the cross, we know for certain that Jesus will forgive us our sins because He feels with us and knows our limitations.  On the other hand, He gives us hope that sin could be overcome just as He did using His human will to say ‘Yes’ to the Father.  Jesus however does not simply show us the way or the example but He will also supply us the grace to do what He did.

Indeed, if we still doubt the love of God, we need only to contemplate on His passion to find strength and hope.   This is what Isaiah is telling us.  “As the crowds were appalled on seeing him, so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human – so will the crowds be astonished at him, and kings stand speechless before him; for they shall see something never told and witness something never heard before: ‘Who could believe what we have heard, and to whom has the power of the Lord been revealed?’”  Truly, it is incredible that we have a God who loves us so much that He would condescend to become one of us and with us, to share in our sufferings and struggles so that He can be a leader in salvation. “Although he was son, he learnt to obey through suffering; but having been made perfect, he became for all who obey the source of eternal salvation and was acclaimed by God with the title of high priest of the order of Melchizedeck.”

When we ponder on the love of God in Christ crucified, we cannot but feel the heart of God.   He will change our hardened hearts. No one suffers more than God.  He suffered for us 2000 years ago and still suffers as much for us today.  The passion of Christ is not something of the past.  He did not die for sinners in His time only.   Why is that so? He died in view of us, of our sins, and still suffers because we are unrepentant and continue to doubt His love and mercy.  He loves us more because He sees us hurting ourselves.

So, let us renew our love for the Lord and be moved by His love for us on the cross.  Until we contemplate on His love and mercy, we cannot be touched by His love and mercy.  We must use our heart, not our head, to come to repentance.  Only the heart can move us to open our arms to embrace His love and mercy.

WRITTEN BY THE MOST REV MSGR WILLIAM GOH
ARCHBISHOP OF SINGAPORE